So....that didn't work at all.
My 630 freezes/crashes soon after restarting it. The little pulsing orange light that moves back and forth during reboots gets stuck on the middle position and stays there, indefinitely. Nothing short of turning off the HDD and unplugging the 630 will get the signal back.
I'm using a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB in an Vantec Nexstar 3 enclosure, but the 630 doesn't seem to like one (or both) of these.
Haven't called tech support yet; I guess that's tomorrow's order of business
UPDATE: Looks like I had a bad eSATA cable. I tried two other drives in my enclosure and it would still lock up the PVR. Finally got it in my head to switch cables. This time the orange light didn't get stuck until a bit later
(stupid tease of a satellite box!).
However, this time I was able to reboot the DVR using the front button (before when it would lock up I had to unplug it). This time the unit came back on and detected the expander drive and I chose to format it!
Question though: How long did the formatting process take everyone? The Shaw website says it should only take a few seconds, and several people on here have said they were up and running in a few minutes. Mine has been formatting for over an hour so far. Though, it is a 2TB drive full of old data from my PC, so that could add some time to the process. You wouldn't think it would make
that much of a difference though.
No, I'm afraid I have a sinking feeling I may end the evening
without a working extender (yet again).
UPDATE 2: So, after waiting over 2 hours with the 630 stuck "formatting" my HDD, I turned it off and rebooted the 630 because I wanted to record a show. Tried the process again after the show had finished and this time it got stuck on the screen where you confirm formatting of the HDD. Not really sure where to go from here. I guess break down and
buy a DVR-rated extender or maybe just wait until SD works out these bugs.
UPDATE 3: After waiting on hold for an hour and a half, I finally got through to a CSR who had me repeat the process several times; All unsuccessful because he had me reboot the 630
without the HDD powered on. Eventually he told me that DVR-rated drives were
required and not just recommended. Therefore, none of the drives I tested (1GB Caviar Black, 2GB Caviar Green, and 750GB Caviar SE16) will ever work.