# HR20: Hard Drive Upgrade



## Gotchaa

I don't recommend anyone do this unless they own their HR20 and understand that you are on your own as far as D* is concerned so don't call them if you have issues or break your box, you are pretty much toast. 

This was intended as a proof of concept for an upgraded hard drive, not intended to be a guide or procedure to do so.

I figured since the SATA port is disabled for the external port, and I had a HR20 that hadn't been activated yet I'd see if I could upgrade the HD.

I opened up the box, unplugged the SATA cable from the internal HD controller and active onboard controller, and plugged in the external SATA cable to controller 1.

I then plugged in my external SATA HD, which I had hoped would just work out of the box, with the external port, powered up and waited. Soon enough, it booted up, I went through the setup menu, activated the device and all is well:

External 300GB SATA HD running off controller 1, internal HD disconnected.

I have HD programs recording for the next 24 hours on 
both tuners now to the external SATA HD.

I also have an internal 500GB HD SATA drive on hand which I plan to likely take back and replace with a 750GB SATA drive, as it seems that in all likelihood it should work.

What I don't know:

-If I can take the external SATA drive and plug it into my other HR20, reverse the controller cable, reboot and see the recorded program I have on the drive. (This would allow Sneaker Net for MRV until it becomes available)

-If it requires an unactivated or formated HD to work the first time

-What will happen if I plug the external sata cable back to controller 2 and reboot.

-What will happen if I plug both internal and external sata cables back into the controllers and attach both external and internal drives and reboot.

-If I can use all the space on the HD (300, 500, or 750GB SATA)

-What happens when I reboot the HR20 without the HD attached or powered on

-What happens when I plug the orginal HD back in and reboot.

Interestingly enough, I have not received even the initial software update, I am guessing because I am actively recording on both streams. 

I also noticed the sound effects option was not grayed out, so I was able to tab to it, these are the settings for screen navigation volume level. Needless to say, there is no menu sound even though it's accessible, likely why it was grayed out with the initial update.


I am going to wait till I get some more recorded material on these devices and test some of these scenarios out.


Now if D* had just released the box with the external sata port enabled I wouldn't be tinkering. In all likelihood D* is going to enable the external port for expanded space, so my efforts are just to find out if it can be done.

All this is pretty interesting to me and likely explains why the box is so quick, it appears recorded programming is all that's stored on the HD, which is good and bad if this turns out to be true.


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## dvrblogger

Gotchaa said:


> I don't recommend anyone do this unless they own their HR20 and understand that you are on your own as far as D* is concerned so don't call them if you have issues or break your box, you are pretty much toast.
> 
> This was intended as a proof of concept for an upgraded hard drive, not intended to be a guide or procedure to do so.
> 
> I figured since the SATA port is disabled for the external port, and I had a HR20 that hadn't been activated yet I'd see if I could upgrade the HD.
> 
> I opened up the box, unplugged the SATA cable from the internal HD controller and active onboard controller, and plugged in the external SATA cable to controller 1.
> 
> I then plugged in my external SATA HD, which I had hoped would just work out of the box, with the external port, powered up and waited. Soon enough, it booted up, I went through the setup menu, activated the device and all is well:
> 
> External 300GB SATA HD running off controller 1, internal HD disconnected.
> 
> I have HD programs recording for the next 24 hours on
> both tuners now to the external SATA HD.
> 
> I also have an internal 500GB HD SATA drive on hand which I plan to likely take back and replace with a 750GB SATA drive, as it seems that in all likelihood it should work.
> 
> What I don't know:
> 
> -If I can take the external SATA drive and plug it into my other HR20, reverse the controller cable, reboot and see the recorded program I have on the drive. (This would allow Sneaker Net for MRV until it becomes available)
> 
> -If it requires an unactivated or formated HD to work the first time
> 
> -What will happen if I plug the external sata cable back to controller 2 and reboot.
> 
> -What will happen if I plug both internal and external sata cables back into the controllers and attach both external and internal drives and reboot.
> 
> -If I can use all the space on the HD (300, 500, or 750GB SATA)
> 
> -What happens when I reboot the HR20 without the HD attached or powered on
> 
> -What happens when I plug the orginal HD back in and reboot.
> 
> Interestingly enough, I have not received even the initial software update, I am guessing because I am actively recording on both streams.
> 
> I also noticed the sound effects option was not grayed out, so I was able to tab to it, these are the settings for screen navigation volume level. Needless to say, there is no menu sound even though it's accessible, likely why it was grayed out with the initial update.
> 
> I am going to wait till I get some more recorded material on these devices and test some of these scenarios out.
> 
> Now if D* had just released the box with the external sata port enabled I wouldn't be tinkering. In all likelihood D* is going to enable the external port for expanded space, so my efforts are just to find out if it can be done.
> 
> All this is pretty interesting to me and likely explains why the box is so quick, it appears recorded programming is all that's stored on the HD, which is good and bad if this turns out to be true.


very ub=nlikely you can move drives between boxes as unlike DISH and otehrs NDS /DIRECTV encrypt all content on the drive. It'll be interesting to see if you have any luck ? Where you able to read the drive in a PC ?


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## Wally_Gator

Reading the drive in a PC might be hard unless you have linux variant on the PC. 
I could be wrong but don't most of these systems use a Linux kernal for speed. 
As far as reading th content. It has been said the the Sat stream is sent directly to the drive and not decrypted. You would need the Decryption hardware in the receiver to decode the content.


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## geoliquid

Wally_Gator said:


> Reading the drive in a PC might be hard unless you have linux variant on the PC.
> I could be wrong but don't most of these systems use a Linux kernal for speed.
> As far as reading th content. It has been said the the Sat stream is sent directly to the drive and not decrypted. You would need the Decryption hardware in the receiver to decode the content.


That makes sense. The stream would have to be encrypted. How else can they let you record a pay per view movie but only charge you if you watch. I would think they would be required to protect that data. Very cool!


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## Gotchaa

Wally_Gator said:


> Reading the drive in a PC might be hard unless you have linux variant on the PC.
> I could be wrong but don't most of these systems use a Linux kernal for speed.
> As far as reading th content. It has been said the the Sat stream is sent directly to the drive and not decrypted. You would need the Decryption hardware in the receiver to decode the content.


Just to clarify, I am not trying to read the recorded data off the external HD, rather I was referring to moving the external HD from one HR20 to another HR20. That's all.

I won't be discussing anything related to hacking the recorded data streams.


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## Wolffpack

If you're interested here's some work I did with the HD on a R15. I'm sure there are differences but this may provide some info:

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=54346


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## NurseDave

Gotchaa said:


> Now if D* had just released the box with the external sata port enabled I wouldn't be tinkering. In all likelihood D* is going to enable the external port for expanded space, so my efforts are just to find out if it can be done.


Oh man, thinking about adding another HD to it just makes me all droolly. :stickman:


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## Gotchaa

Wolffpack said:


> If you're interested here's some work I did with the HD on a R15. I'm sure there are differences but this may provide some info:
> 
> http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=54346


I am curious now, there was nothing on the external HD, so the device must have initialized it and created the HD partition.

If this is accurate, then my guess would be that some information about the drive must be stored on the device. It's possible after initalization, upgrading to another HD from scratch without resetting memory may not work, a lot of assumptions being made here. Installing a larger drive may not work without doing a dd, and from what it sounds like doing a dd from a smaller drive to a larger one requires repartitioning to get the larger space.

I will have to wait till tomorrow to do some more testing, at which point I can attempt connecting the drive to a linux system if I can get drivers for sata pci card to work.

I wonder if there is a jumper setting to erase the onboard device's memory.


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## Gotchaa

I went back and read the thread Wolfpack linked to, and Jim Barton's TiVo-lution article, very good read. http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=381.

From the sounds of it, it make sense why the 300GB external SATA Seagate worked, it's exactly the same size.

I am just going to stop recording now and throw in the 500GB drive and see what happens.

It appears that the HD size is limited in ROM, so it won't matter if it boots up fine. But let's see what happens, perhaps it's not restricted to 300GB. How many hours of Mpeg2 HD should I be able to store about 60 hours?


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## Gotchaa

I went ahead and removed the external HD, replaced the sata internal and external cables, and removed the internal Seagate drive. I was able to put in a virgin Maxtor 500GB drive jumpered to 150gb transfer rate, reboot and it came back up no problems, formatted and ready to go for recording. 

I was immeditately prompted for a software download, which I cancelled. After thinking about it, I am going to let the software update download, as it would eventually happen anyhow, and this would be a better test of how it would be running after testing. Who knows maybe they've locked or unlocked storage capcity (doubt it).

The plan is to record two HD Mpeg2 channels all flagged to KEEP until I delete for the next 30 hours, so my Monday morning, I should know how much recording time I have.


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## Wally_Gator

Now the question is, what is the partition size on that 500gb hd?
Does it partition to 300GB or to a max size? Big question..
One would wonder what type of filesystem is on that HD?

While you may be able to put a larger drive in the system, if it is set to only partition to 300gb, you would never use the additional space... If it used a filesystem compatable with Windows, you could use Partiton Magic to expand the Partition..
Just thoughts...


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## Wolffpack

The partition size doesn't necessarily mean more recording space (at least on the R15).

The R15 comes with a 160GB drive with a 160GB FAT32(ish) partition. If I place a 250GB drive in my R15 and perform a format I get a 250GB FAT32(ish) partition. But even with that the R15 stops recording at 100 Hrs. No increase.


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## Gotchaa

So far I've got 16hrs of Mpeg2 HD, and 82% diskspace free..


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## P Smith

Gothchaa, will be faster to fillout using MPEG-4 channels.


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## Earl Bonovich

P Smith said:


> Gothchaa, will be faster to fillout using MPEG-4 channels.


Actually it will take longer if you are recording MPEG-4 channels..
As it is a tigher compression: MPEG-4-HD is smaller them MPEG-2 HD


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## P Smith

Well, then record two HD channels ; ah - will be interesting to see difference in size for MPEG-2 and MPEG-4.


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## Wolffpack

Gotchaa said:


> So far I've got 16hrs of Mpeg2 HD, and 82% diskspace free..


I'd stay with the MPEG2 HD recordings. Easier to add up the hours and see how that corresponds to the size available. On the HR10 one hour of MPEG2 HD takes up about 6.1 GB of HD space. This is based on Extreme Engineering and Sunrise Earth. If you start mixing SD/HD MPEG2 and HD MPEG4 it's going to be impossible to tell exactly how much storage you have.

Based your figures above, 16hrs of MPEG2 HD would be close to 100GB. How large of a drive did you put in? 500GB?

Does anyone know the actual rating of HD MPEG2 and HD MPEG4 hours on the HR20? Also, how much of the drive is reserved for VOD?


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## Gotchaa

Wolffpack said:


> I'd stay with the MPEG2 HD recordings. Easier to add up the hours and see how that corresponds to the size available. On the HR10 one hour of MPEG2 HD takes up about 6.1 GB of HD space. This is based on Extreme Engineering and Sunrise Earth. If you start mixing SD/HD MPEG2 and HD MPEG4 it's going to be impossible to tell exactly how much storage you have.
> 
> Based your figures above, 16hrs of MPEG2 HD would be close to 100GB. How large of a drive did you put in? 500GB?
> 
> Does anyone know the actual rating of HD MPEG2 and HD MPEG4 hours on the HR20? Also, how much of the drive is reserved for VOD?


500GB is the size, Maxtor Drive, which is louder than the Seagate. Does Maxtor still have the amset quiet flag?

I am recording two HD Mpeg 2 channels, HDNet (which may have more bandwidth allocated per stream), and Showtime-HD. I started at about 2:30AM this morning, which means around 8 or 9 AM Monday morning, I should be completly full with about 60 or so hours of recordings. I've tagged all programs to keep until I delete.

6.1 GB per hour would mean about 50hrs recording time for a 300GB drive, and 80 hours for a 500GB time. I've seen reported that you get about 50hrs with HR20 with Mpeg4 out of the box. If your estimates are correct then I would need to schedule an addtional 20 hours, which would take me out to 7PM Monday evening.

I had been using an estimate of about 8GB per hour for Mpeg2


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## Earl Bonovich

According to previous reports:

30hrs MPEG-2
50hrs MPEG-4


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## Wolffpack

So if a 300GB drive is expected to record 30hrs of MPEG2 one could expect 50hrs of MPEG2 on a properly formatted 500GB drive. So 16 hrs out of 50 would be 32% utilization yet his test is showing 18% utilization.

