# 500GB TiVo Expander failure



## e30cabrio (Jun 4, 2006)

I have an XL, S3, & HD. I had my 500gb WD Expander on the HD for over a year when I started having pixilation and sporadic TiVo freezeups.

I did hours of troubleshooting with Cox & TiVo, finally I moved the expander to the S3 and had the same issues, I moved it to the XL, same thing.

Obviously the Expander is at fault BUT I took the drive out and it has been working fine in my PC for two weeks.

My question is does it seem possible that there is a problem with the electronics between the drive & the TiVo?

I found a 1TB drive on Newegg for 79.99 but if the issue is not the drive that will not solve the issue.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

The short answer to your question is yes, it's possible that there's something wrong other than the WD HDD itself. It seems like we're seeing more and more WD My DVR Expander failures such as you describe (drive good but no longer works w/TiVo) recently...most being a little over a year or so old.

It's possible that the enclosures are failing (bridge, chipset, etc.). The supplied eSATA cables have been known to be problematic though. Did you try replacing the cable? The recommended SIIG Serial ATA external cable is less than $12.

In any case, if it is the enclosure (or even the cable) you have a couple of options. One is to simply replace it of course. The other is to put the WD drive into one of the recommended enclosures such as the Antec MX-1 and reconnect it to any of your TiVo's.

FYI, TiVo recognizes eSATA drives by the exact model number. You can use "unauthorized" drives via plug and pray on Series3's, but not on TiVo HD's or HDXL's. So if you're thinking of adding a different drive to your HD or HDXL you'd need to pull the internal drive and use winMFS to marry the two. (Best bet with a TiVo HD is to simply upgrade the internal drive.)

All of the information you need regarding expansion drives, upgrades, troubleshooting, etc. can be found on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ sticky thread. (Probably best to ask questions there as well.)

Best of luck and let us know how it goes.


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## e30cabrio (Jun 4, 2006)

I bought that cable a week after I got the drive as the cheap cable it came with disconnected when an ant thought about walking near it.

The HD is the one with insufficient space and I really don't need another drive so I guess I'll either get another one of these, one of the ones that are unsupported but work or maybe I'll go internal although as the HD is in warranty and these seem to have an 18 month lifespan and this one is right about there I may hold off on that.

As always thanks for your help.


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## smgeisler (Dec 23, 2001)

I have had at least 25 different external drives in the last 7 years and every single one of them eventually went bad. The type (USB, 1394 or sata) did not make any difference. They all eventually failed. But, also in every case it was the external case that went bad, the drive inside was perfectly fine once installed in a computer or another case. One of the manufacturers I talked to said he would only expect the external case to function for about a year.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

e30cabrio said:


> The HD is the one with insufficient space and I really don't need another drive so I guess I'll either get another one of these, one of the ones that are unsupported but work...


Keep in mind that there's no such thing as an eSATA drive that is "unsupported but works" for TiVo HD's (only Series3's). The 500GB and 1TB WD My DVR Expanders are the only one's that will work with HD's and HDXL's via P&P. Otherwise you have to pull the internal drive and use winMFS to marry them. That's why upgrading the internal drive on the TiVo HD is what most people end up doing.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

smgeisler said:


> One of the manufacturers I talked to said he would only expect the external case to function for about a year.


That's a sad statement isn't it? Wonder why?


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## JFKLS1 (Feb 25, 2009)

I had my WD 500GB Expander fail after 1 year exactly. I understand the frustration, I lost about 80 shows. It is the only HDD I have ever had fail, so I wonder why the failure rate is so high? Obviously many people have had the same problem.


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## smgeisler (Dec 23, 2001)

JFKLS1 said:


> I had my WD 500GB Expander fail after 1 year exactly. I understand the frustration, I lost about 80 shows. It is the only HDD I have ever had fail, so I wonder why the failure rate is so high? Obviously many people have had the same problem.


Yes, I meant to say in my reply above, my WD DVR expander quit working 13 months after its purchase. And due to muy experience with so many external drives, I don't believe the fault is in any way a TiVo problem.


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## e30cabrio (Jun 4, 2006)

Am I the only one that finds it interesting that they seem to fail just out of warranty?

I spoke to the first line of tech support and was told it was out of warranty before I opened the box. I said the fact the HDD was good showed the issue is between the drive & TiVo and that there seemed to be a trend in that direction.

I called corporate and left a message for the Executive customer service liason.

We'll see what happens.


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## JFKLS1 (Feb 25, 2009)

e30cabrio said:


> Am I the only one that finds it interesting that they seem to fail just out of warranty?
> 
> I spoke to the first line of tech support and was told it was out of warranty before I opened the box. I said the fact the HDD was good showed the issue is between the drive & TiVo and that there seemed to be a trend in that direction.
> 
> ...


Good luck, and let us know. I am dissapointed enough with regards to the $ aspect, but losing total seasons of shows is really bad. I love having to pay to rent shows I had but lost....


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## bobrt6676 (Dec 31, 2007)

JFKLS1 said:


> I had my WD 500GB Expander fail after 1 year exactly. I understand the frustration, I lost about 80 shows. It is the only HDD I have ever had fail, so I wonder why the failure rate is so high? Obviously many people have had the same problem.


My WD 500GB DVR expander lasted exactly 13 months. Amazing


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

bobrt6676 said:


> My WD 500GB DVR expander lasted exactly 13 months. Amazing


Talk about planned obsolescence. Sheesh!  This is not sounding too good. Might be worth a poll pretty soon.


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## SandDune (Apr 7, 2007)

I've had three WD external HD's go bad on me during the last three months (two of them My DVR's). All over one year old (average life about 18 months). Really quite frustrating. I really don't want to buy another WD at this point, but given the lack of official support for anything else I'm not sure what to do.


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## gcsheph (May 13, 2005)

Just so I understand, if the enclosure is bad but the drive is ok, what is the process exactly that one goes through to be able to keep all of the programs on the drive? Or did I misunderstand that this can be done? Thanks. Sometimes this all gets a little confusing.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

richsadams said:


> Talk about planned obsolescence. Sheesh!  This is not sounding too good. Might be worth a poll pretty soon.


I had one expander given to me as a present. It died out of warranty - drive was burning hot - obvious it was dead. I just junked the whole thing and put in an internal 1TB drive and never looked back. Internal drive is just a much better solution and 1 TB more than serves my purposes.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

If the enclosure goes bad but the drive is still good, you could just buy a new enclosure. The eclosures are running < $20 on ebay.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> I had one expander given to me as a present. It died out of warranty - drive was burning hot - obvious it was dead. I just junked the whole thing and put in an internal 1TB drive and never looked back. Internal drive is just a much better solution and 1 TB more than serves my purposes.


