Customer Reviews

Western Digital My Book AV DVR Expander 1 TB USB 2.0/eSATA External Hard Drive

5 star:		(142)
4 star:		(53)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

I received my 1TB WD My Book AV Expander today. Here's how it went down:

Unpack, plug into back of DVR with included eSATA cable, plug WD HDD into wall outlet, turn on DVR and TV. See prompt on TV about new attached storage. Look for and find remote that kids misplaced. Then Press A on remote to format. Wait 30 seconds. Now when I press List it shows 5% Full (used to be 40%). It didn't even interrupt the current recording. No more taping over my World Cup matches. How easy is that?

So far no heat from new hard drive and it's whisper quiet. Drive also comes with a USB cable (not needed for this project as the Scientifc Atlanta 8300HD supports eSATA only for adding storage.) From WD's website this drive is on the list of supported drives for Time Warner SA8300HD but it was still a relief to see it immediately recognized.

Connection is about a 5-minute job, but initial boot-up takes awhile. Western Digital instructions are incomplete and fairly useless--just diagrams.

Unplug the Tivo power cord. Connect the SATA cable between WD Expander and Tivo. Power on Expander (check for white light in front). Plug in the Tivo power cord. Go to Settings menu on Tivo, then External Storage, then Add. Then, BE PATIENT! It took my unit about 25 minutes to boot and reconfigure everything. A couple of times I thought something might be wrong but I continued to wait and it finally completed and worked. You can also find instruction on Tivo's Web site. These are basically the same as given here.

The Expander box only shows compatibility with Tivo Series 3 and Premiere. But, that is wrong. I suspect that reviewers who say it does not work with a Tivo HD unit had a defective unit or cable, powered off and on in the wrong sequence, or were impatient and bailed out while the Tivo was still reconfiguring during the initial boot-up.

I bought from a local Best Buy store. Their price is too high ($150). But, I wanted the convenience of easy return in case the reviews saying the Expander would not work with a Tivo HD were correct.

I hope this helps anyone with a Tivo HD that is considering the WD My Book AV DVR Expander.

August 25, 2011 Update:

Several months ago our Tivo started randomly rebooting. This got progressively worse. We started having recordings interrupted or skipped entirely. Over several months dealing with Tivo tech support we finally eliminated all possibilities except the DVR Expander. Once I uninstalled it we had no more random reboots. The unit has a two-year warranty so we had plenty of time left on it. I returned it to Western Digital for a replacement which we have now received. Their return process is very customer friendly. I did have to pay about $17 for shipping return, however.

During one of my many conversations with Tivo Tech Support one person advised that these frequently go bad. They said you are better off buying a Tivo with a bigger hard drive to begin with. But, when we bought our Tivo a larger internal drive was not offered. Since this was a techie, I doubt he was trying to up-sell me. From his standpoint, obviously troubleshooting is easier if you have fewer peripherals attached to the system.

December 20, 2011 Update:

I received the warranty repaired or replacement unit several months ago. I delayed reinstalling it because of having recordings on the Tivo I did not want to lose in the reinstallation process. When I finally did reinstall the MyBook, I only had three recordings stored on the Tivo and did not care if I lost them. To my surprise, I did not lose anything with the reinstall.

The new unit has been up and running for a week now. Everything is good. I have another year left on the warranty. Hopefully, I will have better luck with this one.

We have had a TiVo Premiere XL for about 2 months and got this pretty quickly as an accessory along with the wireless-n adapter. This 1TB HD works great and combined with the 1TB internal drive on the Premiere XL I now get 301 HD hrs/up to 2637 SD hrs (I have the SD recording quality set on highest so I actually get 447 sd hrs capacity). Installation was easy as I was used to hooking one of these external HDs up to the cable DVRs (we still haven't gotten rid of them all yet-still waiting for the "tuning adapter" just for this TiVo). The directions are on the TiVo website, but you basically unplug the TiVo, plug the HD eSATA into the TiVo, then plug in the HD and wait for it to spin up (about 20 secs), then plug the TiVo back in and the on-screen menus will take care of the rest after booting back up. No problems whatsoever with the exception of one time watching a show where there was a hiccup in the recording-not sure whether the recording was on the TiVo HD or the external HD-and rewinding to get it to play again sent the TiVo to do a reset. Only has happened once in 2 months. Very quiet, virtually no HD noise (you can hear spinning if you stick your ear up to it). Looks pretty nice with the single pin dot although you can just as easily hide it behind components if you want.

I was a little hesitant because I have had mixed success with WD externals. One, a 2GB My Book Studio II works great as my main backup with firewire on a Windows 7 x64 PC. Another, an older WD My Book 500gb had lots of issues with the controller card inside and eventually it failed-but I cracked it open (literally because this version at least was not user serviceable) and was able to remove the 500gb HD and put it into an Antec external enclosure and now it works great as a media (audio/video files) drive.

I have a DirecTV HR20 DVR and was frustrated by the limited storage capacity now that the majority of what my family records is HD.

I saw the info on the DirecTV web site that listed four "recommended" external drives to add storage, but warning that it is not officially supported. I read other customer reviews and liked the 1 TB Western Digital drive listed on the DirecTV site. However, I saw on Amazon that this newer model was available which also included USB in addition to eSATA. I planned to use eSATA, but liked the fact the Western Digital site specifically listed this new drive as compatible with the HR20.

