# E-Sata Port



## razor237 (Feb 1, 2002)

Why does TiVo tease us with a port they have no intention on supporting or ever really did ... I mean there is one and only one drive that works and its mostly discontinued... Starting with the blots they should have just removed it. Seems very misleading and deceptive


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

I am not sure I would call it deceptive, TiVo does sell the expansion drive to use it with and it has been this way since the TiVo HD. Disappointing is what I would call it.


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## V7Goose (May 28, 2005)

Yeah, I agree it is disappointing, and also stupid. In my experience, eSATA is a TERRIBLE design - VERY problematic, even when you have a system that is supported. With the original S3, any eSATA drive could be used, but reliable connections and cable problems were constant issues - there were hundreds of posts about how to modify the eSATA cables to improve this, or what specific brands to buy. And when the HD box required you to buy the special TiVo branded WD eSATA drive, the problems were exactly the same (I bought and used that 500GB drive). Once you got it working, and left it ALONE, it was generally fine, but I spent years being afraid to even dust behind the TV for fear I would have to start fighting that damned eSATA connection again! Even when using an eSATA drive with my PC, I still have regular cable connection problems. Super touchy and lousy design.

On the other hand, USB works wonderfully, and there is absolutely no reason TiVo should not be supporting THAT for external drives. I had a misserable experience with Dish for 4 years, but the one thing that worked the way is should was the external drive for the Hopper DVR. That box had both eSATA and USB ports, and Dish wanted to charge more monthly fees if you asked to use an external drive with it. But I simply plugged in a USB drive without even calling them, and it worked perfectly from day one! Even when I had to have the Hopper replaced for a bad HDD, everything I had moved to the external USB drive was still there and accessible when I plugged the same drive into the new Hopper!

Now I really hate DISH, and I recently cut the cord 100% and am real glad to have them out of my life. There wasn't much about the Hopper I liked, certainly not the UI, but if that stupid box and greedy company made it so simple to use an external HDD via the included USB ports, then there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for TiVo not to do that!!!!!


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

V7Goose said:


> With the original S3, any eSATA drive could be used


Not officially, word of how to enable it snuck out and fell into wide use before they released the software that supported it officially, Tivo wisely and generously left the loophole in for the S3OLED enabled, one of many times they have thought in the interest of the consumer, that's one of many times they've done something like that which has garnered them a great deal of respect from folks.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

V7Goose said:


> Yeah, I agree it is disappointing, and also stupid. In my experience, eSATA is a TERRIBLE design - VERY problematic, even when you have a system that is supported. With the original S3, any eSATA drive could be used, but reliable connections and cable problems were constant issues - there were hundreds of posts about how to modify the eSATA cables to improve this, or what specific brands to buy. And when the HD box required you to buy the special TiVo branded WD eSATA drive, the problems were exactly the same (I bought and used that 500GB drive). Once you got it working, and left it ALONE, it was generally fine, but I spent years being afraid to even dust behind the TV for fear I would have to start fighting that damned eSATA connection again! Even when using an eSATA drive with my PC, I still have regular cable connection problems. Super touchy and lousy design.
> 
> On the other hand, USB works wonderfully, and there is absolutely no reason TiVo should not be supporting THAT for external drives. I had a misserable experience with Dish for 4 years, but the one thing that worked the way is should was the external drive for the Hopper DVR. That box had both eSATA and USB ports, and Dish wanted to charge more monthly fees if you asked to use an external drive with it. But I simply plugged in a USB drive without even calling them, and it worked perfectly from day one! Even when I had to have the Hopper replaced for a bad HDD, everything I had moved to the external USB drive was still there and accessible when I plugged the same drive into the new Hopper!
> 
> Now I really hate DISH, and I recently cut the cord 100% and am real glad to have them out of my life. There wasn't much about the Hopper I liked, certainly not the UI, but if that stupid box and greedy company made it so simple to use an external HDD via the included USB ports, then there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for TiVo not to do that!!!!!


 I've never used the eSATA connection on a TiVo, but I currently use a dozen of them with my unRAID setups. I've been using them for over four years now and they have pretty much been rock solid in my use with unRAID. Although I don't run my unRAIDs 24/7 any more, like a TiVo would run.