Absolutely the way to go if you can. :up:

I know for some folks an eSATA drive like the My DVR Expander is more-or-less the only option though so it's unfortunate that they don't seem to be lasting much more than a year. I'm not sure about TiVo's awareness level, but I'd think they would not be happy about that.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

gcsheph said:


> Just so I understand, if the enclosure is bad but the drive is ok, what is the process exactly that one goes through to be able to keep all of the programs on the drive? Or did I misunderstand that this can be done? Thanks. Sometimes this all gets a little confusing.





shwru980r said:


> If the enclosure goes bad but the drive is still good, you could just buy a new enclosure. The eclosures are running < $20 on ebay.


Sound advice. TiVo recognizes eSATA hard drives by the drive model number so a working drive can usually be installed in a new enclosure. Since the drive is running 24/7 users should be cautioned to buy a replacement enclosure that has good cooling abilities. Ideally an enclosure with a fan such as the recommended Antec MX-1 works best but there are plenty of folks using other fan-less enclosures successfully. Enclosures without active cooling should be placed such that there is plenty of air circulation/ventilation.

Be sure to remove and install the eSATA drive per these instructions:

http://www.tivo.com/mytivo/howto/getconnected/howto_add_recording_capacity.html

Of course if the drive has been divorced all recordings since it was installed will be lost.


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## e30cabrio (Jun 4, 2006)

A very nice man from Executive called, I had explained myself fully including the serial number in my message, he said he added a year to the warranty and that I could now go online and create the RMA. I did an advance RMA and await a replacement drive. 

Pretty cool WD.


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## JFKLS1 (Feb 25, 2009)

e30cabrio said:


> A very nice man from Executive called, I had explained myself fully including the serial number in my message, he said he added a year to the warranty and that I could now go online and create the RMA. I did an advance RMA and await a replacement drive.
> 
> Pretty cool WD.


Good deal, at least you get a replacement. Maybe WD is aware of the high failure rate on these drives. Hopefully you won't have any problems with this one. I won't use another one.....don't trust them anymore.


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## bcronin (Dec 29, 2001)

richsadams said:


> Talk about planned obsolescence. Sheesh!  This is not sounding too good. Might be worth a poll pretty soon.


I shouldn't tempt fate by saying this, but mine is 18 months old and still working fine...


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## e30cabrio (Jun 4, 2006)

After hours unsuccessfully trying to get the drive to work on all three TiVos and all of them saying unsupported device, (the S3 let me set it up anyway but then did not see the space). I have an explanation of what the issue is and a great solution from WD.

It took three days but finally they determined they had flashed the firmware on the refurbs in a way the TiVo did not recognize.

They agreed to send me a new drive and for the inconvenience a 1TB to boot! 

It will be here Monday and now the HD will have more space than the XL.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

e30cabrio said:


> It took three days but finally they determined they had flashed the firmware on the refurbs in a way the TiVo did not recognize.


 Never heard that one before. Assuming you mean "they" are WD? That's very interesting and might help others that follow. :up:


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## e30cabrio (Jun 4, 2006)

Yes WD, their representative said they were unaware the change had caused an issue and that I had helped them figure it out.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

e30cabrio said:


> Yes WD, their representative said they were unaware the change had caused an issue and that I had helped them figure it out.


Assume you'll bill him for the appropriate hours?


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## e30cabrio (Jun 4, 2006)

I got a 1TB drive for my trouble, that's good enough for me.










It came today.

Thanks, I did not know it was usable.


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## rocko (Oct 29, 2002)

e30cabrio -

You should edit out your TiVo service number from that screenshot - it really shouldn't be shared - for your protection.

Just a FYI ...


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## mad6c (Nov 2, 2003)

Mine just recently died as well, about 18 months after installation.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

ChocolateThunder??? Sounds like a Claim Jumper desert.


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## e30cabrio (Jun 4, 2006)

It's from the cat, the things are thing 1 & 2 or Chocolate Thunder or Kevin (my XL's name)

lol


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

e30cabrio said:


> It's from the cat, the things are thing 1 & 2 or Chocolate Thunder or Kevin (my XL's name) lol


Kevin??? Shouldn't it be Thor or something like that?


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## CharlesH (Aug 29, 2002)

Likewise, my official WD Extender died after about a year, and, likewise, I just replaced the internal drive by a 1TB drive and said @#!% the external drive. Also, quieter and less total power consumption than with the extender.


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## e30cabrio (Jun 4, 2006)

The oddest thing here is that the 500gb drive is still running fine in my computer.

It has been over two weeks, why the heck would the electronics between the drive and TiVo fail?


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## janry (Jan 2, 2003)

Just checked and my first WD Expander failed on 8/13/08. That was just within the warranty so WD replaced it. So, the new one is just about a year old. Guess it is time to just go ahead and replace the internal drive. Best do it now before the fall and football seasons get here.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

e30cabrio said:


> The oddest thing here is that the 500gb drive is still running fine in my computer.
> 
> It has been over two weeks, why the heck would the electronics between the drive and TiVo fail?


Based on more and more posts it appears the WD My DVR Expander enclosures are the culprits, not the hard drives. Likely the bridge, chipset, etc.


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## Bassplayer (Oct 5, 2003)

e30cabrio said:


> Am I the only one that finds it interesting that they seem to fail just out of warranty?
> 
> I spoke to the first line of tech support and was told it was out of warranty before I opened the box. I said the fact the HDD was good showed the issue is between the drive & TiVo and that there seemed to be a trend in that direction.
> 
> ...


I just bought a drive today for $54.95 at Best Buy. Am I to understand from above that I don't have a warranty? Is WD only going by serial numbers instead of sales receipts?

Second question - how long does the mating process take? EDIT: Never mind - it's done. The first round must have been a glitch.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Bassplayer said:


> I just bought a drive today for $54.95 at Best Buy. Am I to understand from above that I don't have a warranty? Is WD only going by serial numbers instead of sales receipts?
> 
> Second question - how long does the mating process take? EDIT: Never mind - it's done. The first round must have been a glitch.


It should have the normal one-year warranty based on the date of purchase.


