Customer Reviews

Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB eSATA External Hard Drive

5 star:		(124)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(31)

 

 

What can you say - for a device like this, "scoring" is it easy. It either works as advertised, or it doesn't - this thing works as advertised. It's easy to hook-up/install, or it is not - the directions couldn't be clearer, and it was a snap to hook-up.

I have a Comcast DVR Scientific Atlanta 8300HD. I was constantly running into low space issues. No matter how hard I tried to keep up with "house keeping" it always seemed to run at or near capacity. And with the 2008 Summer Olympics coming up, I was finally motivated to find a solution.

I did few Google searches, and yielded some promising results. Other users of the SA-8300HD had the same problem and came up with varying solutions - build you own eSATA external drive, or buy an out-of-the-box device. I'm pretty tech savvy, having built a number of PCs and external USB drives. The cost of DIY-ing a similar device was about $100-110, delivered. For $40 more, I could get a pre-built and certified device. I didn't want any hassles, so I went with this.

It looks like and is the same size as any of the WD MyBook external drives. It's a little smaller than a hard covered book. It comes with an external power supply and an eSATA cable, and a Quick Install guide.

Total time to install - 15 minutes, tops. I could have done it in less than ten, if I read the install guide fully. I jumped the gun and instead of pulling the plug on the DVR, I just turned it off. YOU HAVE TO UNPLUG THE DVR BEFORE CONNECTING THE EXPANDER. Which is what the directions says, but I skipped.

So, to install, you:

1) Check Capacity of your recorder (mine was at 62%)
2) Unplug the DVR
3) Plug in the Expander
4) Connect the Expander to the DVR with the eSATA cable
5) Plug the DVR back in.

The DVR will go through its boot process. When the clock reappears, turn on your TV and then your DVR. A message will appear:

"Detected an external DVR Expander - do you want to format it for use with this DVR?"

Hit Yes and the message disappears. There is nothing to tell you it is performing the install/format. A few minutes later, a new message appears:

"The DVR Expander is ready to use"

Go to the recording section and check capacity. Mine dropped to 16%!

My recommendation - do not hesitate, buy this. Even if you are tech-savvy, is your time/effort worth $40? This is certified and guaranteed to work. WD drives are typically sturdy, and their MyBooks are highly rated.

Hurry - the Olympics start August 8!!

This is the same drive that's sold on the TiVo website at a much better price! It works as easily as everyone said it would too! Right away, on the system info screen, it'll tell you about the added capacity but it takes about an hour for the To Do List to catch up so don't panic. If you've got a big home theater set up, do yourself a favor and get a longer eSATA cable, this one only comes with one that is 3 feet long. Happy HD viewing!

Like the other 40+ reviewers, this was a breeze to install with my TiVo Series III HD. That was 18 months ago, and it's worked perfectly until today. I ran the Kickstart 54 SMART diagnostics, and the external drive has failed. A ton of stored stuff is gone forever (although I may try the trick of freezing the drive and transferring to my PC). 18 months is way too short for the life of an HD drive.

Read about it 10 days ago, sounded like the perfect product that I could not justify not having at around $200. Quick Western Digital order and delivery. Came home an hour early to install. Out of the box, a few plugs in a particular order, and turn stuff on. The Cablevision box acted funny and I thought that this would be a bust. Re-connected and connected 3 times with no apparant luck.

Went out for dinner .When I got home--2 -3 hours later, the DVR was running. The time already recorded on the Cablevision DVR had gone from 79% to 18%--Perfection.Compatible with Cablevision Scientific American hd digitial recorder. Need it when you want to record in HD.

Got a new HD set and Tivo HD just before the Olympics. Realized that only 20 hours of HD would not catch all the action. For just a few bucks, I was able to get up to 80+ hours of HD and more SD TV than anyone could ever watch. I hate having to manage space on the Tivo, and with this device, you don't have to.

Installation was dead simple. Follow the instructions, plug things in in the right order and is just works. Once installed, you can't remove it without losing all your recordings, but that is a fair compromise.

My plan was to eventually get this expander all along. I have always been a fan of Tivo, and when the right deal came my way I got the new Dual tuner HD Tivo that only recorded 20 hrs in HD. Tivo at the time was selling a larger Tivo with I believe 40 hrs recording in HD for $400-$500. 20 Hours is definitely not enough in my house, and if you are considering this, it's probably not enough in your house either.