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## razor237 (Feb 1, 2002)

atmuscarella said:


> I am not sure I would call it deceptive, TiVo does sell the expansion drive to use it with and it has been this way since the TiVo HD. Disappointing is what I would call it.


Last time i had looked it was listed as not available from tivo & every other site has it listed as discontinued. I do see they have it again but its kinda a rare product to get ....i will agree that's its a disappointment as well but i do feel they shouldn't have the port if they never planned to really use it, i mean if they add the port they should have limited support for more e-stat drives and sizes


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## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

V7Goose said:


> Yeah,
> 
> On the other hand, USB works wonderfully, and there is absolutely no reason TiVo should not be supporting THAT for external drives. I had a misserable experience with Dish for 4 years, but the one thing that worked the way is should was the external drive for the Hopper DVR. That box had both eSATA and USB ports, and Dish wanted to charge more monthly fees if you asked to use an external drive with it. But I simply plugged in a USB drive without even calling them, and it worked perfectly from day one! Even when I had to have the Hopper replaced for a bad HDD, everything I had moved to the external USB drive was still there and accessible when I plugged the same drive into the new Hopper!
> 
> Now I really hate DISH, and I recently cut the cord 100% and am real glad to have them out of my life. There wasn't much about the Hopper I liked, certainly not the UI, but if that stupid box and greedy company made it so simple to use an external HDD via the included USB ports, then there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for TiVo not to do that!!!!!


eSATA is about three times faster then USB 2.0. Tivo has no control over program biterate. I'd be surprised if a USB 2.0 drive would perform adequately under all circumstances.


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## V7Goose (May 28, 2005)

lew said:


> eSATA is about three times faster then USB 2.0. Tivo has no control over program biterate. I'd be surprised if a USB 2.0 drive would perform adequately under all circumstances.


So? What value does that statement have? eSata is also faster than USB 1.0 or a floppy disk . . .

But eSATA is NOT materially faster than USB 3.0, and earlier versions of eSata were much slower than USB 3.0. Furthermore, if they simply allowed the USB port to work just to copy programs, then even a USB 2.0 port would be just fine.


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## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

V7Goose said:


> So? What value does that statement have? eSata is also faster than USB 1.0 or a floppy disk . . .
> 
> But eSATA is NOT materially faster than USB 3.0, and earlier versions of eSata were much slower than USB 3.0. Furthermore, if they simply allowed the USB port to work just to copy programs, then even a USB 2.0 port would be just fine.


The USB ports on the Tivo HD, Premiere and Roamio are reported to be USB2.0. eSATA would work on all tivos, USB would be bolt only.

That's the value of my comment.
Bolt is also USB 2.0. Your post is worthless


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

lew said:


> eSATA is about three times faster then USB 2.0. Tivo has no control over program biterate. I'd be surprised if a USB 2.0 drive would perform adequately under all circumstances.


Yes it will. USB 2.0 is more than fast enough to handle many concurrent read/write streams. The bitrates being recorded are very low. Under 20mb/s. the only thing a USB 2.0 drive woukd slow down could be TiVo to TiVo transfers.


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## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

aaronwt said:


> Yes it will. USB 2.0 is more than fast enough to handle many concurrent read/write streams. The bitrates being recorded are very low. Under 20mb/s. the only thing a USB 2.0 drive woukd slow down could be TiVo to TiVo transfers.


In other words an eSata is a better choice then a usb2.0 drive because a USB 2 drive might degrade performance by slowing down tivo to tivo transfers.

Recording up to 6 videos, transferring a show to a pc and mrv at the same time. Do you think a USB drive will work as well as eSATA?

edited to add: My memory is tivo basically treats the internal and external drive as one drive. I suspect, but don't know for sure, having one drive significantly slower then the other would have a detrimental effect on performance.

The 3T drive tivo is using for the Bolt+ is available as an external (USB 3) drive. It would be trivial to mfg the drive but not solder on the sata to USB adapter and wire as esata. I'll speculate tivo thinks the demand for an external drive is extremely low.


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