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## milo99 (Oct 14, 2002)

add me to the Expander failing crew. I started a thread here: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=431571 in trying to figure out what the problem was. Luckily, i'm still within warranty, but this is a ridiculous amount of failures. I'm going to create a poll to see just how many people have had this problem, and hopefully we can get a good amount of replies to send to WD and Tivo.

ETA: poll created here:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=431689


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## wjohna (Sep 24, 2003)

If one wanted to proactively replace his external drive with either a larger internal one or an external one, is there a way to copy the content onto the new drive so that it is not lost? My first WD Expander drive failed about 2-3 months after I put it into service, and from that point on I've been worried about the new drive's failure. As an aside, replacing the eSATA cable with the one recommended on this site did help with some of the pixelation and stuttering I was experiencing earlier, but even this new cable still does not sit tightly into either the Tivo or the WD drive itself. Just moving the external drive or the Tivo tends to break the connection and cause the Tivo to reboot.


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## milo99 (Oct 14, 2002)

wjohna said:


> If one wanted to proactively replace his external drive with either a larger internal one or an external one, is there a way to copy the content onto the new drive so that it is not lost? My first WD Expander drive failed about 2-3 months after I put it into service, and from that point on I've been worried about the new drive's failure. As an aside, replacing the eSATA cable with the one recommended on this site did help with some of the pixelation and stuttering I was experiencing earlier, but even this new cable still does not sit tightly into either the Tivo or the WD drive itself. Just moving the external drive or the Tivo tends to break the connection and cause the Tivo to reboot.


if you're just worried about your shows, you can get the free copy of Tivo Desktop and transfer the shows you want to your PC. If it's a lot of them though, that might take a while.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

wjohna said:


> If one wanted to proactively replace his external drive with either a larger internal one or an external one, is there a way to copy the content onto the new drive so that it is not lost? My first WD Expander drive failed about 2-3 months after I put it into service, and from that point on I've been worried about the new drive's failure. As an aside, replacing the eSATA cable with the one recommended on this site did help with some of the pixelation and stuttering I was experiencing earlier, but even this new cable still does not sit tightly into either the Tivo or the WD drive itself. Just moving the external drive or the Tivo tends to break the connection and cause the Tivo to reboot.


According the author of MFSLive/winMFS:



> Plug and Play method: Using Tivo menu to add an eSATA.
> Manual Method: using WinMFs or mfstools to add an eSATA.
> 
> If you used "P&P method", it's the end of the road as far as upgrading and saving your recordings for both S3 and THD.
> ...


Details on this post:

http://mfslive.org/forums/viewtopic...it=combine+internal+and+external+drives#p5626


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## kingmob (Jan 27, 2007)

e30cabrio said:


> The oddest thing here is that the 500gb drive is still running fine in my computer.
> 
> It has been over two weeks, why the heck would the electronics between the drive and TiVo fail?


Just curious, how did you get the drive out of the case? I can't see any obvious way to take it apart, and some quick googling didn't find instructions.


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## b0rg (Jan 30, 2003)

My second DVR Expander in just under 22 months failed this weekend.

I posted about it here.
 Here's the short version:

First one lasted just about 11 months. I started experiencing freezes, pixilation issues about 9.5 months into using it. One day a few weeks later I got the awesome blue screen which notifies you that your external storage is no longer connected.

I called WD and got a replacement rather easily.

This past weekend (9/5 to be exact) my second drive failed. Had some minor pixilation issues about a week before, but nothing even close to what it was last time. Again, on Saturday mid-afternoon I turned on my TV to find the same screen.

Went through all the troubleshooting steps to no avail, so I called WD and they refused to replace the drive or help me at all. The tech said that even though my first one failed and they replaced it, I still only had 12mo of warranty from my purchase date, which has expired.

After a few minutes of arguing that these drives are suppose to last much longer than 11 months each and thats why we pay a premium for them, the tech tells me that "typically the DVR expander drives fail after about one year." I got him to repeat it, just to make sure I was not crazy. He then told me I could fix it if I could plug it into a computer and format it, which at that point I had to remind him that these drives don't have a USB interface. He suggested I find a computer with an ESATA connection.

I managed to get his manager on the phone which ignored me when I asked if what his support tech had claimed was true, that these drives last one year. After much arguing he promised to have someone call me today... Of course, nothing yet.

Just thought I'd share my experience with Western Digital.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

b0rg said:


> My second DVR Expander in just under 22 months failed this weekend. Just thought I'd share my experience with Western Digital.


Well that's pretty sad.  FWIW the weakest link with the WD My DVR Expanders has been the eSATA cable. Replacing theirs with one of the recommended cables listed on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ cures the problem. But that's obviously not what's happened to you.

Based on quite a few posts here it appears that in a number (majority?) of cases it's not the actual WD MyDVR Expander hard disk drive that's failing but the enclosure. More often than not the actual hard drive passes a deep diagnostic. There seems to be an issue with the WD My DVR Expander's bridge or chipset or...??? that goes south after about a year for some reason.

Since TiVo recognizes eSATA drives by the actual hard drive model number, several folks have successfully pulled the drive out of the WD enclosure and placed it in one of the recommended external drive enclosures (like the Antec MX-1). They were able to save all of their recordings and life was good again. (If you try that make sure you unplug TiVo (don't divorce the drive, etc.) perform the eSATA drive "upgrade", connect it back up to TiVo, power it up and then plug TiVo back in...it shouldn't know the difference.)

Anyway, sorry to hear about your frustration. Keep us posted and hope things get straightened out.


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## milo99 (Oct 14, 2002)

b0rg said:


> My second DVR Expander in just under 22 months failed this weekend.
> 
> I posted about it here.
> Here's the short version:
> ...


well, unfortunately, your experience is not unique. I called up Tivo to tell them about my drive failure (i had an open ticket about my issues so i thought i'd call them and let them know the 'resolution'), and the tech said they were aware of hte problem and are supposedly working on a solution with WD. I couldn't tell if it was just a placating remark from the tech or if that's actually the case...

any way, the poll i crated last month was kind of telling. as unscientific as it was, having that many people have failures is not a good thing at all. i'm not sure who "up the chain" at WD needs to be "made aware", but i want to definitely pass the info on to them in one form or another.

I think this is something we need to raise a stink about, because that's not an acceptable lifespan for something like this, and i don't know how much effort they're making to resolve it.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

milo99 said:


> I think this is something we need to raise a stink about, because that's not an acceptable lifespan for something like this, and i don't know how much effort they're making to resolve it.