Gotchaa, are you recording individual shows or blocks of time? Also, have you reviewed MYVOD to make sure you're getting complete recordings?


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## Earl Bonovich

Wolffpack said:


> So if a 300GB drive is expected to record 30hrs of MPEG2 one could expect 50hrs of MPEG2 on a properly formatted 500GB drive. So 16 hrs out of 50 would be 32% utilization yet his test is showing 18% utilization.
> 
> Gotchaa, are you recording individual shows or blocks of time? Also, have you reviewed MYVOD to make sure you're getting complete recordings?


Do remember those are just the estimates...
And we know the MPEG-2 supplied by SAT is compressed a little tighter then OTA


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## Gotchaa

Wolffpack said:


> So if a 300GB drive is expected to record 30hrs of MPEG2 one could expect 50hrs of MPEG2 on a properly formatted 500GB drive. So 16 hrs out of 50 would be 32% utilization yet his test is showing 18% utilization.
> 
> Gotchaa, are you recording individual shows or blocks of time? Also, have you reviewed MYVOD to make sure you're getting complete recordings?


I started out with Blocks of time, but realized manual recording did not separate each program in MYVOD, so I switch to individual recording at 11AM this morning.

In looking at the two 8hr 41min manual recordings they seemed to be complete. skip to tick advances at 39min intervals.

On a side note, manual record playback does not display the correct program info, hours into the recording on Quiz show it still displays the first program's info Groundhog Day...so for manual recording of a time period, the guide data for the first program is only retained. However if you select more info it lists all the programs recorded from the point in playback you are in, till the end of the manual record period.


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## jonaswan2

Gotchaa said:


> On a side note, manual record playback does not display the correct program info, hours into the recording on Quiz show it still displays the first program's info Groundhog Day...so for manual recording of a time period, the guide data for the first program is only retained. However if you select more info it lists all the programs recorded from the point in playback you are in, till the end of the manual record period.


That's because it thinks that's still the episode it's recording. I'm pretty sure it's the same logic used on all of DirecTV's branded receivers.


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## Gotchaa

Here is the latest from MYVOD confirmed, all Mpeg2 HD:
8:41
8:30
1:00
1:55
3:27
:40
3:31
:18
:26

70% Available


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## Wolffpack

Earl Bonovich said:


> Do remember those are just the estimates...
> And we know the MPEG-2 supplied by SAT is compressed a little tighter then OTA


Then before jumping to any conclusions regarding total space available a control test should be performed to verify the total hours of MPEG2 HD that can be recorded on the stock 300GB drive. As I noted it's pretty standard from what I can see on a HR10 that 1 hour of MPEG2HD is about 6.1GB. Also the control tests I ran on the R15 produced between 95 and 102 hours of SD programming on the R15.

It's hard to state a 500GB drive provides more recording space than a 300GB drive if we don't know what a 300Gb drive can record.


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## gr8reb8

Gotchaa,

Any updates? Does it appear that the recorder is using the full 500Gb?


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## Gotchaa

gr8reb8 said:


> Gotchaa,
> 
> Any updates? Does it appear that the recorder is using the full 500Gb?


I should know in 5 hours or so, before leaving this morning I had a warning messaging saying I had less than 10% left, in check MYVOD it reported 0% available yet was still recording. All programs are MPEG2 HD, so I will tally it up and report back.

I do think I am getting the full space of the 500GB drive, but can't know for sure until the 300GB is full as well. I'll post some info from both boxes.


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## PoitNarf

Have you tried hooking up the drive back to a PC to look at it's contents? I'm sure you won't be able to play any of the stored shows, but I bet a couple of us are curious about the file system and structure on the drive. Interesting possibilities for archiving with a e-SATA drive if each show has it's own directory or something similar.


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## Earl Bonovich

PoitNarf said:


> Have you tried hooking up the drive back to a PC to look at it's contents? I'm sure you won't be able to play any of the stored shows, but I bet a couple of us are curious about the file system and structure on the drive. Interesting possibilities for archiving with a e-SATA drive if each show has it's own directory or something similar.


That last part of your post; being able to create your own directory structure.
Re-Post that to the "thoughts on how to use the eSATA drive". that is a really good idea


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## Earl Bonovich

To everyone (since there are a TON of new people)

A word of warning... as DBSTalk doesn't want to go down the path of discussion of "hacking" and un-authorized extraction... I don't want to see (and can't really allow) any discussions about what the file system might look like and how to work with it for anything remotely close to extracting or accessing the data on the drives.

Sorry......

There are really only three areas we frown on here:
1) Access Card manipulation 
2) Obtaining services you are not legally/technically allowed to get (or avoiding paying for)
3) Accessing the encrypted contents of the data stream or the drive...


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## gr8reb8

I like the idea of having the capability to add a new larger drive. Perhaps in a year or two, a Terrabyte drive will be available for less than $100.


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## PoitNarf

gr8reb8 said:


> I like the idea of having the capability to add a new larger drive. Perhaps in a year or two, a Terrabyte drive will be available for less than $100.


I'd say more like 4 years for them to become that cheap

/edit
After just checking current hard drive prices, maybe 2 - 3 years instead, heh


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## Earl Bonovich

gr8reb8 said:


> I like the idea of having the capability to add a new larger drive. Perhaps in a year or two, a Terrabyte drive will be available for less than $100.


Heck in a year or two... you will probably have multi-terrabyte units


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## PoitNarf

Anyone have any idea if this could possibly work? It's way overkill for me, but I bet some others would be drooling at this possibility:

http://www.usb-ware.com/5-bay-esata-port-multiplier-enclosure.htm

The disclaimer reads: "Requires a SATA host controller that supports port multipliers"

Does the HR20 SATA controller support this functionality?


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## smb3d

PoitNarf said:


> Anyone have any idea if this could possibly work? It's way overkill for me, but I bet some others would be drooling at this possibility:
> 
> http://www.usb-ware.com/5-bay-esata-port-multiplier-enclosure.htm
> 
> The disclaimer reads: "Requires a SATA host controller that supports port multipliers"
> 
> Does the HR20 SATA controller support this functionality?


Sweet Jebus, fill that thing up with five 750GB drives and your good for at least 600 Hours of MPEG-4 HD.


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## Earl Bonovich

I don't think it will support it yet...

But wow... one can hope.


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## Clint Lamor

Earl Bonovich said:


> 2) Obtaining services you are legally/technically allowed to get (or avoiding paying for)


Ya we frown upon you getting stuff legally here :lol:

I THINK he meant legally/tech NOT allowed to get.


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## Earl Bonovich

Clint Lamor said:


> Ya we frown upon you getting stuff legally here :lol:
> 
> I THINK he meant legally/tech NOT allowed to get.


oops


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## davefred99

Earl Bonovich said:


> To everyone (since there are a TON of new people)
> 
> A word of warning... as DBSTalk doesn't want to go down the path of discussion of "hacking" and un-authorized extraction... I don't want to see (and can't really allow) any discussions about what the file system might look like and how to work with it for anything remotely close to extracting or accessing the data on the drives.
> 
> Sorry......
> 
> There are really only three areas we frown on here:
> 1) Access Card manipulation
> 2) Obtaining services you are not legally/technically allowed to get (or avoiding paying for)
> 3) Accessing the encrypted contents of the data stream or the drive...


I know your just protecting your butt, But I thats why I hate these forums. Because we are all treated like like third world citizens. No Free Flow of Information ! Censorship and big brother telling us what we can talk about. Let the politicians and lawers decide for us. We are just pawns in a big chess game.


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## Gotchaa

Okay since this morning I mentioned I saw disk space available an 0% available, and a disk space warning," The Recorder has less than 10% available disk space"

9 hours later I am still recording, I have approximately 77 hours of HD Mpeg2 programming on this 500GB HD. Looking at the current recordings, I still seem to be chugging away.

One interesting issue, I've been recording HDnet, and Wag the Dog and Simone follow each other, Simone being recorded now. When I went to view Simone, it started at -29 minutes (Wag the Dog), and continued to the play 1:26 minutes into Simone. So it appears with a near full disk, the playback is having some interesting effects on MYVOD's program start/stop time with recordings back to back on the same channel. From Simone, I tried rewinding to the beginning of the program and I was able to go back -1:00, a full hour into the preceding program "Wag the Dog" Very strange. So far it only seems to be the case with this current recording.

Based on what I've seen so far, it appears I am getting around 6GB/hr for MPEG2 based on WolfPack's analysis of previous MPEG2 recordings. If this is correct, I should be at about 462GB, and have about 6 hours of more HD recording time.

So it appears from this layman test, the MYVOD remaining disk space will only indicate the percentage remaining for a 300GB drive, while recording will continue until the actual drive space is full.

Once it does fill up and stop, I will pull the drive out and see if I can figure out actual disk space usage.

I've had a hard time using a SATA sil3144 PCI card with Knoppix 5, and GenToo Linux LiveCD. Ubuntu is next. Can't seem to get the device recognized. Needless to say, this appears to be a SATA RAID card that I picked up, so I am not sure if there are drivers for it. I don't know if I am going to be able to actually look at the drive without another SATA card.

If anyone is curious about SATA support on Linux, I found a good FAQ which I still have to read through:

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html


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## Earl Bonovich

davefred99 said:


> I know your just protecting your butt, But I thats why I hate these forums. Because we are all treated like like third world citizens. No Free Flow of Information ! Censorship and big brother telling us what we can talk about. Let the politicians and lawers decide for us. We are just pawns in a big chess game.


Problem is... once the Politicians and Lawyers get involved.... Forums like this are closed and they never recover.

So for certain topics, we simply can't go down that route. 
It has taken years to get this particular forum where it is at today... And years of hard work of those that came before me, and the members that have built this forum to where it is today.... would be gone in a blink.

So at least in this case... this isn't Big Brother persay (in the normal conotation)... this is more of nipping a problem in the bud... before it becomes a problem..

Sorry...


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## Wally_Gator

Gotchaa....
I am very curious about this "Upgrade" test... It will be interesting to see the filesystem it uses. Anyone taking bets? Sounds like the two frontrunners are win32 and NFS..
I doubt that you will be able to pull A recording for archival purposes. Most likely the files are in blobs and or marked using some obscure naming scheme. These are probably cross refrenced to a database stored on the HD. 
As far as viewing the files on a PC, I am sure D* will never add that functionality. The reason I say this is that we are told the stream is recorded directly to the HD and only decoded at the time of viewing. In order to allow a person to copy it to a PC, one of two things will have to happen. 1. The streams are decoded and then stored on the HD. 2. D* will have to sell and support decoding hardware and software for PC's..
For now, I just want to know if I can add more Disk space..
But curious about the inner workings as I am a Tech head..


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## Wolffpack

Wally_Gator said:


> Gotchaa....
> I am very curious about this "Upgrade" test... It will be interesting to see the filesystem it uses. Anyone taking bets? Sounds like the two frontrunners are win32 and NFS..


I'm betting the filesystem is some *ix variant (ext2 or ext3). However, it wouldn't surprise me to learn it's the same as the R15 which will appear as FAT32. There is an outside chance there may be unrecognizable partitions on the drive such as the MFS on Tivo drives.


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## Gotchaa

Okay it looks like I am maxed out at 82-83 Hours of HD. All programs are kept till I delete.

Weird things start to happen, for example if I try to record anything now, it doesn't tell me can't do it, it will allow it, as well as displaying it's recording three things at the same time, but I can easily flip through channels without warning of recordings taking place. So I can officially call the drive maxed out.

I wasn't able to get the drive recognized with the SATA card I have other than with Maxtor's diagnostic tools, so no luck. I will see about picking up another card to test out, but for purposes of this layman fill up the drive to the max test, I am done.

When someone can confirm how much HD they can squeeze on a 300GB drive, we should have the definitive answer. 

What it appears like is the HD upgrade is possible with a 500GB drive, just drop it in and reboot.

FYI, the Maxtor drive I'm using was $179, has 16MB cache and is a SATA II jumpered to 1.5gb transfer speed. It is a slight bit louder than the Seagate, it does not support AMSET, and while it does have SMART enabled, the internal temperature does not read back to the HR20. 

I would recommend looking for a Seagate drive if any of this matters to you, my external Seagate drive did register it's temperature, so there must be some specific call from the OS to the drive to read the status.


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## cabanaboy1977

Gotchaa said:


> Weird things start to happen, for example if I try to record anything now, it doesn't tell me can't do it, it will allow it, as well as displaying it's recording three things at the same time, but I can easily flip through channels without warning of recordings taking place. So I can officially call the drive maxed out.