At the moment they are selling a beast with 150 hrs in HD recording for $600!

Bottom line is that this expander worked perfectly right away. Setup to the device is as easy as plugging it in. Then setting up the Tivo to work with it was quite simple as well. Now I can record 86 hours in HD which for us is way more than enough. We went on a 2 week vacation and still had room to spare when we got back.

In my opinion it is much more economical to buy the standard 20hour HD Tivo and just get this expander to go with it. 86 full HD hours is huge and in just standard digital I think it's in the 500+ hour range. But if you are like me, if it's not in HD now, I don't watch it.

Definitely worth buying.

Mine showed up yesterday and I hooked it up with no problems at all. I shut down my Tivo, as instructed, then hooked up the drive and power and restarted the Tivo. The only annoying part of this is that the Tivo will request to restart itself again, a good 5 minute process, but once this is done, the drive is good to go.

I'm now set with over 80 hours of HD recording and tons of digital hours. This is a very good buy for this storage device and hooks up to the Tivo 3 effortlessly.

One word of caution, that is not disclosed in the product description. *This drive is not portable.* Once it is paired with your Tivo 3, it needs to stay there. Removing it will erase all of your recordings and you'll have to either re-pair it, or move it to another Tivo 3. This obviously has something to do with the paranoia over DRM as well as the way Tivo breaks up the recording.

Other than that one warning, I'd say this product is highly recommended! Good price, easy installation.

I connected my DVR Expander to a SA8300HD (Scientific Atlanta HD-DVR from Time Warner) and had the same positive experience (so far) as ByTheShore did.

Turn off and unplug DVR, connect and power up My DVR Expander, power up and turn on DVR, and a couple dialogs later I was up and running.

I had a Cavalry 500GB external eSata enclosure that I am returning as I had frequent playback glitches (one to serveral times an hour the video would pixelate/skip and the sound would drop for a second or so). I'm hoping the WD My DVR Expander won't have the same issue...since it is specifically designed for external HD video recording/playback, I have high hopes for it.

[Added two days later] The WD My DVR Expander is performing very well. Dropouts/glitches during playback are mostly gone, to the point that they appear to be just the "normal" occasional transmission hiccups that I get from my cable company (TWC).

[Added two weeks later] I am unfortunately returning the My DVR Expander...I started seeing more playback glitches, fewer than w/the 500 GB Cavalry drive, but still too frequent. I replaced the MY DVR Expander w/the 500 GB Apricorn DVR Xpander and am have no issues with playback with the Apricorn.

Installed on my Tivo Series 3 incredibly easy, I didn't even read the directions and it installed that easy! Gives you 85+ hours of HD recording (which is why I bought it - HD is a major space hog)! Next to my wireless adapter, the best thing you can add to your Tivo! A++

To anyone out there with a TiVo HD, TiVo Series 3, or TiVo HD XL DVR and you want to add extra recording hours/capacity to your DVR, then I HIGHLY recommend that you purchase this Western Digital My DVR Expander.

At first, I was skeptical to buy this DVR Expander because of the product description stating that it will only add 60 more hours of HD and 300 more hours of SD recording space to a DVR. After I spoke with a TiVo Customer Service Rep, who assured me that the Expander would actually add 600 hours of SD recording space and 65 of HD, I bought the Expander to try it out.

To my surprise, this Western Digital My DVR Expander actually increased my SD recording space by 626 hours (instead of 300) when I plugged it up to my DVR, and the Expander increased my HD recording space by 72 hours (instead of 60). Without this Expander, my TiVo DVR originally held only 21 hours of HD recording space and 184 hours of SD. Now, thanks to this DVR Expander, I have 810 hours of SD recording capacity and 93 hours of HD.

Overall, this DVR Expander is a great buy, and it definitely adds MORE recording space to your DVR than the 300 SD hours and 60 HD hours that the product description states.

**UPDATE AS OF DECEMBER 1, 2011 - I have now had this same Western Digital DVR Expander for 3 years now since December 2008 and the expander is still working great to this day. In October 2010, I upgraded to a TiVo Premiere after my TiVo HD box died, and this expander actually added more hours of recording space to the Premiere than what it added to my TiVo HD box. This expander added 642 extra SD hours and 74 more HD recording hours to my Premiere. Overall, the price that I paid for this expander was money well-spent.