Agree completely. Even though the WD My DVR Expanders only have a one-year warranty TiVo needs to be made aware of this issue. If so many are failing on or about the end of the warranty period, there's a problem.

WD has a three-year warranty on their bare drives but only a one-year warranty on most of their other external drives. I imagine they rightfully take into account most external drives are subject to more physical issues and abuse than an internal computer drive. However once a TiVo external drive is attached I'd guess that most are very rarely moved. So if in a majority of these cases the enclosure is failing and not the hard drive, WD must be aware of it and really needs to address it.

TiVo can and should bring some pressure to bear on WD to not only improve their product but take care of the folks that have already invested their money (not to mention their frustration with losing their recordings). After all, a majority of the current and potential customers for the WD 500GB and now 1TB external drives are TiVo customers first. This issue reflects badly on both companies.


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## b0rg (Jan 30, 2003)

Update from post #43 above...

Much to my surprise I got a call from a Mr. Glass which apparently works for WD corporate.

He was very cold and fairly rude. The entire time we were on the phone (about 5 minutes) I felt that it was a huge burden for him to be talking to me. He started with "You requested for someone to call you from the corporate office." Which I responded with "Yes."

It all went downhill from there. No matter to what I said about my drives failing he just kept reiterating that these drives have a one year warranty. Each time sounding more and more annoyed. He didn't seem to care that neither of my two drives lasted one year.

To shorten this post, he finally offered to extend my warranty so I can get a replacement, but the replacement would carry a 90-day warranty. Obviously I tried to argue my case of two drives not lasting even 1 year a piece, and it should have a one year warranty, but he was not hearing it.

He finally asked "Do you want to take this warranty extension and replace your drive or not?"

So I had very little choice but to accept his offer.

Conclusion: WD has lost me as a customer. I will never purchase another WD drive again for myself/family or work. With that being said I know I will probably indirectly end up using a WD drive with something I end up purchasing.

*There is zero reason for someone from a corporate office to be rude to a customer who has already been dealing with with failure issues and terrible support.*

@richsadams: That's a great idea. I ordered the external drive enclosure and will give it a try. Thanks.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

b0rg said:


> Update from post #43 above...
> 
> Much to my surprise I got a call from a Mr. Glass which apparently works for WD corporate.
> 
> He was very cold and fairly rude.


Well that pretty much sucks. Thanks for sharing though. I just don't understand corporate folks that are willing to lose a customer for any reason...especially one that took the time to make an inquiry when most would just throw the product away and not buy it again. But in this case for what? A lousy external hard drive? How much good will could have been bought for a few dollars? Unbelievable.

A story about bad customer service is repeated to an average of ten people. Stories about good customer service are repeated to an average of three. In this case, likely dozens or hundreds will read about your bad experience with Western Digital when the jerk on the other end of the phone could have had a win-win for their cost of a hard drive. The cost to obtain a new customer over maintaining an existing customer is about ten fold. How foolish is this guy? He saves a dime and loses a dollar. Were he my employee he'd not last very long.

If he gave you his full name you should post it here. Maybe word will get around so his superiors can see how much damage he's doing.

In any case, thanks again for letting us know and hope the new drive lasts a bit longer. :up:


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## janry (Jan 2, 2003)

b0rg said:


> So I had very little choice but to accept his offer.


Unfortunately, you wind up with another external drive you can't trust. Do you really want to plug it in and hope you remember to replace before it gets to be a year old and fails. And, even if you do you wind up having to back-up your recordings so you don't lose them when you change it out.

That is the delima I was facing when my replacment expander hit the 12 month mark this summer. I decided to go with in internal upgrade.


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## flip123 (Feb 11, 2003)

janry said:


> That is the delima I was facing when my replacment expander hit the 12 month mark this summer. I decided to go with in internal upgrade.


I agree. When my expander died I decided I did not want another one, even if it was free. The real cost was in all the lost shows.


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## SC0TLANDF0REVER (Dec 9, 2001)

Add me to this list... I decided to just upgrade the internal drive to a 1TB.
I'm currently pulling all my shows off onto my Mac for longevity. I may also back up to my PC so that I can send them back to the new drive.


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## pogmothon (Sep 11, 2009)

After getting TIVO in about Sept last year, I put the 1 TB internal WD drive in (in November), and everything worked like a dream up to a week ago, when I suddenly started to have rebooting problem. However, reboot always got "stuck", so I had to unplug to force another reboot. Frequency of this event increased, until a few days ago it just would not reboot (staying on the reboot screen indefinitely, no matter how many reboots I tried). As the TIVO is still under warranty (and have extended Harvey Norman warranty), I decided to swap back in the 160 GB disk, and now it all appears to work perfectly again. So it appears that the WD 1 TB disk (the correct one for this application) has failed.

Has anyone else experience this?

I will check the 1 TB disk by installing in enclosure and connecting to a PC, but will I have to try a reformat to check if it has failed? Any thoughts? And if it has not failed, if I get an eSata enclosure for it, can I use it as an expansion drive? If is has failed, maybe WD will honour the warranty on it (and give me the TIVO expander drive in its place - or is that expecting pigs to fly?)

Thanks for any insights


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## milo99 (Oct 14, 2002)

b0rg said:


> Update from post #43 above...
> 
> Much to my surprise I got a call from a Mr. Glass which apparently works for WD corporate.
> 
> ...


wow. i second the notion to post the guy's full name. I would also write a letter to some of the higher ups, maybe 1 or all of the people listed here:
http://www.wdc.com/en/company/corp-officers.asp

Hearing this kind of thing is NOT encouraging. They label this as a "home entertainment" product. What kind of home entertainment product is expected to last only ONE year??


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

pogmothon said:


> After getting TIVO in about Sept last year, I put the 1 TB internal WD drive in (in November), and everything worked like a dream up to a week ago, when I suddenly started to have rebooting problem. However, reboot always got "stuck", so I had to unplug to force another reboot. Frequency of this event increased, until a few days ago it just would not reboot (staying on the reboot screen indefinitely, no matter how many reboots I tried). As the TIVO is still under warranty (and have extended Harvey Norman warranty), I decided to swap back in the 160 GB disk, and now it all appears to work perfectly again. So it appears that the WD 1 TB disk (the correct one for this application) has failed.
> 
> Has anyone else experience this?
> 
> ...


Welcome to the forum. Unfortunately it does sound like the 1TB drive failed. Annoying because these days you'd expect several years of service out of it but these things happen.