I wonder if that has anything to do with the buffer. From what I remember people saying about the R15's buffer it takes it's HD space from the MYVOD part of the HD space not the Showcase part. Maybe something in that logic is making it messup and not letting it know that it's full?


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## Wally_Gator

Now, How could you tell the drive temp? Hidden menu?


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## Earl Bonovich

Wally_Gator said:


> Now, How could you tell the drive temp? Hidden menu?


Menu->Setup->System Information->Info

Scroll down, System Temperature.


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## P Smith

Gotchaa said:


> <..>I would recommend looking for a Seagate drive if any of this matters to you, my external Seagate drive did register it's temperature, so there must be some specific call from the OS to the drive to read the status.


Would be 750 GB disk from Seagate next candidate ?


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## Wally_Gator

I am looking at the DB35 series from seagate...


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## Gotchaa

I don't see why the 750GB drive would not work. 

For me, the price point of $179 for a Maxtor 500GB HD just seemed right. The Seagate 750GB external at Fry's was $479 I believe. It's simple enough to switch ports to use an external drive. I may give it a try, but I am hoping someone else can take up that task, and report back, I've got a bunch of crap to purge now!


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## Earl Bonovich

Gotchaa said:


> I've got a bunch of crap to purge now!


While in your MyVod.

Hit Menu->Mark and Delete.

You can Select All, or select just the ones you want to delete.


----------



## Wolffpack

Gotchaa said:


> I don't see why the 750GB drive would not work.
> 
> For me, the price point of $179 for a Maxtor 500GB HD just seemed right. The Seagate 750GB external at Fry's was $479 I believe. It's simple enough to switch ports to use an external drive. I may give it a try, but I am hoping someone else can take up that task, and report back, I've got a bunch of crap to purge now!


Who would that be Gotchaa? There's only a couple of you out in LaLa land that can even get these beasts. :lol:


----------



## Gotchaa

Wolffpack said:


> Who would that be Gotchaa? There's only a couple of you out in LaLa land that can even get these beasts. :lol:


Fine, it's going to have to wait until after labor day!


----------



## Gotchaa

Earl Bonovich said:


> While in your MyVod.
> 
> Hit Menu->Mark and Delete.
> 
> You can Select All, or select just the ones you want to delete.


I did this, all except 4 programs, and damn, after 10 minutes screen came up with nothing in my list, and no response from the system. A reboot brought everything back, including the 4 programs I saved.

I love the mark and delete feature (TWP aside)

Just so nobody is confused, all my bug reports in the other thread are with an "out of the box" HR20.

I assume any issues I have with the modified one don't really count since I am tinkering (although I can argue that the drive shouldn't matter, it's not really fair to D*).


----------



## Wally_Gator

I may be up for a 750gb swap.. 
It would be nice if I gould get my hand on a second box.. But I think that is pushing it.


----------



## Earl Bonovich

Gotchaa said:


> I did this, all except 4 programs, and damn, after 10 minutes screen came up with nothing in my list, and no response from the system. A reboot brought everything back, including the 4 programs I saved.
> 
> I love the mark and delete feature (TWP aside)
> 
> Just so nobody is confused, all my bug reports in the other thread are with an "out of the box" HR20.
> 
> I assume any issues I have with the modified one don't really count since I am tinkering (although I can argue that the drive shouldn't matter, it's not really fair to D*).


1) Thank you very much for noting that you "tweaked" the box... I highly recommend to ANYONE that brakes the seal on the back of the box, to forever note that... regardless if you just "look" inside...

2) As for the list... how long did you wait before rebooting? It will take some time to clear out everything....


----------



## Wally_Gator

I was reading about the DB35 drives from Seagate that come with the unit. 
They may not be readable...
"Seagate customers can choose to take advantage of the DB35 Series DriveTrust feature. DriveTrust technology provised the optional capability to "lock" the drive to the system on which it is installed"


----------



## cabanaboy1977

Wally_Gator said:


> I was reading about the DB35 drives from Seagate that come with the unit.
> They may not be readable...
> "Seagate customers can choose to take advantage of the DB35 Series DriveTrust feature. DriveTrust technology provised the optional capability to "lock" the drive to the system on which it is installed"


Sound like the Locked drives that they UTV had. The way around that was to turn on the Unit and then unplug the data cable and the drive was unlocked. The you hooked up the data cable from your PC. (or something along that lines I never did that so I don't remember what it was exactly).


----------



## Wally_Gator

cabanaboy1977 said:


> Sound like the Locked drives that they UTV had. The way around that was to turn on the Unit and then unplug the data cable and the drive was unlocked. The you hooked up the data cable from your PC. (or something along that lines I never did that so I don't remember what it was exactly).


I doubt this is the same technology and it will not work. 
Here is the text from their PDF...

"Protect content and intellectual property with digital rights management
As part of a comprehensive digital rights management solution, Seagate customers can choose to take advantage of the DB35
Series DriveTrust feature. DriveTrust technology provides the optional capability to "lock" the drive to the system on which it is
installed. With this feature enabled, only host systems that provide the manufacturer-assigned key to the drive can gain access to
stored information. If the drive is removed, the only possible reuse of the drive involves a full erasure of existing content. In most
cases, DriveTrust technology will serve as an additional layer of content protection, adding to techniques such as data encryption
and conditional access. This offers manufacturers and system designers choice, convenience and security in hard drive-based
products."


----------



## cabanaboy1977

Wally_Gator said:


> I doubt this is the same technology and it will not work.
> Here is the text from their PDF...
> 
> "Protect content and intellectual property with digital rights management
> As part of a comprehensive digital rights management solution, Seagate customers can choose to take advantage of the DB35
> Series DriveTrust feature. DriveTrust technology provides the optional capability to "lock" the drive to the system on which it is
> installed. With this feature enabled, only host systems that provide the manufacturer-assigned key to the drive can gain access to
> stored information. If the drive is removed, the only possible reuse of the drive involves a full erasure of existing content. In most
> cases, DriveTrust technology will serve as an additional layer of content protection, adding to techniques such as data encryption
> and conditional access. This offers manufacturers and system designers choice, convenience and security in hard drive-based
> products."


Sounds like it's allot better then the UTV protection with the HW sending the code. That's pretty cool.


----------



## Wally_Gator

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/TP-545_DynaPlay.pdf

Link to the PDF this was pulled from.


----------



## taw123

While I understand the desire NOT to talk about extraction, I am not going to start a flame war over fair use, the law, etc....

I come from a long line of TiVo use and would like to understand where (what form or site) would folks find others looking to extract digital content WE HAVE PERSONALY recorded on this DVR? I am not looking for card hacking, theft of service etc. This chould also include streaming of content between boxes. Yes DTV has talked about one day alowing extraction of content to personal video players, but I am almost ceartin it will require a Windows machine and impose some DRM solution. Since I don't use windows (I use Macs), and am a pretty good Software engineer I willing to help to make an open source solutions available.

Thanks for any pointers. Again this is NOT an invitatation to start flamin folks (pro or con) about the rules of this site. If you don't like the rules lets find another site....

-----



Earl Bonovich said:


> To everyone (since there are a TON of new people)
> 
> A word of warning... as DBSTalk doesn't want to go down the path of discussion of "hacking" and un-authorized extraction... I don't want to see (and can't really allow) any discussions about what the file system might look like and how to work with it for anything remotely close to extracting or accessing the data on the drives.
> 
> Sorry......
> 
> There are really only three areas we frown on here:
> 1) Access Card manipulation
> 2) Obtaining services you are not legally/technically allowed to get (or avoiding paying for)
> 3) Accessing the encrypted contents of the data stream or the drive...


----------



## Wally_Gator

There may be an issue doing this..
1. I understand that the video is recorded in live stream format.
2. in order to read the stream you will need to decode it using the card and internal software.
3. Unless it is recorded some other way, there maybe too many issues with encryption to even justify the cost, not to mention legal isssues..


----------



## Gotchaa

Okay Folks, I am back with a *750GB* Seagate SATA drive installed up and running. Same procedure for the upgrade just dropped it in and booted up. I was able to get a decent price of $329 for the drive.

So the plan is to schedule MPEG2 HD channels for recording (keep till I delete) for at least 125 hours of HD recordings based on a 6GB per hour average.. Recording on two streams around the clock.

Based on these estimates, I should fill the drive up the drive in under 3 days. So by Wednesday I should be able to count up the hours and report back.

Good news on the Seagate is that the internal temperature monitor does work with this drive, so that could confirm SMART is enabled and has specific calls to Seagate drives, as the 500GB Maxtor which had SMART enabled did not register temperature.

And it is a bit quieter than the Maxtor, which is nice.

That's about all, I'll report hours and MyVod "Disk Space" Available in a day or so.


----------



## pappys

Gotchaa said:


> Okay Folks, I am back with a *750GB* Seagate SATA drive installed up and running. Same procedure for the upgrade just dropped it in and booted up. I was able to get a decent price of $329 for the drive.


Can't wait to hear how it goes. kind of a newbie ? about hacking. You didn't have to transfer the data on the old hard drive to the new one?


----------



## uscboy

Yeah, does the HR20 somehow have the entire DVR "OS" onboard in the box and it just sees/uses hard drive space like a spare drive in a PC for example?

In other words, no virgin images, no zippers, no PTVUpgrade Instant Cake CDs... ? Just drop in a new drive any time and the box formats it and can see/use the space right away?

If so... very cool. 

Maybe a software update will address the 'sizes larger than 300GB' issues of time on playback not being displayed correctly if the update adds support for larger drives.


----------



## P Smith

Dish DVRs beginning from model 522, then 625, 942 and 622 always works from ROM [ROMFS DishLinux] and use the disk as a storage for schedules, recordings, VODs, logs, etc.

Providers getting smarter with each your attempt to hack STB, DVR .


----------



## Wolffpack

uscboy said:


> Yeah, does the HR20 somehow have the entire DVR "OS" onboard in the box and it just sees/uses hard drive space like a spare drive in a PC for example?
> 
> In other words, no virgin images, no zippers, no PTVUpgrade Instant Cake CDs... ? Just drop in a new drive any time and the box formats it and can see/use the space right away?
> 
> If so... very cool.
> 
> Maybe a software update will address the 'sizes larger than 300GB' issues of time on playback not being displayed correctly if the update adds support for larger drives.


OS is stored on FlashMemory. Not sure of the exact size on the HR20 but IIRC the R15 has 32MB Flash.


----------



## P Smith

You mean 32 Mbit, ie 4 MB Flash chip size.


----------



## Dave_S

Anyone add multiple drives yet?


----------



## ericlhyman

Gotchaa said:


> I don't recommend anyone do this unless they own their HR20 and understand that you are on your own as far as D* is concerned so don't call them if you have issues or break your box, you are pretty much toast.
> 
> This was intended as a proof of concept for an upgraded hard drive, not intended to be a guide or procedure to do so.
> 
> I figured since the SATA port is disabled for the external port, and I had a HR20 that hadn't been activated yet I'd see if I could upgrade the HD.
> 
> I opened up the box, unplugged the SATA cable from the internal HD controller and active onboard controller, and plugged in the external SATA cable to controller 1.
> 
> I then plugged in my external SATA HD, which I had hoped would just work out of the box, with the external port, powered up and waited. Soon enough, it booted up, I went through the setup menu, activated the device and all is well:
> 
> External 300GB SATA HD running off controller 1, internal HD disconnected.
> 
> I have HD programs recording for the next 24 hours on
> both tuners now to the external SATA HD.
> 
> I also have an internal 500GB HD SATA drive on hand which I plan to likely take back and replace with a 750GB SATA drive, as it seems that in all likelihood it should work.
> 
> What I don't know:
> 
> -If I can take the external SATA drive and plug it into my other HR20, reverse the controller cable, reboot and see the recorded program I have on the drive. (This would allow Sneaker Net for MRV until it becomes available)
> 
> -If it requires an unactivated or formated HD to work the first time
> 
> -What will happen if I plug the external sata cable back to controller 2 and reboot.
> 
> -What will happen if I plug both internal and external sata cables back into the controllers and attach both external and internal drives and reboot.
> 
> -If I can use all the space on the HD (300, 500, or 750GB SATA)
> 
> -What happens when I reboot the HR20 without the HD attached or powered on
> 
> -What happens when I plug the orginal HD back in and reboot.
> 
> Interestingly enough, I have not received even the initial software update, I am guessing because I am actively recording on both streams.
> 
> I also noticed the sound effects option was not grayed out, so I was able to tab to it, these are the settings for screen navigation volume level. Needless to say, there is no menu sound even though it's accessible, likely why it was grayed out with the initial update.
> 
> I am going to wait till I get some more recorded material on these devices and test some of these scenarios out.
> 
> Now if D* had just released the box with the external sata port enabled I wouldn't be tinkering. In all likelihood D* is going to enable the external port for expanded space, so my efforts are just to find out if it can be done.
> 
> All this is pretty interesting to me and likely explains why the box is so quick, it appears recorded programming is all that's stored on the HD, which is good and bad if this turns out to be true.


