# Dumb question... Is using esata port on Bolt easy ?



## I_am_not_randy (Oct 30, 2010)

All,

Based on the threads here I believe I have my answer, but ill ask anyway.

Probably ten years ago I upgraded the internal drive on a Series two with the standard tools at the time. Not difficult as I have some computer skills.

Approx 5 years later I got a Cable DVR that had an Esata port, and adding a 1T external drive to that was extremely simple.

I am considering a BOLT, wanted to go cheap (500K) and if I decided I need more, upgrade (I mostly stream these days anyway).

I saw the eSATA port and thought adding a external hard drive to the BOLT would be more like the Cable DVR upgrade, than the Series 2 upgrade.

Can someone educate me as the the level of complexity of adding a eSATA drive is on the Bolt ?

Thanks !


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## sfhub (Jan 6, 2007)

I_am_not_randy said:


> I saw the eSATA port and thought adding a external hard drive to the BOLT would be more like the Cable DVR upgrade, than the Series 2 upgrade.
> 
> Can someone educate me as the the level of complexity of adding a eSATA drive is on the Bolt ?


I would just pretend the eSATA port isn't there. It only works with one TiVo eSATA expansion that isn't sold anymore. It isn't just the expander case but there is supposed to be some white listed model of drives that TiVo will accept.

Go with internal expansion, which is really easy these days for 3TB or less because OS is kept on flash on the motherboard, so for 3TB or less you just stick the drive in and it formats itself and you are ready to go, no PC needed. If you want to use larger drives, still need to use a PC to adjust some data on the drive.

If you want to do 3.5" drives instead of internal 2.5" run a long SATA cable from the internal port to an external enclosure.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

I_am_not_randy said:


> All,
> 
> Based on the threads here I believe I have my answer, but ill ask anyway.
> 
> ...


Well, with MFSTools 3.2, you can add an external drive to a Bolt. I added an 8TB drive to my Bolt. I did it in hopes that some day soon larger 2.5 inch drives would be available and someone would write a program that would allow me to combine the drives and work around the 2TB MFS partition limit.

The caveat is that now I have more than one drive that can fail and cause me to lose my recordings.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


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