If you use WD's Lifeguard diagnostic test you won't have to reformat the drive...although if you run the extended diagnostic (read/write/read) everything will be wiped anyway. If later you decide to use it as an eSATA drive you'll have to marry it to the internal drive and reformat it anyway.

WD Lifeguard:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en

The drive has a three-year warranty so you should have no problem getting an RMA/replacement from WD. You can process the exchange on your own by going to the Western Digital Product Replacement site OR you can call Western Digital Customer Support at 1-800-ASK-WDC (275-4932) to have an agent process the exchange.

WD Product Replacement Site:

http://websupport.wdc.com/warranty/rmainfo.asp?custtype=end&lang=en

On the last point, yes, I think pigs flying would be more likely. 

Me? I'd just get a replacement drive from WD, image it as you did before and put it back in TiVo. Odds are the new one will last a good long time.

Best of luck and let us know how it goes.


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## pogmothon (Sep 11, 2009)

Thanks very much for your response (can't 'quote' your response as don't have sufficient posts yet).
Well, interesting developments: I used WinMFS to delete everything from the drive (at least that's what I think it did), and ran WD diagnostics, which showed nothing wrong (Lifeguard). So I then recopied the contents of the original TIVO disk back to the 1TB one, reinstalled it in the TIVO, and IT ALL SEEMS TO BE OK NOW! Of course, it's too early to tell, but it looks like a simple disk corruption issue. 

Here's a long-shot explanation: Over the past couple of weeks, we have had very bad digital reception on a couple of UHF channels (SBS in Australia - the only channels worth watching!). The rebooting problem started after some days of this. Any chance that this could have caused a disk corruption? Seems unlikely....


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

pogmothon said:


> Thanks very much for your response (can't 'quote' your response as don't have sufficient posts yet).
> Well, interesting developments: I used WinMFS to delete everything from the drive (at least that's what I think it did), and ran WD diagnostics, which showed nothing wrong (Lifeguard). So I then recopied the contents of the original TIVO disk back to the 1TB one, reinstalled it in the TIVO, and IT ALL SEEMS TO BE OK NOW! Of course, it's too early to tell, but it looks like a simple disk corruption issue.
> 
> Here's a long-shot explanation: Over the past couple of weeks, we have had very bad digital reception on a couple of UHF channels (SBS in Australia - the only channels worth watching!). The rebooting problem started after some days of this. Any chance that this could have caused a disk corruption? Seems unlikely....


If things are back to normal after a re-image it does indeed sound like data corruption. It's also possible that there are bad sectors on the HDD and things were fine until TiVo tried to use the area(s). So things may be fine forever, or it's possible that you'll run into some issues again one day. Time will only tell.

Data corruption can come from all sorts of areas. Usually trouble starts when a boot partition is corrupted, but again, other areas of the disk may have some issues. If the disk's error correction is overloaded things can go south as well. Power problems like surges, spikes, brown outs and short term failures can be problematic too..hard to say what happened.

Be sure your TiVo is on a UPS and all of the connections are good and life will probably be fine.


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## pogmothon (Sep 11, 2009)

Thank you very much Rich. All seems OK for now.


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

A couple of maybe silly questions, but..since I don't really want to lose any of the programs on the TiVO HD..
My expander is about 6 months old...can I expect it to die at any minute?
Are there are any who use it actually getting MORE that a year out of it?
Is there any way to save programs on it to the TiVO hard drive before it is disconnected? 
If the shelf life is ONLY a year, what's the point of even getting one (probably a rhetorical question)? 
From what I'm reading here, you almost need to backup EVERYTHING on your TiVO somewhere else in anticipation of the expander dying. That's ridiculous.


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## milo99 (Oct 14, 2002)

to answer you questions,

Q. My expander is about 6 months old...can I expect it to die at any minute?

they seem to get close to the 12 month span before failing, at least the ones that do...

Q. Are there are any who use it actually getting MORE that a year out of it?

some... my poll on the other thread:http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=431689

Q. Is there any way to save programs on it to the TiVO hard drive before it is disconnected?

no, the Tivo utilizes both drives when recording, but you can save it onto your regular PC via Tivo Desktop

Q. If the shelf life is ONLY a year, what's the point of even getting one (probably a rhetorical question)?

yea, count me in the group that if i'd known this ahead of time, i would've just upgraded the internal drive...


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

Thanks for the responses.
How does one upgrade the internal drive, and I don't mean "personally," as I would not want to attempt going inside there myself.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

hybucket said:


> Thanks for the responses.
> How does one upgrade the internal drive, and I don't mean "personally," as I would not want to attempt going inside there myself.


I wouldn't discount a DIY as it's really quite simple. It's also fairly inexpensive. A 1TB hard drive can be purchased for <$100 now and that would give you 157 hours of HD and 1367 hours of SD recording space. If you're comfortable with connecting a hard drive to a PC you can upgrade TiVo. The whole process from start to finish usually takes a first-timer an hour or less. All of the instructions can be found on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5616160#post5616160

That said, you can contact the forum sponsor, DVRUpgrade.com or Weaknees.com. They offer pre-imaged replacement drives and full replacement options. But again, consider looking at the Drive Upgrade FAQ, in particular Section V, #18a and 18b.


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## mad6c (Nov 2, 2003)

Just a bit of information for everyone.

My DVR expander died after about 15 months, could no longer RMA it so I cracked open the enclosure took out the drive and ran spinrite on it.

It ran for 40 hours on the highest diagnostic level and found no problems, I'm pretty sure the drive is fine.

I pick up another enclosure and give it a shot.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

mad6c said:


> Just a bit of information for everyone.
> 
> My DVR expander died after about 15 months, could no longer RMA it so I cracked open the enclosure took out the drive and ran spinrite on it.
> 
> ...


Per my earlier post here (and several on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ sticky thread).

Let us know how it goes. :up:


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## milo99 (Oct 14, 2002)

richsadams said:


> Per my earlier post here (and several on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ sticky thread).
> 
> Let us know how it goes. :up:


Rich, i see in the initial post of the FAQ thread there are several eSATA enclosures listed, but the statement of only the MX-1 was tested and verified with 9.2 software.

Has that been updated since? anybody use any other enclosures with the internal drive of the WD MY DVR Expander successfully? with over 3500 posts in that thread, searching through it is proving futile. 

i'm just trying to see if there are other options other than paying over $50 for the MX-1 - which is half the cost of a new drive...