I thought this unit was supposed to have an enabled external port so we could easily add a second hard drive without opening the box? Would this just require a software download to enable?


----------



## 66stang351

ericlhyman said:


> I thought this unit was supposed to have an enabled external port so we could easily add a second hard drive without opening the box? Would this just require a software download to enable?


The external port is not currently enabled, and yes a software update can activate it.


----------



## Wolffpack

P Smith said:


> You mean 32 Mbit, ie 4 MB Flash chip size.


Opps, actually 8MB flash on the R15. (M58LW064D).


----------



## TekGamer

Any updates on the 750GB drive testing?


----------



## dtvmiami

Gotchaa said:


> Okay Folks, I am back with a *750GB* Seagate SATA drive installed up and running. Same procedure for the upgrade just dropped it in and booted up. I was able to get a decent price of $329 for the drive.
> 
> So the plan is to schedule MPEG2 HD channels for recording (keep till I delete) for at least 125 hours of HD recordings based on a 6GB per hour average.. Recording on two streams around the clock.
> 
> Based on these estimates, I should fill the drive up the drive in under 3 days. So by Wednesday I should be able to count up the hours and report back.
> 
> Good news on the Seagate is that the internal temperature monitor does work with this drive, so that could confirm SMART is enabled and has specific calls to Seagate drives, as the 500GB Maxtor which had SMART enabled did not register temperature.
> 
> And it is a bit quieter than the Maxtor, which is nice.
> 
> That's about all, I'll report hours and MyVod "Disk Space" Available in a day or so.


I'm sure u know this already: alot of HR20 current and prospective :group: owners are keeping close tabs on all ur findings. We appreciate what u r testing and of course posting.

With that said, being today is Wednesday, i'd love to hear ur update on that monster 750gb hdd setup u got going on.
Though, I have to admit I got so excited at what ur doing I'll have to re-read all ur posts again. I got lost on whether this is an internal 750 or external. Hopefully i'm not asking too much, but when ur done a nice little tutorial would be lovely.  And make a great sticky

For me, in *order of importance*:

1st, i'd take a HR20 HDD upgrade

2nd, the coveted dual buffers.


----------



## Gotchaa

Okay folks latest tally is approximately 93 hours of HD MPEG2 recordings marked as Keep till "I delete", with MyVod showing 12% space available.

From testing, I've found that "space available" has not been very accurate, so I am assuming when it get's down to 0% I will still have some working space.

With that said, if we take the current 12% remaing space indicator for the 750GB drive, with 93 hours already recorded, I should have about 90GB free. Based on 6GB per hour of MPEG2, I should be able to record at least another 15 hours, which would bring the total # hours to around 108, which falls short of the 125hr estimate. So we'll have to see what happens.

Some possible good news is that I've got my hands on and IDE to SATA adapater that I am hoping will work with some of my Linux boot CDs, so I may actuallly be able to see an accurate reading of the partition table and possible size per recording.

Likely will be able to test this out Thursday evening and post findings on Friday.


----------



## Wolffpack

Gotcha,

You may also be able to boot from UBCD and use one of the utilities on that to inspect the HD. I doubt UBCD supports SATA but with your adapter it mat work.


----------



## jasonblair

QUESTION - What about the 500GB drive you tested it on first? Can you re-plug it back in, and still view all of the shows you had recorded on it? Or will the HR20 try to reformat it?

Basically, I was wondering if this scenario would work... I fill up a hard drive with shows I absolutely LOVE and want to keep forever... I then pop it out and replace it with another hard drive for normal DVR activity... But then some cold, snowy night, I decide to watch all my favorites... can I pop the old hard drive back in and watch the shows as normal? Will the HR20 allow this?


----------



## dtvmiami

Wolffpack said:


> Gotcha,
> 
> You may also be able to boot from UBCD and use one of the utilities on that to inspect the HD. I doubt UBCD supports SATA but with your adapter it mat work.


I have respect for the UBCD 

And let's not forget Hiren's Boot CD

But, my favorite of all time: UBCD4WIN 
I was readin that some are able to add SATA drivers through a 'driver folder method' or the 'Plugin Method'


----------



## Gotchaa

jasonblair said:


> QUESTION - What about the 500GB drive you tested it on first? Can you re-plug it back in, and still view all of the shows you had recorded on it? Or will the HR20 try to reformat it?
> 
> Basically, I was wondering if this scenario would work... I fill up a hard drive with shows I absolutely LOVE and want to keep forever... I then pop it out and replace it with another hard drive for normal DVR activity... But then some cold, snowy night, I decide to watch all my favorites... can I pop the old hard drive back in and watch the shows as normal? Will the HR20 allow this?


Well unfortunately, I did purge all those programs recorded on the 500GB drive, I believe there are some recordings there, so what I can do is pop it back in and see what happens..


----------



## Gotchaa

I am @ an estimated 121 hrs of HD recordings, it's still going, it's been showing 0% free since this morning. I am expecting it to be completly full in an hour or so...clearly MyVod space remaining is not accurate...One thing I realized is that I recorded three 4 hour blocks of the US Open, I know they play commercials that likely are not in HD and take up less space, so there may be some additional space left than I am estimating...it really sucks not being able to see the actual file system. I will mount it later this evening. If anyone has any ideas of what type of file system I should try to mount it as, pass that on, otherwise I'll be regulated to trying tools to read drive information..
It is a bit slow now in playback, similar to the 500GB drive maxed out...


----------



## greywolf

The resolution doesn't change for the commercials. They are upconverted.


----------



## Wolffpack

Gotchaa said:


> I am @ an estimated 121 hrs of HD recordings, it's still going, it's been showing 0% free since this morning. I am expecting it to be completly full in an hour or so...clearly MyVod space remaining is not accurate...One thing I realized is that I recorded three 4 hour blocks of the US Open, I know they play commercials that likely are not in HD and take up less space, so there may be some additional space left than I am estimating...it really sucks not being able to see the actual file system. I will mount it later this evening. If anyone has any ideas of what type of file system I should try to mount it as, pass that on, otherwise I'll be regulated to trying tools to read drive information..
> It is a bit slow now in playback, similar to the 500GB drive maxed out...


How do you know it's full? Will it stop?

Regarding the file system start by running any partition utility in Linux and it will tell you what it sees. For example if you're running Suse run YAST and then the PARTITIONER. Also, using the mount command it it's recognized it will mount without the need to specify the filesystem. Or just run fdisk and print the contents of that drive.


----------



## Gotchaa

So I am at approximately 124 hours and it is completly full. 

When attempting to press record I get a pop message "Disk Space Conflict" Current recording cannot continue, options are to delete the oldest recording or cancel. I don't remember seeing this with the 500GB Maxtor, but then again it was running on an older software version than I have now.

So bascially D*s estimate of 50hrs of HD for the HR20 with the default 300GB drive is accurate, about 6GB per hour.

As of the latest software revision 0x9c, I can say:

500GB replacement drive works

750GB replacemnet drive works 

It would be silly if the external port is not enabled for expanded storage capacity, so for those of you who own your equipment, willing to void warranty and support from D*, and can't wait for software updates that may enable the external SATA port, go ahead and upgrade your Hard Drive.


Drop it in reboot


----------



## hdtvfan0001

Gotchaa said:


> It would be silly if the external port is not enabled for expanded storage capacity, so for those of you who own your equipment, willing to void warranty and support from D*, and can't wait for software updates that may enable the external SATA port, go ahead and upgrade your Hard Drive.


I seem to recall that D*TV always intended to make these unit's storage Hard Drive "consumer upgradable". I'll bet you'll see a flurry of external SATA drives emerging just for this purpose, and marketed to HR20 customers (potentially by D*TV themselves). This is pretty close to plug and play, from what you've shown us.

Thanks for your informative experimentation. It certainly appears as though these new HR20 units are upgradable for storage - and without all sorts of hacks, utilities, and other cumbersome tricks needed to do it (like the H10-250).


----------



## Gotchaa

jasonblair said:


> QUESTION - What about the 500GB drive you tested it on first? Can you re-plug it back in, and still view all of the shows you had recorded on it? Or will the HR20 try to reformat it?
> 
> Basically, I was wondering if this scenario would work... I fill up a hard drive with shows I absolutely LOVE and want to keep forever... I then pop it out and replace it with another hard drive for normal DVR activity... But then some cold, snowy night, I decide to watch all my favorites... can I pop the old hard drive back in and watch the shows as normal? Will the HR20 allow this?


Guess what, you can safely plop in your backup disk and all your recordings reappear. I added back in the 500GB Maxtor, and the recordings that I did have on there, were all there. So basically, your archiving scenario will work.

I would venture to guess that it will NOT work taking the drive to another HR20, but I am not ready to void the warranty on my other HR20 to test it. I'd like to keep one untouched for the time being as new software updates are coming out every couple of weeks. Archive away...


----------



## Gotchaa

Wolffpack said:


> Regarding the file system start by running any partition utility in Linux and it will tell you what it sees. For example if you're running Suse run YAST and then the PARTITIONER. Also, using the mount command it it's recognized it will mount without the need to specify the filesystem. Or just run fdisk and print the contents of that drive.


I am pretty much out of ideas right now as to mounting or viewing the file system, UBCD didn't have any tools that worked. I can't see the partition table. even tried pretending I knew what the filesystem type was (vfat, ufs...of course not) This will probably need to wait for the more patient and able amongst us, but for what it's worth, here is the readout and my command history from UBUNTU, with the Maxtor 500GB drive:



Code:


[email protected]:~# fdisk /dev/hda3
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.


The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 58776.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda3: 483.4 GB, 483449057280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 58776 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

Command (m for help): q

[email protected]:~# mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/hr20
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
[email protected]:~# mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/hr20 -t vfat
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda3,
       missing codepage or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

[email protected]:~#


----------



## Rebelde

I just want to ask if..
1. if all of this threads are about adding memory to the unit so that more hours of recording can be added...

2. I have some knowledge when it comes to electronics and their components but not an expert.. 

3. so, can a not so expert be able to perform such a thing? and if not so complicated how can one go about it?


----------



## cabanaboy1977

Gotchaa said:


> When attempting to press record I get a pop message "Disk Space Conflict" Current recording cannot continue, options are to delete the oldest recording or cancel. I don't remember seeing this with the 500GB Maxtor, but then again it was running on an older software version than I have now.


What does the buffer do at this point? Do you still have the 90 mins or does the full drive of recordings take the place of the buffer?



Gotchaa said:


> I would venture to guess that it will NOT work taking the drive to another HR20, but I am not ready to void the warranty on my other HR20 to test it. I'd like to keep one untouched for the time being as new software updates are coming out every couple of weeks. Archive away...


I think this might work but you'd have to take the access card from the receiver the HD was in and have D* marry it to the new receiver. That's the only way I'd even think it would work. Althought it would be nice if you could so we'd be closer to whole house viewing or D* to go.


----------



## Wally_Gator

Wally_Gator said:


> I doubt this is the same technology and it will not work.
> Here is the text from their PDF...
> 
> "Protect content and intellectual property with digital rights management
> As part of a comprehensive digital rights management solution, Seagate customers can choose to take advantage of the DB35
> Series DriveTrust feature. DriveTrust technology provides the optional capability to "lock" the drive to the system on which it is
> installed. With this feature enabled, only host systems that provide the manufacturer-assigned key to the drive can gain access to
> stored information. If the drive is removed, the only possible reuse of the drive involves a full erasure of existing content. In most
> cases, DriveTrust technology will serve as an additional layer of content protection, adding to techniques such as data encryption
> and conditional access. This offers manufacturers and system designers choice, convenience and security in hard drive-based
> products."





Gotchaa said:


> I am pretty much out of ideas right now as to mounting or viewing the file system, UBCD didn't have any tools that worked. I can't see the partition table. even tried pretending I knew what the filesystem type was (vfat, ufs...of course not) This will probably need to wait for the more patient and able amongst us, but for what it's worth, here is the readout and my command history from UBUNTU, with the Maxtor 500GB drive:


Gotchaa,

I think you are running into the drive trust technology. If this is the case you will not be able to read the drive on another HR20 unit. Only on the original unit..


