SA8300HD - External SATA Drive Works, Please Read Post 1 and Post 1 Links

[robinwood]

picked up at Canada Computers
400GB SATAII (WD4000KS and NST-360SU-BL $172.00 plus 44.00
installed this morining - went ok so far - this drive is way quieter
than the seagat I originally tried - will record and watch later today
hope this solves the Blip problems,

Since TCM is now available need the extra space for sme of these
great classic films-real acting no special effects !!

[lexar]

I just bought a Vantec NexStar 3 SATA and a Maxtor 320 Gig SATA II drive.
I plugged everything in and rebooted the 8300hd. It tells me I have a drive and hit A to format. I click and nothing happens?!?!
The screen seems to freeze for a couple of seconds but when I check my availabe space it is still the same. I tried power reseting the 8300 and it tells me again to try and format and same problem..

Any suggestions?!?


Thanks

[riceman]

did you turn off the PVR and then plug everything in?

[lexar]

Yes.. did that several times.

I also went into the Sara screens and saw that both the drives are recognized but my internal has a total size and a free size but the new one has 0 for both.

I plugged it into my PC using USB (don't have a SATA port) and formatted it for NTFS and it works fine. Therefore it seems to be something either in the 8300 or the sata interface.

[Jake]

I click [format] and nothing happens

IIRC nothing does. You have to be patient and wait for the process to finish. Give it a good 15 minutes then come back and check. Also, never turn off the power to the VN3 even when the PVR is unplugged for a reboot.

[Noahj120]

Also is 500gigs the largest drive you can add or could you attach a 750gig drive. Thanks a lot

[Jake]

It might but a lot of enclosures come with the right cable. My cable is the same on both ends.

[lexar]

Now I can see the drive and the extra space but every now and then the 8300 says the drive was disconnected and I need to reboot it.

Anyone else have this problem?

[robinwood]

Originally Posted by robinwood

picked up at Canada Computers
400GB SATAII (WD4000KS and NST-360SU-BL $172.00 plus 44.00
installed this morining - went ok so far - this drive is way quieter
than the seagat I originally tried - will record and watch later today
hope this solves the Blip problems,

Since TCM is now available need the extra space for sme of these
great classic films-real acting no special effects !!

update: recorded and watched about 3 hours worth of material
on the new box and drive- about 3 small breakups in the whole process
appaers to have no adverse affects on live tv as the seagate did - so far looks like a good combo

[slyboy]

Originally Posted by lexar

Now I can see the drive and the extra space but every now and then the 8300 says the drive was disconnected and I need to reboot it.
Anyone else have this problem?

Yes, I've definitely seen this a number of times over the past year that I've been using an external drive. I see the message, "OK" it to make the message disappear and then continue on as normal. It almost seems like the drive perhaps looses connectivity with the 8300HD (perhaps after an update or reset or something happening on the Rogers network) but then after going past the message on the screen everything works again, at least for me.

[maddog40]

Originally Posted by maddog40

Well just set up my Vantec ns3 with a seagate 7200.8 400gig a few days ago ( upgraded my pc's drive for a 7200.10 ) and all seems good on the eastern front up to now. The drive is far from being quiet but I can live with it as I always use home theater sound. Will let you guys now if it stays good.

Well after 1 week on use, everything is fine and dandy even though it's a Seagate, maybe since it's an older 7200.8 sata and not a sata2.

[eonibm]

Well I have had the WD Caviar 50 GB drive attached for a few days now. Seems to work well except I have had a few quirky things happen that didn't happen before. The SA8300HD PVR kept showing it was recording something when it wasn't. Unplugging it and then plugging it in fixed that. The next thing was that I had two recordings going on at the same time and when I switched to the other one it was always a recording I had done a few days ago. Today that happened again and the other recording that was being displayed was also that same show from a few days ago and not the one that it was actually recording. This morning the screen got frozen while recording on the same image, yet the audio progressed. Switching channels back and forth seemed to cure that.

I am wondering whether this is now happening because I added 500GB or because the WD is not the best drive to attach or just general quirks of the 1.87 software that all just happened to happen right now.

[Jaytradertee]

I have a Vantec NexStar 3 SATA and a WD 320g and I couldnt get it to work. I kept getting an error that there was a problem with the cable. I borrowed a Seagate 320g and it appears to work without issue. Its odd because I read some other people have no issues with the same model WD.

[riceman]

just had a scary moment. the tv was going fine, but when i tried watching something from my 'list' and it wasn't there. tried a few others, and they weren't there. i saw that my capacity was 60%, which was wrong since i knew it was supposed to be around 75%. i did a hard reboot of the PVR (unplug/plug). USUALLY the digital output gives the wavy lines for a couple seconds, then says boot, then displays time, then i press power and the signal goes through. THIS TIME it flashed some letters i couldn't catch, then flashed the letter "r"and counted down from 300 or something really fast all the way to zero (as in r360, r359, r358, etc). then it went blank, no tv signal, nothing. i unplugged/plugged again, same thing (r3xx, -> r000). after a few moments the PVR worked but a message popped up saying my external device wasn't working. everything that i had recorded on the internal was still there, but everything on the list that was recorded on the external wasn't there.
i unplugged again, then rebooted the external HD as well. then plugged the PVR back in, and everything seemed to be back to normal.... PHEW.

[MacTVJunkie]

Originally Posted by riceman

(snip)THIS TIME it flashed some letters i couldn't catch, then flashed the letter "r"and counted down from 300 or something really fast all the way to zero (as in r360, r359, r358, etc). then it went blank, no tv signal, nothing. i unplugged/plugged again, same thing (r3xx, -> r000).

Have you, by any chance, gone into the OSD and looked at what your firmware version is since this happened? What you describe is what you see when an SA box downloads a ROM image. I don't want to get anyone excited for nothing but it's *possible* that your box downloaded a firmware upgrade. Of course, it's also possible that it simply downloaded the existing firmware because your ROM image somehow got corrupted.