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

milo99 said:


> Rich, i see in the initial post of the FAQ thread there are several eSATA enclosures listed, but the statement of only the MX-1 was tested and verified with 9.2 software.
> 
> Has that been updated since? anybody use any other enclosures with the internal drive of the WD MY DVR Expander successfully? with over 3500 posts in that thread, searching through it is proving futile.
> 
> i'm just trying to see if there are other options other than paying over $50 for the MX-1 - which is half the cost of a new drive...


Not meaning to answer for Rich, but, with the little I know about all this (I'm learning...), this way you get to keep the recordings, and if you bought a new WDME, it might just crap out again in another year. If I'm wrong on this, pls correct.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

milo99 said:


> Rich, i see in the initial post of the FAQ thread there are several eSATA enclosures listed, but the statement of only the MX-1 was tested and verified with 9.2 software.
> 
> Has that been updated since? anybody use any other enclosures with the internal drive of the WD MY DVR Expander successfully? with over 3500 posts in that thread, searching through it is proving futile.
> 
> i'm just trying to see if there are other options other than paying over $50 for the MX-1 - which is half the cost of a new drive...


Section IV, #29 of the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ lists all of the recommended drives including the Antec MX-1.

The Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ is generously and constantly updated by bkdtv. (As of today it was edited on 08/26/09). All of the enclosures listed are almost certainly in use currently. AFAIK no software upgrade has ever bricked an eSATA drive enclosure. (There was one instance where an eSATA drive, the Seagate Free Agent Pro, became problematic post update. I'm sure there are still some in use, but they were never recommended.) So it would be safe to say that they all work with the most current software (v11.0d). As bkdtv monitors this thread closely I can almost guarantee that no one has found any issues with any of the enclosures to date. FWIW I keep a pretty careful eye on it too and AFAIK no one has posted anything negative about any of them. Going off of the reservation would be at your own risk though.

The MX-1 is recommended due to its solid reputation based on TCF member posts over a few years now. It is fan cooled. Keeping a drive that's spinning 24/7 can extend its life but as long as there is decent ventilation, most enclosures should work well. It also comes with a good eSATA cable. Again FWIW, I have one running a few feet from me at this very moment. It's been flawless for over two years but there are certainly other enclosures that merit your review.

Happy upgrading!


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

hybucket said:


> Not meaning to answer for Rich, but, with the little I know about all this (I'm learning...), this way you get to keep the recordings, and if you bought a new WDME, it might just crap out again in another year. If I'm wrong on this, pls correct.


Well...yes...and no...sort of.  If any eSATA hard drive goes south you will likely lose all of the recordings made since the drive was attached since TiVo stripes recordings across both drives (as a means of meeting copyright standards/regulations).

However as mentioned, it's increasingly likely that the cause of failure with the WD My DVR Expander is the enclosure, not the hard drive itself. A number of folks have opened the WD enclosure, pulled the drive, put it in a new enclosure (i.e., the Antec MX-1) and life was good again. No one has been able to pinpoint why the enclosures are failing to date...but it seems to happen most often between 12 and 15 months. Hopefully minds much brighter than mine will shed some more light on this phenomenon one of these days.


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## shrike4242 (Dec 1, 2006)

For anyone that's concerned about the warranty of their DVR Expander, SquareTrade offers a 3-year warranty on a hard drive that costs about $100 (mine were $92-$96 from Amazon or NewEgg) for $12.99. With the current code of SEPTEMBER (ends 09/30 or until supplies last), it's 30% off, so it was a little under $11 for a 3-year (inclusive with the 1-year WD warranty, so it's really a 2-year extension). 

It would be a "replacement" plan like you see at Best Buy, where they'd provide a check towards the purchase of a new unit. 

Something to think about for people concerned about post 1-year failures.


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## janry (Jan 2, 2003)

shrike4242 said:


> For anyone that's concerned about the warranty of their DVR Expander, SquareTrade offers a 3-year warranty on a hard drive that costs about $100 (mine were $92-$96 from Amazon or NewEgg) for $12.99. With the current code of SEPTEMBER (ends 09/30 or until supplies last), it's 30% off, so it was a little under $11 for a 3-year (inclusive with the 1-year WD warranty, so it's really a 2-year extension).
> 
> It would be a "replacement" plan like you see at Best Buy, where they'd provide a check towards the purchase of a new unit.
> 
> Something to think about for people concerned about post 1-year failures.


Unfortunately, it won't recover your lost recordings. 

To me, that is the bigger loss.


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## milo99 (Oct 14, 2002)

richsadams said:


> Section IV, #29 of the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ lists all of the recommended drives including the Antec MX-1.
> 
> The Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ is generously and constantly updated by bkdtv. (As of today it was edited on 08/26/09). All of the enclosures listed are almost certainly in use currently. AFAIK no software upgrade has ever bricked an eSATA drive enclosure. (There was one instance where an eSATA drive, the Seagate Free Agent Pro, became problematic post update. I'm sure there are still some in use, but they were never recommended.) So it would be safe to say that they all work with the most current software (v11.0d). As bkdtv monitors this thread closely I can almost guarantee that no one has found any issues with any of the enclosures to date. FWIW I keep a pretty careful eye on it too and AFAIK no one has posted anything negative about any of them. Going off of the reservation would be at your own risk though.
> 
> ...


ok cool, good to know. I'm thinking ahead to next year if/when my replacement expander starts croaking. I'd rather spend the $30 or so to get a new enclosure and keep the driving running than get a whole new internal drive (assuming the drive is fine but encasing is bad). I've got more than enough capacity for my purposes with the current setup, so it'd be nice to keep it going in that scenario


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

shrike4242 said:


> For anyone that's concerned about the warranty of their DVR Expander, SquareTrade offers a 3-year warranty on a hard drive that costs about $100 <snip>


That's good info and some peace of mind at least. :up: Even at the full price of $14.99 or $5/year it seems like a reasonable price to pay for credit toward a replacement. I can't imagine the price of either the 500GB or the 1TB going up in the future, so it sounds like it would be a full replacement warranty. But as janry mentions, it won't recover lost recordings. 

I'm still favor of internal upgrades, but for anyone wanting a simple P&P solution, for the price (as well as the mounting 500GB failure reports), I'd opt for the 1TB model and get the warranty at this point. I plugged it in and the SquareTrade warranty for the 1TB (currently $129.99 at B&H) is $19.99 and w/the "September" coupon code $15.99.

EDIT: Just noticed that the WD 1TB Expander is back ordered at B&H, so not sure what the price will be when they get them in. More shopping would be in order.


