Swapping Hard Drives
DrDan3
Newbie

I'm a new FIOS user and have been having trouble with the IR receiver on my STB (one of the new CISCO DVRs)

Verizon is sending me a new STB.  I've got a couple programs on the HD that I want to save (15-20 hrs). The tech

said that the HDs weren't swappable.   I've been in the computer business for 40+ years and can swap the HDs in less

than 5 min.  But, will it work?  I.e., is there recording data stored somewhere else other than on the HD that will prevent

the new STB from accessing the data on the old HD?

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Re: Swapping Hard Drives
Keyboards
Master - Level 3

First off, you don't own the DVR and opening the case is against the rules.  Your risk should there be future problems with the hardware and not sure what anti-tamper mechanisms Verizon may have and what they might do if "tampering" is discovered.

That being said, I don't know if the internal drives are married to the hardware in a similar fashion to what is done with the external drives.  It may be that the only way to "change" drives would require a re-format and you would lose your existing recordings.  Again, this is only speculation on my part based on the eSATA implementation for an external drive.

Re: Swapping Hard Drives
inachu
Enthusiast - Level 3

I am wondering this as well as I do not have a DVR yet as I have one of the plain silver boxes with no DVR in it but I am considering upgrading my service to include DVR support but I would like to copy the original drive and copy it to a SSD drive which is much faster and would run cooler since no spinning parts.

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Re: Swapping Hard Drives
prisaz
Legend

@inachu wrote:

I am wondering this as well as I do not have a DVR yet as I have one of the plain silver boxes with no DVR in it but I am considering upgrading my service to include DVR support but I would like to copy the original drive and copy it to a SSD drive which is much faster and would run cooler since no spinning parts.


See the response to your previous post. It should answer both of these questions. I am not sure if the drive is "married" to the DVR but very well could be, since the external drives are not swappable.

http://forums.verizon.com/t5/FiOS-TV-Technical-Assistance/Am-I-allowed-to-MOD-the-DVR/m-p/384443/mes...

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Re: Swapping Hard Drives
th3rtythr33
Enthusiast - Level 3

To save you form making a terrible mistake - having a Solid State Disk in a DVR is usually a complete waste. You would not see any reasonable increase in performance. Loading times when choosing a recording to play may become faster by a fraction of a second, but you probably wouldn't even notice that. Keep in mind that Blu Ray is MUCH slower than a platter hard drive, and Blu Ray is the standard for top quality video - even 4K resolutions - at this time.

Putting a SSD in a DVR for media storage is a waste of money and time, and it will die much more quickly than a HDD would. That's before you have to pay Verizon $450 to replace the modified set top box. If you want to drop a lot of money on a cool DVR-like solution, build yourself a media center PC, but still use a HDD for media, even if you want to use a SSD for the system software. Again, I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but you've been misled if someone has you believing putting a SSD in your DVR would be a worthwhile endeavor, even if it is hypothetically possible. The DVR might not even support SSDs.

Re: Swapping Hard Drives
prisaz
Legend

@th3rtythr33 wrote:

To save you form making a terrible mistake - having a Solid State Disk in a DVR is usually a complete waste. You would not see any reasonable increase in performance. Loading times when choosing a recording to play may become faster by a fraction of a second, but you probably wouldn't even notice that. Keep in mind that Blu Ray is MUCH slower than a platter hard drive, and Blu Ray is the standard for top quality video - even 4K resolutions - at this time.

Putting a SSD in a DVR for media storage is a waste of money and time, and it will die much more quickly than a HDD would. That's before you have to pay Verizon $450 to replace the modified set top box. If you want to drop a lot of money on a cool DVR-like solution, build yourself a media center PC, but still use a HDD for media, even if you want to use a SSD for the system software. Again, I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but you've been misled if someone has you believing putting a SSD in your DVR would be a worthwhile endeavor, even if it is hypothetically possible. The DVR might not even support SSDs.



I have been wanting to try one of these devices, but as Verizon migrates more towards IP, I am not sure if it would be a waisted investment.

http://cetoncorp.com/

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Re: Swapping Hard Drives
CRobGauth
Community Leader
Community Leader

I would assume data is encrypted on the internal drive. It is when you add an external drive (to prvent you from copying data to PC).

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Re: Swapping Hard Drives
prisaz
Legend

@CRobGauth wrote:

I would assume data is encrypted on the internal drive. It is when you add an external drive (to prvent you from copying data to PC).


Yes, and you can not as of yet swap the external drive to another Verizon DVR. It will just format the drive and poof. I would say the STB looks at the F/W serial number on the drive, plus other format information that is matched to the box.

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