I ordered it and followed the simple installation instructions on the DirecTV website. As it notes there, this drive serves as a replacement so you will not be able to play programs that were recorded on the internal hard drive once you connect the external one.

The installation went smooth with no issues whatsoever. I did it an hour before going to bed because the 14 day program guide has to download. Within the first hour I could select some programs to record overnight and by the next morning the full program guide was available.

Its been two days since I installed it and I've had no problems. I've recorded, watched and erased numerous programs, but I currently have about 14 hours of HD and 13 hours of SD shows recorded and it says 93% free. MUCH better than with the internal drive.

Now that I've done it, I wish I would have bought an external drive sooner.

PS: I saw feedback from some reviewers of the older model who had problems with the supplied eSATA cable that were resolved by using a third-party cable. This new drive comes with both a USB and eSATA cable. I used the eSATA cable and its working fine.

I bought this unit to expand the memory capacity of my Tivo HD unit. My journey started with a chat with Tivo technical support where they informed me that this DVR expander is the only unit they recommend as compatible with Tivo equipment. Placed the order at Amazon and got the unit the next day. Followed the instructions step by step and my Tivo froze. Called Tivo (twice), with no luck in resolving the issue. Called Western Digital: very nice staff but no help either. Got a call back from Western Digital the next day and they said that my Tivo required a firmware update. Called Tivo, no such thing, as my firmware was up to date. Then, I went back to the Amazon website and found from a reviewer (whom I am now very grateful for his comments), that he managed to make this unit work by replacing the ESata cable that comes with the unit with another one. Short drive to Radio Shack and $10 bucks later, Voila! the unit was working perfectly after a short 15 minutes set-up time. On the positive side, this expander is very quiet, with almost no heat generation and so far and no issues with the quality of the recording.

Three things

1. Your DVR set top box needs to be one of the following models

Motorola QIP 7216
Motorola QIP 7232
Cisco CHS 435 HDC

Only these Fios Models have a eSATA port to plug your device into.

2. Check your System Information. You find it pressing Menu and then Settings then System Information
You need Release 1.9 or higher. As of May 8, 2011 this release is just being rolled out. Even if you have one of
the above boxes the box will not recognize the external drive until you are upgraded to Release 1.9. The upgrade will happen automatically when Fios releases the upgrade in your area.

3. Not sure if this is just with Fios or for everyone. This device will only work with one DVR. If you want to use it in a different room or loan it to a friend, when attached to the second DVR you will get a message that the drive needs to be reformatted. This will erase any shows you have on the drive.

I have a recent Dell Windows 7 laptop with an eSATA port and I wondered whether this DVR extender would also be usable as an external backup drive. External eSata drives are not widely available at the moment and the 6x speed difference vs. USB 2.0 is compelling. The answer is yes. I turned off the laptop, plugged in the drive via the supplied eSata cable, turned it on, then turned on the laptop. The drive was instantly recognized as My Book AV (E:) with 1TB of space. I copied a 750MB folder from my solid-state laptop drive in 3 seconds. I love this drive. FOLLOW UP: I wanted to use this drive as a backup drive for Windows 7 backup. Once I "soft" formatted the drive from FAT32 to NTFS it was no problem. I backed up 170GB from my solid-state laptop drive in 40 minutes!

Before long my DVR had filled up so I had to keep deleting shows i wanted to save - I ordered this product the
Western Digital My Book AV DVR Expander 1 TB USB 2.0/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive WDBABT0010HBK-NESN
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MVZ60S/ref=cm_cr_rev_prod_title
and within 15 minutes of receiving it - had it installed and no longer have to worry about keeping the shows I love! It truly is seamless to operate - just follow directions for install - they are very easy.

I've had this external drive for over a week. I bought it so that I could increase the recording capacity on my TiVo Premiere DVR. I'm am very please with it. My Tivo Premiere had a recording capacity of 46 hours in HD, but since I've connected this external drive I now have a recording capacity of 191 hours in High Definition (HD)
It is very quiet and I love the shiny look that it has. It's a no brainer to hook it up. I will be buying another for my other Tivo unit.

If you are a Cablevision subscriber with the SA 8300HD DVR be sure to read this before you try to install the DVR expander drive using Cablevision's instructions...quite frankly, they're backwards...Cablevision's instructions on their website tell you to unplug everything, connect the sata cable between the drive & the DVR, power on the drive & then the DVR box...tried this 3 times & nothing happened

In doing a little research online I stumbled across another reviewer who said that the drive worked perfectly for her once she did the exact opposite - powered on the DVR first and THEN power on the drive with the sata cable already connected...i did this and within 5 minutes the drive was formatted & my used space was down from 100% to just 13%

Unfortunately, I began running into trouble after this. Whenever I would go to turn on my DVR box after it was in lower power mode (having not been in use for a few hours) it suddenly wouldn't recognize the hard drive. I would have to reboot both to get it working. In doing some research online I discovered that other people had similar issues and that it was resolved by replacing the included SATA cable with a third party one. I did this, problem solved.

So overall, great product with lousy SATA cable - spend the $10 or so to get another one & you'll do just fine.