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## mchief (Sep 10, 2005)

In may case the drive in the enclosure (MY DVD Expander) was toast. Never ran diagnostics - as soon as I removed it from the enclosure and hooked it up to the Vista computer, windows starting having problems accessing the drive.

Still have the drive sitting on my desk. One of these days I will run spinrite and see if the bad sectors can be fixed.


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## shrike4242 (Dec 1, 2006)

janry said:


> Unfortunately, it won't recover your lost recordings.
> 
> To me, that is the bigger loss.


Agreed, though at least you've covered towards the replacement of the unit.



richsadams said:


> That's good info and some peace of mind at least. :up: Even at the full price of $14.99 or $5/year it seems like a reasonable price to pay for credit toward a replacement. I can't imagine the price of either the 500GB or the 1TB going up in the future, so it sounds like it would be a full replacement warranty. But as janry mentions, it won't recover lost recordings.
> 
> I'm still favor of internal upgrades, but for anyone wanting a simple P&P solution, for the price (as well as the mounting 500GB failure reports), I'd opt for the 1TB model and get the warranty at this point. I plugged it in and the SquareTrade warranty for the 1TB (currently $129.99 at B&H) is $19.99 and w/the "September" coupon code $15.99.
> 
> EDIT: Just noticed that the WD 1TB Expander is back ordered at B&H, so not sure what the price will be when they get them in. More shopping would be in order.


I know you're a fan of internal drives, though as my Tivo HD's are all covered by extended warranties, I'd rather not give someone an excuse to not cover the unit if it does crap out in the warranty period.

If you can track down the 1TB for $129.99, I'd agree, it's a good deal at this point.

The SquareTrade warranties have been pretty reasonably priced, and they do coupon deals regularly, so if you don't jump on the SEPTEMBER coupon, they'll have others, plus they offer a 20% off coupon for existing customers, so that's always something if you already have a warranty from them.

Worst case, if the drive goes south, you're out shipping charges to send the dead unit to them, then you get a check towards a replacement item. Pretty painless, all told, for items they can't repair, like a DVR expander.


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## milo99 (Oct 14, 2002)

well, i guess i had to deal with this earlier than i expected. Got home last night only to find tuner 1 frozen. Quick troubleshooting showed that this was the same problem i was experiencing when the Expander #1 was starting to fail. Arg. This one is only 1 month old. SO i said F it and decided to do a little surgery. 

Basically took apart the expander casing, took out the 500GB drive, opened up the Tivo, took out the 160GB drive, backed it up, then restored the image to the 500GB drive, and put that as my new internal drive in the Tivo (all using the WinMFS tools described in the drive upgrade sticky). So now i'm just running the 500GB internal drive w/ about 75 HD hours. It's a new drive, i'm sure that's not what was failing.

interesting thing though. In my PC i have 3 HD and 1 CDROM and 1 DVD Player (hey, i keep my old HDs when i've gotten new ones for extra storage). 2 of the HDs are IDE, the main one is SATA. My motherboard has 4 SATA slots, so that wasn't a problem. However my powersupply only has 2 SATA power plugs, so i couldn't put both the old Tivo and NEW Tivo drive on at the same time (since i needed the main WinXP drive running), so i had to just do the back up from the old drive and restore it to the new drive, one at a time.

This is where it got weird. When i plugged in the new 500gb drive to do the restore, on boot my windows wouldn't boot. the PC would POST, then i'd here the XP HD make a sounds like it was just powering up. then nothing, black screen. I unhooked all the drives, took out the WInXp one, and it was hot. So i put it in the fridge for a few minutes, then wrapped a clothed icepack around it for a couple min and it cooled off. then i put it back in by itself, and it booted fine. hooked up the 500GB drive and was able to finish.

Then put all the drives back in and things are running smoothly again. I wonder if my powersupply just couldn't handle it all and it ended up messing with the main drive?? i have no idea... just... odd....


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

milo99 said:


> well, i guess i had to deal with this earlier than i expected. Got home last night only to find tuner 1 frozen. Quick troubleshooting showed that this was the same problem i was experiencing when the Expander #1 was starting to fail. Arg. This one is only 1 month old. SO i said F it and decided to do a little surgery.


Congrats on a positive patient outcome! :up:


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## milo99 (Oct 14, 2002)

richsadams said:


> Congrats on a positive patient outcome! :up:


thanks.. i just wish i'd done this in the first place with a 1TB drive. Oh well, live and learn. At least i didn't have to make any more expenditures and i have 75hrs of recording time, which should be enough for me. i don't tend to store a lot of movies or complete seasons and such.


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## stretch35 (Nov 9, 2007)

what is involved in opening up a dead wd 500g expander? is it impossible to fix what breaks on the encolosure? any good tools for mac users with tivo.. luckily I had been moving off of tivo to my mac with tivo transfer stuff I wanted but haven't really veen able to figure a way to send it back to tivo.


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## dcobbley (Mar 1, 2003)

I went through 3 WD 500GB expanders before discovering: it's the cable, stupid. Last drive that was failing almost immediately worked instantly with a good, new cable. Here's what I recommend (though expensive, it's worth it):

StarTech 6 ft. Shielded External eSATA Cable M/M Model ESATA6 (search for it on Newegg.com

Now have several weeks under my belt with no failure on a drive that would cause my Tivo to reboot within minutes of starting to watch any program recorded since I had added the expander.

Tivo and WD should work together and upgrade the shipped cable; I'm sure the amount of time and wasted materials in shipping out new drives, upsetting customers, phone and email support make this a "penny wise, pound foolish" decision to not immediately rip open all MyDVR boxes they have, replace the cables, and incinerate the old ones as quickly as possible.

--David


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## stretch35 (Nov 9, 2007)

cable swap no help for me went thru 3 , even tried connect to another tivo 3 no differance, would like to try the enclosure failure theory but need esata to usb cable to even try plugging into computer


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## milo99 (Oct 14, 2002)

stretch35 said:


> what is involved in opening up a dead wd 500g expander? is it impossible to fix what breaks on the encolosure? any good tools for mac users with tivo.. luckily I had been moving off of tivo to my mac with tivo transfer stuff I wanted but haven't really veen able to figure a way to send it back to tivo.


well, they have from what i can tell a unique circuit board that the drive attaches to, so if that's the failing point (as is being theorized) then not much you can do. Opening up the case is simple enough, then just have to unscrew the drive from the casing and unplug it from the circuit board. If you've ever dealt with an interal HDD on a PC, this should be cake.