----------



## TekGamer

Gotchaa,

So you were about to squeeze 124 hours of MPEG-4 HD content or MPEG-2 HD content?

Does the buffer work when you get the HD full message?

So, since we can easily replace the drive on owned boxes all D* needs to do it fix the space available calculation


----------



## PoitNarf

TekGamer said:


> Does the buffer work when you get the HD full message?


Very interesting question! Hopefully there is a section of the drive reserved exclusively for the buffer.


----------



## Wolffpack

Gotcha,

Try 'fdisk /dev/hda'. fdisk runs against the drive itself. You were running it against the 3rd partition on that drive 'hda3'. fdisk on the drive from my R15 (installed as /dev/hdc) shows:



Code:


Cartman:/home # fdisk /dev/hdc

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 3222492.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hdc: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
97 heads, 1 sectors/track, 3222492 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 97 * 512 = 49664 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdc1               1     3222493   156290872+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Also, if that still doesn't work try 'dd'ing from the drive directly. This will display the drive's partition sector if readable:



Code:


Cartman:/home # dd if=/dev/hdc bs=512 count=1 skip=63|hexdump -C

1+0 records in
1+0 records out
00000000  e9 00 00 45 42 53 4e 45  54 20 20 00 02 40 20 00  |...EBSNET  [email protected] .|
00000010  02 00 00 00 00 f8 00 00  3f 00 f0 00 3f 00 00 00  |........?...?...|
00000020  10 87 a1 12 09 95 00 00  00 00 00 00 15 00 00 00  |................|
00000030  01 00 06 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000040  80 00 29 78 56 34 12 56  4f 4c 55 4d 45 4c 41 42  |..)xV4.VOLUMELAB|
00000050  45 20 46 41 54 33 32 20  20 20 00 00 00 00 00 00  |E FAT32   ......|
00000060  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
000001f0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa  |..............U.|
00000200

Or, just dd looking for anything using:

dd if=/dev/hda|hexdump -C|more

...and see if you can see anything.


----------



## 66stang351

TekGamer said:


> Gotchaa,
> 
> So you were about to squeeze 124 hours of MPEG-4 HD content or MPEG-2 HD content?
> 
> Does the buffer work when you get the HD full message?
> 
> So, since we can easily replace the drive on owned boxes all D* needs to do it fix the space available calculation


He was recording MPEG-2 content.


----------



## Gotchaa

TekGamer said:


> Gotchaa,
> 
> So you were about to squeeze 124 hours of MPEG-4 HD content or MPEG-2 HD content?
> 
> Does the buffer work when you get the HD full message?
> 
> So, since we can easily replace the drive on owned boxes all D* needs to do it fix the space available calculation


No buffer, no recording...


----------



## cabanaboy1977

Gotchaa said:


> No buffer, no recording...


Thanks, that's what I thought would happen.


----------



## DaveC56

I have a couple of questions regarding the Seagate 750GB hard drive.

Did you use the "Seagate 750 GB 7200 RPM Barracuda 7200.10 Serial ATA 3 Gbps Internal Hard Drive"? Is there a jumper pin combination to slow down the I/O transfer from 3.0Gbps to 1.5Gbps? Did you try using the drive at the default fast transfer speed of 3.0Gbps? How quiet is the 750GB hard drive???

Its seems very simple to provide an internal upgrade for increased recording space. Thanks for your experiment and posting the results to this forum.

Dave


----------



## Gotchaa

Wolffpack said:


> Gotcha,
> 
> Try 'fdisk /dev/hda'. fdisk runs against the drive itself. You were running it against the 3rd partition on that drive 'hda3'.
> 
> Or, just dd looking for anything using:
> 
> dd if=/dev/hda|hexdump -C|more
> 
> ...and see if you can see anything.


I returned the Maxtor 500GB and kept the Seagate 750GB. I haven't pulled it yet, so that will have to wait. Here is info from the Seagate 300GB. I don't remember what I recorded on the orginal drive if anything, here is what I found:



Code:


[email protected]:/mnt/hr20# fdisk /dev/hda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 36481.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 300.0 GB, 300069052416 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36481 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1               1          66      530113+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda2              67        2025    15735667+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3            2026       36481   276767820   83  Linux


expert command (m for help): e

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 36481 cylinders

Nr AF  Hd Sec  Cyl  Hd Sec  Cyl     Start      Size ID

Expert command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 36481 cylinders

Nr AF  Hd Sec  Cyl  Hd Sec  Cyl     Start      Size ID
 1 00   1   1    0 254  63   65         63    1060227 82
 2 00   0   1   66 254  63 1023    1060290   31471335 83
 3 00 254  63 1023 254  63 1023   32531625  553535640 83
 4 00   0   0    0   0   0    0          0          0 00

Also as you can see it's listing as a Linux partition, I don't remember creating any partitions, so I am not sure why it differs from your R15 reading, unless the filesystem is new for the HR20. Also I assumed since it was listed as a Linux parition, I would be able to mount it...assumed it was ext3 with journaling, but that didn't work, ext2 didn't either. I'll have to plug in the 750GB and check it out, but I won't be able to do that today. If I can do it in the AM I'll post results, otherwise it will have to wait till I get back in town next week...


----------



## Gotchaa

DaveC56 said:


> I have a couple of questions regarding the Seagate 750GB hard drive.
> 
> Did you use the "Seagate 750 GB 7200 RPM Barracuda 7200.10 Serial ATA 3 Gbps Internal Hard Drive"? Is there a jumper pin combination to slow down the I/O transfer from 3.0Gbps to 1.5Gbps? Did you try using the drive at the default fast transfer speed of 3.0Gbps? How quiet is the 750GB hard drive???
> 
> Its seems very simple to provide an internal upgrade for increased recording space. Thanks for your experiment and posting the results to this forum.
> 
> Dave


Yes I used the Seagate 750, the default was set at 1.5Gbps, so I did not need to change the jumper. I did not try and set it to 3.0Gbps because the original Seagate drive was only a 1.5Gbps, so I assumed the controller couldn't handle it.


----------



## Wolffpack

Gotchaa said:


> Also as you can see it's listing as a Linux partition, I don't remember creating any partitions, so I am not sure why it differs from your R15 reading, unless the filesystem is new for the HR20. Also I assumed since it was listed as a Linux parition, I would be able to mount it...assumed it was ext3 with journaling, but that didn't work, ext2 didn't either. I'll have to plug in the 750GB and check it out, but I won't be able to do that today. If I can do it in the AM I'll post results, otherwise it will have to wait till I get back in town next week...


Follows along with what Earl has mentioned that R15 <> HR20 in many ways...for example, based on Linux.

Since you cannot mount hda3 I would guess it's a raw partition which could have it's own format and drivers. Yes it's a Linux partition but was never formatted using Linux. Many databases allow storing data on raw partitions. It does provide faster IO in bypassing even the Linux filesystem calls. Could be hda3 is a MYSQL, Sybase or Oracle database partition.

Did you try mounting hda2? That should be the root partition and I'm guessing a mount of hda2 would be successful. May not be much of anything there other than OS routines as the SLs, TDL, and MYVOD are no doubt stored in hda3.

It would be interesting to see what the first few pages of a 'dd' of hda3 contains. ie, anything readable.

At least this indicates no Seagate drive trust technology.


----------



## Gotchaa

Wolffpack said:


> Follows along with what Earl has mentioned that R15 <> HR20 in many ways...for example, based on Linux.
> 
> Since you cannot mount hda3 I would guess it's a raw partition which could have it's own format and drivers. Yes it's a Linux partition but was never formatted using Linux. Many databases allow storing data on raw partitions. It does provide faster IO in bypassing even the Linux filesystem calls. Could be hda3 is a MYSQL, Sybase or Oracle database partition.
> 
> Did you try mounting hda2? That should be the root partition and I'm guessing a mount of hda2 would be successful. May not be much of anything there other than OS routines as the SLs, TDL, and MYVOD are no doubt stored in hda3.
> 
> It would be interesting to see what the first few pages of a 'dd' of hda3 contains. ie, anything readable.
> 
> At least this indicates no Seagate drive trust technology.


Here it is



Code:


[email protected]:/mnt/hr20# dd if=/dev/hda1 bs=12 count=1 skip=63|hexdump -C
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
12 bytes transferred in 0.001669 seconds (7190 bytes/sec)
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00              |............|
0000000c
[email protected]:/mnt/hr20# dd if=/dev/hda2 bs=12 count=1 skip=63|hexdump -C
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
12 bytes transferred in 0.002287 seconds (5247 bytes/sec)
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00              |............|
0000000c
[email protected]:/mnt/hr20# dd if=/dev/hda3 bs=12 count=1 skip=63|hexdump -C
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
12 bytes transferred in 0.002178 seconds (5510 bytes/sec)
00000000  5b d9 60 00 00 01 1a 32  57 27 09 81              |[.`....2W'..|
0000000c

[email protected]:/mnt/hr20# mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/hr20
mount: /dev/hda2: unknown device
[email protected]:/mnt/hr20#

And just a dd of hda (small sample):



Code:


[email protected]:/mnt/hr20# dd if=/dev/hda | hexdump -C|more
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
000001b0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01  |................|
000001c0  01 00 82 fe 3f 41 3f 00  00 00 83 2d 10 00 00 00  |....?A?....-....|
000001d0  01 42 83 fe ff ff c2 2d  10 00 e7 36 e0 01 00 fe  |.B.....-...6....|
000001e0  ff ff 83 fe ff ff a9 64  f0 01 98 48 fe 20 00 00  |.......d...H. ..|
000001f0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa  |..............U.|
00000200  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00000600  00 00 00 01 00 01 ff fe  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000610  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
000011f0  00 00 00 00 00 00 53 57  41 50 53 50 41 43 45 32  |......SWAPSPACE2|
00001200  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00008200  00 00 00 01 00 01 ff fe  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00008210  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00008df0  00 00 00 00 00 00 53 57  41 50 53 50 41 43 45 32  |......SWAPSPACE2|
00008e00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
061a8200  33 c6 83 ee dc 09 ff 9d  ce 3f 29 60 f0 b9 1e 63  |3........?)`...c|
061a8210  55 65 90 88 d4 39 87 b1  dd c8 ff c5 f3 4f 5f 6d  |Ue...9.......O_m|
--More--


----------



## Wolffpack

Gotchaa said:


> [email protected]:/mnt/hr20# mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/hr20
> mount: /dev/hda2: unknown device
> [email protected]:/mnt/hr20#


Now that's a strange error. Not a "you must specify the filesystem type" error but a unknown device.

What does "file -s /dev/hda{,1,2,3,4,5}" return?


----------



## dogbreath

Gotchaa, could you describe the procedure for removing the hard drive from the HR20. I took the cover off but was wondering what else had to come off the remove the drive.

Thanks,
dogbreath


----------



## DVRaholic

Will this Upgrade actually work ?? 
Has anyone besides Gotchaa sucessfully upgraded to a larger hard drive ???

I want to try this (I have a 500GB Maxtor Quickview ready to go) 
BUT I want some more feedback from other Upgraders before I VOID my warranty.
and lose the $299 I shelled out for it.

There must be someone else... Anyone ???


----------



## P Smith

I don't understand your intention. Are you trying to dismiss all Gotchaa's work and effort ? He spent a lot of time for those two long runs with two different disks. I found your post as a sign of untrustworthy.


----------



## houskamp

not many of us with the resources to do/risk doing this.. It's nice to see someone willing to risk it for the rest of us


----------



## DVRaholic

P Smith said:


> I don't understand your intention. Are you trying to dismiss all Gotchaa's work and effort ? He spent a lot of time for those two long runs with two different disks. I found your post as a sign of untrustworthy.


Not at all, I fully believe he has done this upgrade. But who knows if D* has locked down the Hard drive with one of the recent upgrades.

Just wanted to know if other has Recent success, Like i said It would be bad if it didnt work Because of Voiding my warrantee. Thats it


----------



## P Smith

"Will this Upgrade actually work ?? " - that's your words.

BTW, you can return the disk back to a store (Fry's ?) if it will not work for you.


----------



## DVRaholic

P Smith said:


> "Will this Upgrade actually work ?? " - that's your words.
> 
> BTW, you can return the disk back to a store (Fry's ?) if it will not work for you.


