xenophonite writes:
Ever since the 3.x ODN upgrade, my eSATA drive has been unstable. I've tried a 750GB WD drive and Hitachi 1TB drive. Keep reading for a workaround. While not ideal, I've decided to keep my drive attached. It works well enough.
Here's a summary of details further below..
- Set powerup channel to one not subscribed to (Settings>Display>PowerOn Channel)
- Press poweroff button on cablebox to properly save the powerup channel
- Power off drive and unplug cable box, startup drive first for few seconds, then plug in cable box
- Should get blue Press A to Format screen after reboot completes (countdown to L1) and then a confirmation screen after a minute
- If not able to format on cable box, use Windows low level formatting tool described in detail section below
- Confirm extra space available in DVR list or page 11 in Diag screen
- ODN 3.x appears to have a drive idle issue so need to establish a constant recording channel at low priority. ESPN News (SD) is best channel since it uses same title 24x7. Set to always record series but keep just one episode - 'save at most last 1 episode' in record series options. Go into DVR List Series Manager and set ESPN News to _lowest_ priority (move to bottom of list). This will allow other recordings to override the ESPN channel.
Details here...
The first issue is getting the drive to format. The only way I can consistently get drive formatting from cable box to work is to first use a low level format tool in Windows...
http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.04.12-HDD-Low-Level-Format-Tool/
The low level format in Windows can take many hours, which is not necessary. You can kill the LLTFORMAT.exe program from Windows Task Manager after it runs for a minute. It just needs to wipe out the header info.
This will consistently allow a 'Press A to format' on the cable box but there should be a confirmation message within a minute or two, which is not consistent. I just kept trying after a low level format and finally got a confirmation message. You do need to power off both cable/drive enclosure, power up drive first, let it spin up a few seconds and then power up the cable box. Keep trying the format until you get a confirmation message.
Next check the DVR List screen to see if your % full has improved or you can also check in the Diag screen on page 11. Press and hold the Select button on remote and wait for the mailbox to appear on cable box display then press the down button. A diag screen will appear. Use the page up/down buttons to get to page 11. It should show the new drive with the total size in GB with a status of Ready. If not, back to Windows low level formatting and rebooting fun.
Once you get the drive to be recognized on the cable box...
Unfortunately ODN 3.x is severely buggy with eSATA compared to ODN 2 and I can only get recordings to view if doing the following...
wx27 responded with this method, which has been working well for me...
FYI, I read your workaround for ODN 3.x after getting "upgraded" last Tuesday. Right after the upgrade, my list showed all recorded programs, but nothing would play. Rebooting w/ external drive powered off gave me a short list of the shows on the internal drive. Rebooting once more with external drive powered on gave me the short list again, but the % used dropped, so it looks like after those cycles, the external drive contents were lost (no formatting done, but the file allocation table or equiv got wiped).
I have implemented the workaround for when 2.x was crashing with eSATA (actually easier to implement since now we have the ability to change series priority) and my setup has worked fine (recording, playback) since Wednesday. I choose ESPN-News as the program to record since it is in 30 minute intervals and is repeated 24/7 on that channel. With this as lowest priority, if I have two other programs to record at the same time, they will bump the ESPN recording. Other settings I set were to retain only one episode of ESPN-News and also to adjust the start time to 15 min after and the end time to 5 min before, so it spends the minimum time (10 out of 30) recording that program and reduces HD writing by 66.6%. This also prevents both tuners from switching to this channel. If recording the whole 30 minute program, when the next "show" is about to start, the 2nd tuner changes to that channel to prepare to record. With the adjusted start/end time method, the tuner used for the most recent recording will not be busy at the moment the next recording is being prepared, so the DVR doesn't have to use the 2nd tuner.
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