Build your own 2TB External Hard drive expansion for DVR.
toddh44
Enthusiast - Level 1

As with many of you, I finally got fed up constantly deleting programing from my DVR to make room for more shows.

After doing some research, and finding availability problems with the reccmended expansion drives, I decided to build my own, and wanted to post my experience in case someone else was contemplating the same thing.

I chose a Western Digital AV-GP series Drive that is recomended for DVR and Closed Circuit TV applications. It does not sleep and create recognition problems some drives cause.

WD AV-GP WD20EURS Hard Drive - 2TB 5400RPM SATA 300Green A/V OEM Hard Drive. It is available on amazon and NewEgg for 100 to 120 dollars.

I installed it in a Rosewell enclosure. 20 bucks. It came with mounting screws and a SATA cable.

After entering settings on my DVR, I selected Activate SATA. Then plugged in my already powerd up drive into the ESATA port. DVR recognized external drive immediately, and after about 1 minute told me I was ready to go and to reboot my DVR.

Been working for about 3 days with no issues.

This was about as easy a build as you can do. From unboxing the drive to recording shows was about 15 minutes. and I'm slow.

So if this is something you are thinking of, Don't be scared of it.

1 Solution

Correct answers
Re: Build your own 2TB External Hard drive expansion for DVR.
Hubrisnxs
Legend

This website helped me when I was ready to do it as well. 

Great info and great tips www.247smile.com/

View solution in original post

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Re: Build your own 2TB External Hard drive expansion for DVR.
Hubrisnxs
Legend

This website helped me when I was ready to do it as well. 

Great info and great tips www.247smile.com/

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Re: Build your own 2TB External Hard Drive - Great Tips
armond_in_nj1
Master - Level 1

@toddh44 wrote:

 ... I decided to build my own, and wanted to post my experience  ...

I chose a Western Digital AV-GP series Drive  ... WD AV-GP WD20EURS Hard Drive - 2TB 5400RPM SATA 300Green A/V OEM Hard Drive is available on amazon and NewEgg ... installed it in a Rosewell enclosure ... After entering settings on my DVR, I selected Activate SATA. Then plugged in my already powerd up drive into the ESATA port. DVR recognized external drive immediately, and after about 1 minute told me I was ready to go and to reboot my DVR ...


Great recipe and great info.  Should simplify life for many.

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Re: Build your own 2TB External Hard drive expansion for DVR.
Ephesian
Newbie

Todd or others that have tried 2TB drives:

  Can you please verify two things? I'm having trouble with my 2TB drive (Seagate ST2000DM001 Barracuda 7200RPM 2 TB SATA 6 GB/s NCQ 64 MB Cache)

1) Does the STB actually recognize all 2TB (1.8TB) of space? (see below, mine only recognizes 1023 GB + 1 GB)

2) Do you experience lags of 2 - 5 seconds between button pushes in the DVR listings, or problems with deleted shows staying forever in the listings? (mine does both!

----------

Instructions to see how much is recognized, from this thread (4th post😞

To access this diagnostics menu:

1) Get the DVR into normal live tv mode (no menu, no guide, no pause ...)

2) Go to the Cisco CHS 435 HD DVR (not the remote control) and press these buttons on the front of the DVR: Press both the Left Arrow "<-" button and "OK" button at the same time and hold them both down for aprox 5 seconds. [may take a few tries to get right]

3) The "Verizon FiOS TV Diagnostics Menu" menu will appear. The menu can then be used by the remote control.

4) I chose "D03 Memory / HDD" and then "Hard Disk Information" and finally "OK"

A five page disk report appeared. With a little bit of interpretation I discovered:

The Internal Drive is know as "drive 1/hdc1" has 461 GB total space with 454 GB free.

The External Drive is split into two partitions "hdc2" and "hdc3" (aka two mount points).

"drive 2/hdc2" has 1007 MB total with 317 GB free

"drive 3/hdc3" has 1007 MB total with 974 GB free

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Re: Build your own 2TB External Hard drive expansion for DVR.
Woody210
Newbie

My DVR is a Motorola QIP-6416-2( whole house HD DVR )  I love your idea and would like to use it with my DVR.  Can you address whether your "fix" would work with my DVR model?  If you can't say, can you advise what specs the DVR must have to use your fix?  Thanks in advance.

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Re: Build your own 2TB External Hard drive expansion for DVR.
CRobGauth
Community Leader
Community Leader

You can't use an external drive with the 6416. You have to upgrade to the 72xx series.

Re: Build your own 2TB External Hard drive expansion for DVR.
Woody210
Newbie

I was afraid of that.  Thanks.

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Re: Build your own 2TB External Hard drive expansion for DVR.
armond_in_nj1
Master - Level 1

@Woody2 wrote:

My DVR is a Motorola QIP-6416-2( whole house HD DVR )  I love your idea and would like to use it with my DVR.  Can you address whether your "fix" would work with my DVR model?  If you can't say, can you advise what specs the DVR must have to use your fix?  Thanks in advance.


Your device probably qualifies for a free replacement as mentioned elsewhere on the forums.  Verizon is changing certain TV channel properties, and if you subscribe to a package that qualifies, you can upgrade the device for free.  The upgraded device supports external hard drive expansion.  Enter "replace DVR" in the forums search box above for details.

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Re: Build your own 2TB External Hard drive expansion for DVR.
Woody210
Newbie

I intend to build and add an esata drive to my DVR.  Two questions:  Is there any need to use an enclosure with a built in fan?

and Does anyone know the capacity of the internal DRV drive?

Thanks.

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Re: Build your own 2TB External Hard drive expansion for DVR.
gandalf1369
Enthusiast - Level 2

I have an external eSATA enclosure without a fan connected to my FIOS DVR and it works just fine.  Been setup like that for about 8 months now and I have had absolutely no issues.

As far as the capacity of the internal drive, I think that it is 500GB but I could be wrong.  Mabe someone else can tell you for sure.

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