Let me rephrase... "Will this Upgrade actually work NOW after D* has sent 2 software Updates... has anyone else tried this as well ??"

I'm not worried about the Replacement drive, Im worried about messing up the original drive and having the HR20-700 not function anymore, and NOT be under warrantee

Gotchaa, can you let us know if everything is still running smoothly, and like the poster erlier asked how do you remove the harddrive, it seems a bit difficult.

Thanks


----------



## Earl Bonovich

DVRaholic said:


> and like the poster erlier asked how do you remove the harddrive, it seems a bit difficult.


I am not going to go into much detail on how I took the drive out to do the review.... Let's put it this way.... I have been taking electronics apart for 20+ years.... assembled many o-computers from scratch... worked on the insides of laptops, ect...... (I have always managed to get them back together).

It took me a good 30 minutes or so of study to put a game plan together to take that drive out of the HR20... and another tedious 15-20 or so to get it out.... and it wasn't a "piece" of cake to get back in either.

At this time... I have ZERO inclinations of upgrading the internal drive (even though I wanted to take some more photos of the inside... I didn't want to take it apart again)... I am just going to wait for the external solution...

Do remember it is a leased box... and a very complicated system inside there... If you open it up... do concider you may have tweaked something when opening it

I not saying this as a guy with DirecTV contact... just a guy that has opened a lot of things that plug in... and this one wasn't designed to be opened up and "tinkered" with.


----------



## P Smith

If I would post the question, I would feel there is no courage inside myself, but wimpiness .

Don't lost your courage - you did the hard first step !


----------



## Greg Rosler

What's the model # on the Seagate 750 gb drive you used?

Also, what was the best price you found for the drive and where did you buy it from?

Is there space inside the HR20-700 for 2 hard drives? If there is and I can fit two 750 gb drives inside I might try it.

If there is space inside for two hard drives do you think there is enough space between the drives for good cooling?

Anyone have any idea (or guess) on when the external sata hd connection will go live (software wise)? And if so, will we be able to use multiple hard drives on it? 

Thanks much for your outstanding effort in modding the box. We all really appreciate the effort.


Greg


----------



## Earl Bonovich

Greg Rosler said:


> What's the model # on the Seagate 750 gb drive you used?
> 
> Also, what was the best price you found for the drive and where did you buy it from?
> 
> Is there space inside the HR20-700 for 2 hard drives? If there is and I can fit two 750 gb drives inside I might try it.
> 
> If there is space inside for two hard drives do you think there is enough space between the drives for good cooling?
> 
> Anyone have any idea (or guess) on when the external sata hd connection will go live (software wise)? And if so, will we be able to use multiple hard drives on it?
> 
> Thanks much for your outstanding effort in modding the box. We all really appreciate the effort.
> 
> Greg


Take a look at the REVIEW photos...
There is no space for a 2nd unit, unless you manfacture some elaborate bracket, introduce a power supply, and build a second SATA input


----------



## Wolffpack

DVRaholic said:


> I'm not worried about the Replacement drive, Im worried about messing up the original drive and having the HR20-700 not function anymore, and NOT be under warrantee


Why would you do anything with the original drive other than just removing it. If you're not sure about your abilities to remove a drive, then I would stay away.


----------



## P Smith

Earl Bonovich said:


> Take a look at the REVIEW photos...
> There is no space for a 2nd unit, unless you manfacture some elaborate bracket, introduce a power supply, and build a second SATA input


Earl, hehe - second SATA already there  - look at back of your HR20. 
I think it will be not that hard reuse it for connect second HDD.


----------



## Earl Bonovich

True... unless there is some suttle technicall differences between eSATA and SATA

Till doesn't change the fact that there isn't room in there for a second one.


----------



## P Smith

Greg Rosler said:


> What's the model # on the Seagate 750 gb drive you used?
> 
> Also, what was the best price you found for the drive and where did you buy it from?
> <..>Greg


Fry's: Seagate SATA 750 GB - $309.99 ( ATA variant - $299.99 ).


----------



## P Smith

Earl Bonovich said:


> True... unless there is some suttle technicall differences between eSATA and SATA
> 
> Till doesn't change the fact that there isn't room in there for a second one.


Not I'm aware. Give me the HR20 and I'll build new HDDs holder and will measure power consumption/load/capability of existing power supply.


----------



## Soundteck

Earl,
When they do finally turn on the external SATA, do you think this would allow us to move an external drive from on HR20 to another? I know the problem I have now is that I have two HR20's one for the living room and bedroom (split signal) and one for the Home Theater and it never fails that I never know WHERE my wife will want to wathc TV.. sometimes in bed at night.. sometimes in the living room... and on weekedns sometimes in the Theater... so I have to DUPLICATE some shows that we BOTH like on each DVR. So if this might be a workaround for whole house recording.. dont ya think??


----------



## Earl Bonovich

Soundteck said:


> Earl,
> When they do finally turn on the external SATA, do you think this would allow us to move an external drive from on HR20 to another? I know the problem I have now is that I have two HR20's one for the living room and bedroom (split signal) and one for the Home Theater and it never fails that I never know WHERE my wife will want to wathc TV.. sometimes in bed at night.. sometimes in the living room... and on weekedns sometimes in the Theater... so I have to DUPLICATE some shows that we BOTH like on each DVR. So if this might be a workaround for whole house recording.. dont ya think??


I have heard of 2 different methods they are going to implement eSATA

Method 1, is just pure external drive usage. Where it will be the primary storage device for the recordings. In that scenerio, I don't think you will be able to move it to different units.

Method 2, it is used more as an ARCHIVE drive (you would "move" recordings) from the internal drive to an external drive... hence you could create a "simpsons" esata drive. IN that scenerio, there probably will be some sort of DRM that will allow you to use that drive on authorized HR20's

Things look like we may get Method 1 first, as Method 2 is going to take more time to develop.

Ultimately... you are a candidate for the Home Media Center when that becomes available... hopefully in 2007


----------



## Soundteck

Earl Bonovich said:


> I have heard of 2 different methods they are going to implement eSATA
> 
> Method 1, is just pure external drive usage. Where it will be the primary storage device for the recordings. In that scenerio, I don't think you will be able to move it to different units.
> 
> Method 2, it is used more as an ARCHIVE drive (you would "move" recordings) from the internal drive to an external drive... hence you could create a "simpsons" esata drive. IN that scenerio, there probably will be some sort of DRM that will allow you to use that drive on authorized HR20's
> 
> Things look like we may get Method 1 first, as Method 2 is going to take more time to develop.
> 
> Ultimately... you are a candidate for the Home Media Center when that becomes available... hopefully in 2007


:uglyhamme is that still in the works?? I have not heard much about it since during one of the web conferences from Directv last year... I hope so... I have waited this long... dont you just love technology...


----------



## Earl Bonovich

Soundteck said:


> :uglyhamme is that still in the works?? I have not heard much about it since during one of the web conferences from Directv last year... I hope so... I have waited this long... dont you just love technology...


Yes, it is very much in the works... and was part of the plan for including an eSATA port on the HR20


----------



## PoitNarf

Earl Bonovich said:


> Yes, it is very much in the works... and was part of the plan for including an eSATA port on the HR20


The HR20 will be HMC compatible, correct?


----------



## PoitNarf

Earl Bonovich said:


> Method 1, is just pure external drive usage. Where it will be the primary storage device for the recordings. In that scenerio, I don't think you will be able to move it to different units.


So if you hook up an external drive, the internal one doesn't get used at all? I'd like it if it could record to both drives.


----------



## Gotchaa

PoitNarf said:


> So if you hook up an external drive, the internal one doesn't get used at all? I'd like it if it could record to both drives.


One thing that worked for me when I was testing was I was able to go between drives, that is use the external record, then plug in the internal with recordings already there, and vice versa...so unless the drive format changes between software versions the external drive should be able to be used as an archive of some sorts. Don't know if that's changed since it's been officially enabled now.

So far no problems with the 750GB drive...


----------



## cadjoe

Earl Bonovich said:


> True... unless there is some suttle technicall differences between eSATA and SATA
> 
> Till doesn't change the fact that there isn't room in there for a second one.


Well, wait till 2.5" laptop SATA drives are around 500 to 750gb. Largest I have seen so far is 250gb.

Space problem solved.


----------



## Earl Bonovich

cadjoe said:


> Well, wait till 2.5" laptop SATA drives are around 500 to 750gb. Largest I have seen so far is 250gb.
> 
> Space problem solved.


Not really.

If you look inside the HR20... unless someone designs a special bracket or something, I still can't see where 2 2.5" drives would fit.


----------



## grate88

How long should it take to format the new drive when using this option?


----------



## cadjoe

Earl Bonovich said:


> Not really.
> 
> If you look inside the HR20... unless someone designs a special bracket or something, I still can't see where 2 2.5" drives would fit.


Well, you can put 4 laptop drives in the same space as 1 standard 3.5" drive.

Laptop drive is 0.375 thick x 2.5 wide x 3.5 long

Standard drive is 1.0 thick x 3.5 wide x 5.7 long

Turn two laptop drives sideways, and stack them with 1/4" air gap, and you have 4 drives in same space.


----------



## PoitNarf

cadjoe said:


> Well, you can put 4 laptop drives in the same space as 1 standard 3.5" drive.
> 
> Laptop drive is 0.375 thick x 2.5 wide x 3.5 long
> 
> Standard drive is 1.0 thick x 3.5 wide x 5.7 long
> 
> Turn two laptop drives sideways, and stack them with 1/4" air gap, and you have 4 drives in same space.


Ok, but how does one connect 4 laptop hard drives to a single SATA controller?


----------



## Wolffpack

Hey, I'm just waiting a few years for those 1TB flash memory cards.....what did they call those on STNG? Ah, but those were probably alot bigger than 1TB.


----------



## cadjoe

PoitNarf said:


> Ok, but how does one connect 4 laptop hard drives to a single SATA controller?


Well, there is only two controllers, int, and ext (which can be redirected to an internal drive).

My point was that 2.5" laptop drivers are about 1/4 the size of standard 3.5" drivers, and if you can put 4 in the same space, you could easily put 2.


----------



## hick

Well alrighty then... Time to get a new HDD for my hr20.. Also to the guy who said you diddnt want to waste your 299 that you spent.. remember that you DO NOT OWN it.. if you paid 299 your leasing it.. This or any other hardware modification should be done onl on hardware that you own... Yours still technically belongs to D*..


----------



## Earl Bonovich

Also remember... opening the HR20, is in violation of your "lease" of the box... It is afterall DirecTV's equipment.

So when you return it at the end of yoru lease, or it is damaged.... you could be charged full price.


----------



## PoitNarf

Earl Bonovich said:


> Also remember... opening the HR20, is in violation of your "lease" of the box... It is afterall DirecTV's equipment.
> 
> So when you return it at the end of yoru lease, or it is damaged.... you could be charged full price.


And with the eSATA port now active, there really isn't any reason to open the HR20 up anymore.


----------



## jgriffin104

Hi Gottcha,

As per our IM, I took my time and ordered all the adapters off Ebay. I have 12 Maxtor 250 IDE gig drives and one external SATA Seagate 300 gig drive. I had to unplug the main SATA cable on the HR-20-700 but couldn't use the external chassis mount SATA cable. Half an inch to short. So I unplugeg it and pluged in my external 300 Seagate drive. It was also new and never turned on or formated.

The HR-20-700 took right to it and I ran 3 days on recording anything. I then hooked up the orignal 300 gig drive and did the same thing. All recordings worked.

Then I assembled the IDE to SATA adapter and hooked up one of my Maxtor IDE drives formated to NTFS. It spent 14 hours with the blue leds going in circles, before I concluded it didn't like NTFS. I then took the drive and forced a delete partartion in Win XP Pro, and created a new partartion using the entire drive. I clicked no for format and powered down and hooked up the IDE to SATA adapter to the Maxtor 250 gig drive. I pluged the SATA cable into the main SATA connection on the H-20-700 mother board. The power conector was male molex the same as the male conector on the hard drive. So I went over to my PC to make TIVO drives and took the Y IDE cable and used the two male ends to connect to the mother moard and Maxtor drive. The IDE To SATA adapter has a y cable for Floppy and IDE power. so when pluged in the female side of the IDE y cable is not used. 

I then powered up the HR-20-700 and crossed my fingers. It went right into boot up with the a few more minutes screen. After live tv popped on, I started 
recording on 2 channels and it's still recording with 61% space left. I picked Quick Change with Bill Murry form the middle and watched the whole show. No problems other than a few sparkles, but it rained last night here in Dallas. I than took the Adapter off and pluged in the External Seagat 300 gig and continued recording. I haven't bothered to put the Maxtor in the PC yet. I was just happy to see it work with the adapter.


