Adding external esata drive to SA8300HD

[bruces]

I recently purchased an Antec MX-1 external case and a 2TB esata drive.

When I powered off the SA8300HD, connected the esata cable to both the MX-1 and the SA8300HD, powered on the MX-1 and then powered on the SA8300HD, a screen was displayed about the external being detected and the drive being formatted.

However, when the formatting was completed, the extra storage does not seem to be recognized. The free space shown is the same as it was before I connected the drive.

Is there any other step that I need to follow or did I just add too large a drive. I am in the Albany TW market in case it matters.

If it is just a case of the drive being too large, I can always just switch it with the 750MG one I currently have connected to one of my directv boxes.

Since I have already attached a 2TB external to one of my other directv boxes and it recognizes the extra storage with no problem, I know that will work.

[bruces]

Problem solved.

I pulled the power cable from the SA8300HD again, waited about a minute and then plugged it back in.

Before the boot, the available space showed around 84% used. After the boot, the available space showed about 4% used.

I don't know whether all 2TB of the external drive are now being used, but at least this shows that some of it is now recognized.

[Skaggs]

Wow, 2TB? That's got to be about 200 hours of HD.

I installed a 500 GB hard drive in one of my TiVo HD's and got 64 hours of HD or 607 hours of SD storage.

[bruces]

The 2TB appears to have been too much for the current software loaded on the box to handle.

A few days ago, it stopped recording anything although it showed only about 8% used.

I pulled the power cable on the external drive and the rebooted the box. Now it can record again.

Anybody have any suggestions on where to look to find out the maximum external drive size the SA8300HD should be able to work with?

[hurnik]

Did you look in the avsforums?

[UsualNoise]

Yeah, there's a thread in AVS specifically for this issue, and a separate web page listing all the hard drives and enclosures currently working with the 8300HD. I'm currently using a 750 GB Western Digital drive and have had no problems for over a year with it (and an Antex MX-1).

Here's the thread
Here's the compatibility web page for SARA

Looks like 1 TB is the max being used at this point, so anything larger is probably not going to be stable long-term.