----------



## thumperr

Gotchaa, how's your 750 working? I was wondering with all the talk on the eSATA thread if you're still able to use all your space? if you had seen any changes with the software updates? thanks.


----------



## y2khardtop

is the eSATA a USB connector????

Also, it sounds like you have to open the box to disable the internal drive, so ANY upgrade is technically going to "break the box" open?? 

Thanks!


----------



## hasan

y2khardtop said:


> is the eSATA a USB connector????
> 
> Also, it sounds like you have to open the box to disable the internal drive, so ANY upgrade is technically going to "break the box" open??
> 
> Thanks!


No, it is NOT USB.

No, you don't have to open the box to disable the internal drive. It is auto-detected (presense of eSATA drive) upon a reset. All you have to do is connect the eSATA drive and do a red button reset. The internal drive is "bypassed", but nothing is lost on it. The external drive is then formatted and the OS is installed and away ya go.


----------



## P Smith

Plus he must read other thread - eSATA for avoid repeating a lot of info.


----------



## jstefani

I've been reading thru these posts and understand that an eSATA drive can be installed and is formatted upon reset. My question is if what happens to my internal drive once I remove the eSATA drive and reset. Will the internal drive be formatted? Or vice-versa, If I unplug my eSATA drive (that has already been formatted) and plug it back in, will it be formatted again?


----------



## P Smith

Just read the other thread - URL posted 2 messages up;
ppl got answer to same question(s) there.


----------



## SepticDeath

Greg Rosler said:


> What's the model # on the Seagate 750 gb drive you used?
> 
> Is there space inside the HR20-700 for 2 hard drives? If there is and I can fit two 750 gb drives inside I might try it.
> 
> If there is space inside for two hard drives do you think there is enough space between the drives for good cooling?
> 
> Greg


More importantly I would think a PSU rating would be very important.
Also, (And I hate my insert point, as It may have been mentioned by I dont think it has been actually pasted in as a complete data point) if you look at the drives architecture, it would lend to how this is doable across the entire SATA seagate product line because the drive specs (*Bytes per sector and Logical CHS*) are identical across the entire line (meaning that the rom based OS even if not autodetecting would have the correct drive specs for any of the line as they are all the same, draw the same power, and have the same spindle speed; from 750gb to 80gb. (see below)

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/personal/family/0,1594,766,00.html


----------



## P Smith

Just small note - CHS is not that parameter what any current software using, it's listed for compatibility with DOS era programs include old BIOS. Today only MaxLBA utilized.


----------



## Coffey77

Earl Bonovich said:


> Also remember... opening the HR20, is in violation of your "lease" of the box... It is afterall DirecTV's equipment.
> 
> So when you return it at the end of yoru lease, or it is damaged.... you could be charged full price.


And also, those heat issues will only increase and mostlikey you'll have to add more fans and cooling options along with your HDs. You talk of heat now, a laptop HD seems to boil!:flaiming


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## ekb6

I have my own suspicions that the unwatchable bug and other apparent file corruption issues are less a matter of firmware -- which DTV would like everyone to believe -- than it is hardware, either faulty logic boards in the tuner section or defective hard drives.

Can anyone comment on the effect swapping HDs has had on all the performance "issues?"

Thanks


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## Marco in HD

My friend finaly got up the nerve to replace the drive in his HR20. Being the good friend I am, I had to help.

The case is closed with those heaxagon screws. Cover came off easy. Rather than replace the drive compleatly we just unplugged both the power an sata cable from the old drive, placed the new drive on top of the old one, plugged the power and sata cable into the new 750G drive, booted up, VIOLA. it works.

He's gonna record stuff like mad for a week to see how well it works.

I'll report back how he did.


----------



## Michael D'Angelo

Marco in HD said:


> My friend finaly got up the nerve to replace the drive in his HR20. Being the good friend I am, I had to help.
> 
> The case is closed with those heaxagon screws. Cover came off easy. Rather than replace the drive compleatly we just unplugged both the power an sata cable from the old drive, placed the new drive on top of the old one, plugged the power and sata cable into the new 750G drive, booted up, VIOLA. it works.
> 
> He's gonna record stuff like mad for a week to see how well it works.
> 
> I'll report back how he did.


It will work without a problem but you break the lease agreement with Directv by doing it.


----------



## cruise350

My question is how will D* know if and when he has to return it he removes the 750gb drive and reconnects the original drive.


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## houskamp

warentee sticker on the back edge..


----------



## Marco in HD

Says he owns his box outright. When we took off the cover I don't notice any sticker... maybe cause it was retail?


----------



## Marco in HD

Update:

He says the box has been working without a hitch. So, we decided to put the HHD in the bracket. FYI, we used a T9 6 point screw driver to remove the bracket holding the HDD. Overall it was easy. Easy for me to say, not my machine. Sort of like putting a HDD in a computer.

Booted back up without a hitch.


----------



## Marco in HD

Update: All is well.


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## P Smith

Sort of. You need philips screwdriver for remove HDD from metal holder and T10 for remove the holder-heat sink from DVR.


----------



## manowell

If so, any problems?

If no problems, how much will it hold?


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## P Smith

I posted about 1TB Hitachi.


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## manowell

P Smith said:


> I posted about 1TB Hitachi.


OK. I've spent about thirty minutes searching (new to this forum and forum software, and found:



> Hitachi should fist on HDD market with 1TB disk : (url deleted)


 and


> Hitachi 1TB SATA drive.


and


> It was used as internal drive for a couple weeks;
> since Hitachi selling only one 1 TB SATA model, you'll not miss it .


Which didn't tell me a whole lot.  Is there other information that I missed? Why did you only use it for two weeks? What kind of effective capacity did you get?


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## P Smith

It works; DVR is gone to a customer; the size is eq 1TB-20 GB-100GB(reserved).


----------



## DssDude

I just got a D* HR20-700, and bought a Seagate Barracuda 750g. While I was replacing the 300 gig internal SATA drive I noticed that it did not have a jumper on the 150/ 300 jumper pins. In previous posts it advises that it should be in 150 transfer mode. The original drive also has the label on the top (like all other Seagate SATA drives) that shows the pin settings to reduce the transfer rate.

My question is will the newer HR20 support the 300 transfer rate? Mine was manufactured in August if that makes a difference. Also, what effect will it have trying to run it in 300 if the SATA controller only runs at 150? Will there be permanent damage or simply turn off, set jumper, and reboot?

How long should I give to format that drive (how much INACTIVITY is too much)?

Thanks guys...


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## P Smith

HW doesn't changed to raise speed up to 3 Gbps and the HDD backward compatible; the jumper could be used for rare cases when it need.


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## DssDude

P Smith said:


> HW doesn't changed to raise speed up to 3 Gbps and the HDD backward compatible; the jumper could be used for rare cases when it need.


Thanks..

Any idea how much time I should allow for it to format?


----------



## cartrivision

DssDude said:


> Thanks..
> 
> Any idea how much time I should allow for it to format?


I didn't notice any prolonged boot up time when I put a new 750 GB disk in my HR20, so any formatting that it does is minimal and fast.


----------



## DssDude

cartrivision said:


> I didn't notice any prolonged boot up time when I put a new 750 GB disk in my HR20, so any formatting that it does is minimal and fast.


Appreciate your response. I think my drive was faulty, so I have a new one on the way. No activity and chirps occasionally. Wanted to make sure it wasn't supposed to take a great amount of time to format and load software.


----------



## John10Yes

I have an esata drive on order for my new HR20. Can someone tell me what happens when I plug it in? Will I lose what is stored on my existing internal drive? IF so I assume that mysetting for things to record are safe. 

Any tips on what I need to do to install or do I just plug it in??


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## jhays

The esata drive will become the principal (and only) drive. All your recordings and settings will remain intact on the internal drive, but you will not be able to access them until you unplug the esata.

By the way, plugging and unplugging the esata should only be done with the HR20 unplugged from the power source.


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## DssDude

My issue was a faulty drive. New one arrived and booted up quickly. No jumper used it auto-detected the transfer rate (like I thought it would/should).

Just for the record it got to the SEARCHING FOR SATALITE INFORMATION in like 30 seconds. Almost no time for the "format/ software install" portion of the swap.

Thanks for you help guys, this thread, and the boards...


----------



## John10Yes

jhays said:


> The esata drive will become the principal (and only) drive. All your recordings and settings will remain intact on the internal drive, but you will not be able to access them until you unplug the esata.
> 
> By the way, plugging and unplugging the esata should only be done with the HR20 unplugged from the power source.


Do I need to fortmat the drive or anything before attaching it? It is in route to me after buying it but I assume it will be NTFS or maybe FAT32.


----------



## mikeny

John10Yes said:


> Do I need to fortmat the drive or anything before attaching it? It is in route to me after buying it but I assume it will be NTFS or maybe FAT32.


No, the HR20 detects the new drive and formats it when you restart the power with the e-SATA cable connected to the new drive for the first time.


----------



## rbgamble

I would like to upgrade my drive externally, but, the connector on the back of my HR20-700C, looks like this: rbgamble.net/Pictures/DSCF0852.JPG

The cable I got with the drive does not seem to fit. It looks like this: rbgamble.net/Pictures/DSCF0857.JPG on both ends of the cable. 

It's close, but not the same.

Where can I get a cable that will fit the HR20's on one end and the drivde on the other?

Thanks for any help,


----------



## Sirshagg

Can't say for sure but based on the pictures and the product description it seems this will do the trick.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10226&cs_id=1022602&p_id=3750&seq=1&format=2


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## CCarncross

1st your drive enclosure is using a SATA connection(internal connector), and the HR20 is using an eSATA connection. In a perfect world, you should have an external enclosure that actually uses the proper eSATA jack on it, like the one on your HR20. You might be able to find an eSATA II to sata cable if you look hard enough. I highly recommend getting a proper eSATA enclosure to correct this.

My favorite and many others here are using the ANTEC MX-1 enclosure available at most box stores like CC or BB...


----------



## rbgamble

Thanks, Looks like it might be what I'm looking for. I'll give it a try.



Sirshagg said:


> Can't say for sure but based on the pictures and the product description it seems this will do the trick.


----------



## rbgamble

The drive I have is an External SATA Hard Drive - Seagate 750Gb SATA 7200rpm 16mb Buffer Hard Drive (installed). The description stated it came with an E-SATA to SATA Cable. The cable it came with has the same style end on both ends.



CCarncross said:


> 1st your drive enclosure is using a SATA connection(internal connector), and the HR20 is using an eSATA connection. In a perfect world, you should have an external enclosure that actually uses the proper eSATA jack on it, like the one on your HR20. You might be able to find an eSATA II to sata cable if you look hard enough. I highly recommend getting a proper eSATA enclosure to correct this.
> 
> My favorite and many others here are using the ANTEC MX-1 enclosure available at most box stores like CC or BB...


----------



## CCarncross

I understand what you have. What I dont understand is how some stupid company is using a sata connection meant for internal hookups on the outside of a eSATA enclosure...I would return that enlcosure and get a real enclosure like the one I mentioned above.


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## rbgamble

I think a quicker solution will be getting the cable mention in another reply. The one at: http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10226&cs_id=1022602&p_id=3750&seq=1&format=2

Looks like what I need. I'll let you know how it goes.



CCarncross said:


> I understand what you have. What I dont understand is how some stupid company is using a sata connection meant for internal hookups on the outside of a eSATA enclosure...I would return that enlcosure and get a real enclosure like the one I mentioned above.


----------



## sbmiami

Any help on how to remove and replace internal HD? Seems to be installed pretty well.


----------



## sbmiami

DssDude said:


> I just got a D* HR20-700, and bought a Seagate Barracuda 750g. While I was replacing the 300 gig internal SATA drive I noticed that it did not have a jumper on the 150/ 300 jumper pins. In previous posts it advises that it should be in 150 transfer mode. The original drive also has the label on the top (like all other Seagate SATA drives) that shows the pin settings to reduce the transfer rate.
> 
> My question is will the newer HR20 support the 300 transfer rate? Mine was manufactured in August if that makes a difference. Also, what effect will it have trying to run it in 300 if the SATA controller only runs at 150? Will there be permanent damage or simply turn off, set jumper, and reboot?
> 
> How long should I give to format that drive (how much INACTIVITY is too much)?
> 
> Thanks guys...


>

How did you physically remove the drive without damaging the mounting brackets


----------



## rbgamble

Thanks for the link to monoprice. I got the cable today, and it works great! I did need to input all the favorate channles, and programs, but, it's worth the extra space. Now if only I could use both drives (the one in the HR20) and the external as one large drive. Perhaps a future update will fix that.



Sirshagg said:


> Can't say for sure but based on the pictures and the product description it seems this will do the trick.
> http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10226&cs_id=1022602&p_id=3750&seq=1&format=2


----------



## Sirshagg

rbgamble said:


> Thanks for the link to monoprice. I got the cable today, and it works great! I did need to input all the favorate channles, and programs, but, it's worth the extra space. Now if only I could use both drives (the one in the HR20) and the external as one large drive. Perhaps a future update will fix that.


----------



## Special Ed

I am looking for one of these http://www.efytimes.com/efytimes/fullnews.asp?edid=22078 to swap out with my current internal drive. I wonder if it will work as well as the 750 Gig seagate swap out works.


----------



## CCarncross

Special Ed said:


> I am looking for one of these http://www.efytimes.com/efytimes/fullnews.asp?edid=22078 to swap out with my current internal drive. I wonder if it will work as well as the 750 Gig seagate swap out works.


From your link:

The DB35.4 family of hard disc drives will be available starting in the first calendar quarter of 2008.

So its not really available yet...


----------



## meller

Hi,
I have a networked HR20-700. I want to install an eSATA drive. Since the USB port on these boxes are dead ,where would the external drive plug into?

Thanks


----------



## Smuuth

meller said:


> Hi,
> I have a networked HR20-700. I want to install an eSATA drive. Since the USB port on these boxes are dead ,where would the external drive plug into?
> Thanks


The *eSATA drive* plugs into the *eSATA port*.


----------



## meller

Smuuth said:


> The *eSATA drive* plugs into the *eSATA port*.


Duh......I sure feel pretty stupid......

Thanks


----------



## ethanr75

check it

newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136151

look like it does some variable RPMing too, nifty but will it get in my way? 

i am planning on using this as a replacement internal drive in a new hr2x that i am due to receive ina couple of weeks. does anyone see why this wouldnt work?

ethan


----------



## spunkyvision

ethanr75 said:


> check it
> 
> newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136151
> 
> look like it does some variable RPMing too, nifty but will it get in my way?
> 
> i am planning on using this as a replacement internal drive in a new hr2x that i am due to receive ina couple of weeks. does anyone see why this wouldnt work?
> 
> ethan


Did you ever get a response ethanr75 ? Did you replace your drive?


----------



## Sirshagg

ethanr75 said:


> check it
> 
> newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136151
> 
> look like it does some variable RPMing too, nifty but will it get in my way?
> 
> i am planning on using this as a replacement internal drive in a new hr2x that i am due to receive ina couple of weeks. does anyone see why this wouldnt work?
> 
> ethan


I have two of them in MX-1 cases and they work fine. I'd imagine they would work well internally too.


----------



## BigBearf

Any links with pictures to show how to replace the HR20-700 internal with a Seagate 750 or 1 Terabyte drive?
Thanks,
BigBearf


----------



## houskamp

BigBearf said:


> Any links with pictures to show how to replace the HR20-700 internal with a Seagate 750 or 1 Terabyte drive?
> Thanks,
> BigBearf


no offence intended but if you don't feel comfortable without pics you problaby don't want to do it..


----------



## kcopen

Hey guys, I decided to just get an external eSata drive instead of voiding the ole warranty and installing an internal. Was just wondering, since the drive I'm getting is eSata and the connection on the HR20-700 is Sata, I'm assuming that I need to get an eSata to Sata type of cable?


----------



## houskamp

kcopen said:


> Hey guys, I decided to just get an external eSata drive instead of voiding the ole warranty and installing an internal. Was just wondering, since the drive I'm getting is eSata and the connection on the HR20-700 is Sata, I'm assuming that I need to get an eSata to Sata type of cable?


esata>esata.. the port on the HR is an esata one..


----------



## chumbley

sbmiami said:


> >
> 
> How did you physically remove the drive without damaging the mounting brackets


As others have stated, if you aren't comfortable doing this without pictures, then you probably should go the eSATA route.

The HR20's drive bracket is held in place by 4 rubber-isolating mounts. Two are screws through the front (you have to remove the plastic bezel to see them), and other two are plastic retention clips. To remove these clips, push the center down through them, this will allow the clip retainers to retract through the holes in the hard drive bracket.


----------



## Basil

Just put in a 1TB Western Digital "Green drive" that I purchased from Best Buy. A little tricky getting the front cover off because of how the ribbon cable is attached to the main board but other than that it was an easy process but if you are not comfortable working inside a PC then I probably would not attempt the process. The drive is sooo quiet compared to the original 300GB Seagate. I have been recording two HD channels since for the last 15 hours and I still have 92% left. Additionally, the internal temperature is lower. The unit has been running between 116 and 120 degrees. Before the upgrade it was always at 127. I am planning on stress testing it until it gets to 80% but so far I am really happy with the upgrade.


----------



## TheWizz

I have a new HR21-700 and I attached a new Seagate eSATA 750GB drive to it and rebooted. This is the first time I have done this, so my question is how do I know for sure that the HR21 is using the external 750GB drive now and not the internal 320GB drive? Is there any setup screen that shows the size of the HD? 

Would the same apply to an HR20 as I plan to do the same to an HR20 - but would like to know for certain it is using the external drive.


----------



## houskamp

TheWizz said:


> I have a new HR21-700 and I attached a new Seagate eSATA 750GB drive to it and rebooted. This is the first time I have done this, so my question is how do I know for sure that the HR21 is using the external 750GB drive now and not the internal 320GB drive? Is there any setup screen that shows the size of the HD?
> 
> Would the same apply to an HR20 as I plan to do the same to an HR20 - but would like to know for certain it is using the external drive.


If you had any recordings or series links on it before they should be missing(would be on OEM drive..
otherwize you will have to record some stuff and see how much space they take..
and yes HR20 and HR21, same procedure..


----------



## TheWizz

houskamp said:


> If you had any recordings or series links on it before they should be missing(would be on OEM drive..
> otherwize you will have to record some stuff and see how much space they take..
> and yes HR20 and HR21, same procedure..


Thanks, they are brand new (to me) DVRs and no recordings. Is there no easy way to ensure it is using the external vs. internal drive without recording something, powering off, unplugging, powering back up and seeing if recordings disappeared? I am coming from ReplayTV world where the recording menu shows you how many hours of recording space is left and it was roughly 1HR per 1GB, so it was easy to see what size HD was in use. Of course there was no external HD option with ReplayTV. :grin:

Another way to ask the question: is there a setup option or screen that shows how much space is left on the HD for recordings? Obviously if I could see 200GB left or 650GB left, that would let me know which drive is being used.


----------



## houskamp

TheWizz said:


> Thanks, they are brand new (to me) DVRs and no recordings. Is there no easy way to ensure it is using the external vs. internal drive without recording something, powering off, unplugging, powering back up and seeing if recordings disappeared? I am coming from ReplayTV world where the recording menu shows you how many hours of recording space is left and it was roughly 1HR per 1GB, so it was easy to see what size HD was in use. Of course there was no external HD option with ReplayTV. :grin:
> 
> Another way to ask the question: is there a setup option or screen that shows how much space is left on the HD for recordings? Obviously if I could see 200GB left or 650GB left, that would let me know which drive is being used.


bottom of your playlist show % used/free...


----------



## TheWizz

houskamp said:


> bottom of your playlist show % used/free...


So if I record one show to test it, how will I know if I recorded on the 320GB or 750GB HD? What % used/free would I see if I recorded a one hour SD or one hour HD show? Any formula for this? Thanks again and sorry if this sounds like a stupid question. Still learning the ropes with HR-2x DVRs (and praying for MRV!).


----------



## houskamp

well the OEM is rated 30 mpeg2, 50 mpeg4, and 200 SD... so you'll have to kinda guess.. the 750 should be giving you about 3.5x the space...


----------



## raoul5788

houskamp said:


> well the OEM is rated 30 mpeg2, 50 mpeg4, and 200 SD... so you'll have to kinda guess.. the 750 should be giving you about 3.5x the space...


Shouldn't a 750 gb drive give you a bit more than double what you get in the HR21, not 3.5 times?


----------



## houskamp

some amount (guessed at 50-100gb) is used by the dvr.. so a 500gb is 2-2.5x and a 750 is 3-3.5x the space..


----------



## Richierich

I don't understand the math houskamp.

320 GB minus 100 GB = 220 GB (assuming 100 GB for Housekeeping)
500 GB minus 100 GB = 400 GB
400 GB divided by 220 GB = 1.8 Times more space
650 GB divided by 220 GB = 2.95 Times more space


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## houskamp

richierich said:


> I don't understand the math houskamp.
> 
> 320 GB minus 100 GB = 220 GB (assuming 100 GB for Housekeeping)
> 500 GB minus 100 GB = 400 GB
> 400 GB divided by 220 GB = 1.8 Times more space
> 650 GB divided by 220 GB = 2.95 Times more space


close enough..
it's all estimates...
I get close to 100 hrs mpeg4 (new chanels) on my 500s..


----------



## Richierich

I guess what throws alot of people is that they don't take into consideration that the OS needs between 50 & 100 GB to do it's thing!!!


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## davahad

Tried a Hitachi Deskstar 1 Terabyte (PN:0A34193) with a HR21-700 internally and it did not work. After about 10 minutes the drive got really loud and the picture froze. Put the stock drive back in and all was fine.

Tested the Hitachi drive with their Drive Fitness Test in both quick and advanced and drive tested fine.


----------



## houskamp

davahad said:


> Tried a Hitachi Deskstar 1 Terabyte (PN:0A34193) with a HR21-700 internally and it did not work. After about 10 minutes the drive got really loud and the picture froze. Put the stock drive back in and all was fine.
> 
> Tested the Hitachi drive with their Drive Fitness Test in both quick and advanced and drive tested fine.


Did you try it with and without the speed jumper in place?


----------



## davahad

houskamp said:


> Did you try it with and without the speed jumper in place?


The Hitachi doesn't have a speed jumper. It is set in software using their utility and I just checked and it was set to 3.0Gbs. Guess I can try 1.5Gbs and see if that works.

What are the drives normally set to, 1.5 or 3.0?


----------



## houskamp

davahad said:


> The Hitachi doesn't have a speed jumper. It is set in software using their utility and I just checked and it was set to 3.0Gbs. Guess I can try 1.5Gbs and see if that works.
> 
> What are the drives normally set to, 1.5 or 3.0?


Good question :lol: 
Don't know.. but there have been reports of some DVRs not liking 3.0..
but all mine are set for 3.0 and work fine..


----------



## skylinebeach

Noticed this thread and am wondering if the HR21 has problems like the HR20 when upgrading internal sata drives?

There is no need for special setups is there? Just replace the internal drive no matter the size up to 1TB and it will work I thought. Is this wrong?

Does the HR20 and HR21 units automatically take advantage of the larger hard drive space or do you need to do something to enhance that?


----------



## houskamp

skylinebeach said:


> Noticed this thread and am wondering if the HR21 has problems like the HR20 when upgrading internal sata drives?
> 
> There is no need for special setups is there? Just replace the internal drive no matter the size up to 1TB and it will work I thought. Is this wrong?
> 
> Does the HR20 and HR21 units automatically take advantage of the larger hard drive space or do you need to do something to enhance that?


no special setups..
just throw out the warrentee (and violate the lease), replace drive, and turn on.. it will automaticaly setup itself with the new space.. then you have to reset all series links and favorites..


----------



## skylinebeach

How will they ever know about the upgrade? 

Dont ask, Dont Tell.


----------



## houskamp

skylinebeach said:


> How will they ever know about the upgrade?
> 
> Dont ask, Dont Tell.


If you ever have to have an exchange they may or may not find out.. there are warenty stickers on the recivers and if they were to look at the drive and see that the last recording was in 06 they might know..
but it's all a guess, just depends on the risk level you feel...


----------



## skylinebeach

look, my cat and your cat should get together...

but as far as D* hooking up and starting your unit to check for recording dates... 

well, we know that wont happen.

the stickers are on less then half of the units acording to a thread somehwere with a poll on it and as someone also said it makes sense that they are not keeping track of which units have stickers and which dont.

this is my take on it anyways.

is your cas as fat as mine is (21lbs) or is that just a bad hair day for him/her?


----------