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## bowlingblogger (Oct 2, 2007)

My TivoHD rebooted and got stuck on the "Welcome! Powering up..." screen. Several reboots later and it was still getting stuck. I thought the Tivo's internal HD was dead, but then I replaced the esata cable to the DVR Expander (500GB) and it booted up again. It passed the first two SMART tests, and I'll run the rest tonight. Interestingly, I had earlier replaced the stock cable with the SIIG II cable recommended in this thread, which I guess must have failed. When I substituted it for the stock cable, that's when it started working again.

BTW, I've had my DVR Expander for almost 22 months and it's still working. From everyone else's reports, I guess I'm ahead of the game.


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

bowlingblogger said:


> My TivoHD rebooted and got stuck on the "Welcome! Powering up..." screen. Several reboots later and it was still getting stuck. I thought the Tivo's internal HD was dead, but then I replaced the esata cable to the DVR Expander (500GB) and it booted up again. It passed the first two SMART tests, and I'll run the rest tonight. Interestingly, I had earlier replaced the stock cable with the SIIG II cable recommended in this thread, which I guess must have failed. When I substituted it for the stock cable, that's when it started working again.
> 
> BTW, I've had my DVR Expander for almost 22 months and it's still working. From everyone else's reports, I guess I'm ahead of the game.


I wonder what is the LONGEST anyone has had the Expander without it crapping out (for whatever reason). I know that these forums are usually filled with people who HAVE problems, and not with those for whom everything is working fine, but let's see.


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## bowlingblogger (Oct 2, 2007)

I take that back; it's been almost _21_ months. Anyway, it's rebooting again; so maybe changing the cable just bought me a couple of minutes. I changed the cable _again_ (I'm using the one I previously had connecting an esata external drive to my desktop computer) and the Tivo's working again...but for how long? The internal hard drive in my desktop computer has been going strong almost five years...it sucks that these expanders are lucky to last 18 months!

I don't think I'm up for trying to replace the enclosure. If I have to replace the drive, should I go for the 1TB? I never used all the space on the 500GB, but if the 1TB is more robust I'd rather have that one.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

bowlingblogger said:


> If I have to replace the drive, should I go for the 1TB? I never used all the space on the 500GB, but if the 1TB is more robust I'd rather have that one.


In a word...yes!


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## bowlingblogger (Oct 2, 2007)

OK, thanks for the suggestion! The Expander is now rebooting again with the third cable, so I think it's obvious the drive or enclosure is failing. I think I'll see if I can get by with the space on the stock internal for now and if I can't, I'll go for the 1TB external.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

bowlingblogger said:


> I think I'll see if I can get by with the space on the stock internal for now and if I can't, I'll go for the 1TB external.


Ooops, I misunderstood.  I thought you were talking about upgrading your TiVo's internal hard drive to 1TB.

I've no reason to suspect that the 1TB WD My DVR Expander will be more or less reliable (or robust) than the 500GB model.

For the money, the internal upgrade is the way to go, plus you remove one additional failure point. It's a pretty easy DIY project. Takes under an hour and generally costs under $99 for a brand new hard drive these days. All the info you need can be found on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ. :up:


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## stretch35 (Nov 9, 2007)

my stock sony series 1 dvr hard drive (I think 40g??) still running 9 years non stop is that really possible? tivo expander about 17months?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

stretch35 said:


> my stock sony series 1 dvr hard drive (I think 40g??) still running 9 years non stop is that really possible? tivo expander about 17months?


To be fair...a bit apples and oranges. A Series3, TiVo HD or HDXL three or four-platter drive (internal or external) must handle far higher data throughput including HD broadcasts, broadband activity such as guide updates, program downloads, etc. all coming in from three different sources at the same moment, provide error correction for all of that data and any A/V output changes ...all the while playing back (high data) content 24/7. I'm sure I've left out some other activity, but you get the idea. The demands on a nine-year old tiny (by comparison) hard drive in a single SD channel receiving Series1 are miniscule by comparison. FWIW the dual hard drives in our seven or eight year old Series1 still fire up and run fine as well.

Of course you won't find me defending drives that only last a year or so as it seems may be more common than not with WD's My DVR Expanders that's for sure. WD should be ashamed. :down:


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## bowlingblogger (Oct 2, 2007)

richsadams said:


> Ooops, I misunderstood.  I thought you were talking about upgrading your TiVo's internal hard drive to 1TB.
> 
> I've no reason to suspect that the 1TB WD My DVR Expander will be more or less reliable (or robust) than the 500GB model.


Hmm, after reading through that thread, and considering the lower cost and potential improvement in reliability, I think I will go the internal route. Thanks for that suggestion! My Tivo is out of warranty anyway, and I like the idea of only having one link in the chain. I don't need 1TB, so I'm thinking of going with the 500GB Seagate Pipeline ST3500312CS on the approved drive list in the expansion thread. Anyone have any experience with this?

Well, that question should probably be asked in the expansion forum.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

bowlingblogger said:


> I'm thinking of going with the 500GB Seagate Pipeline ST3500312CS on the approved drive list in the expansion thread. Anyone have any experience with this?
> 
> Well, that question should probably be asked in the expansion forum.


I don't have any experience with that particular Seagate HDD. Seagate makes very good drives but the caveat is that the automatic acoustic management (AAM) cannot be changed. If the drive is noisy (and some Seagates can be real thrashing machines) you're stuck with it. Seagate makes dedicated A/V HDD's, the DB35 line. The seek noise is tuned to be very quiet but they are a little more expensive than their standard drives. You could check the specs on their web site to find out more.

It's best to stick with recommended drives however. They are proven and you won't be disappointed. Although the WD10EVVS is a 1TB drive, the cost isn't that much more and it's a dedicated A/V drive. Folks here are very pleased with it, but your call of course. You could also use the slightly less expensive 1TB WD10EADS in your TiVo HD. It's a fairly quiet drive out of the box but you can adjust the AAM settings to make it quieter if needed. (More info on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ).

In any case, I haven't ever heard anyone complaining about having too much recording space...only some that wished that they had gone with a larger drive instead. 

Happy upgrading!


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## bowlingblogger (Oct 2, 2007)

Excellent point about space...indeed, I'd rather have too much than too little! You convinced me to order the WD10EVVS. I've never upgraded an internal HD before, but the instructions on the expansion thread make it seem within my abilities. It will probably take me triple the estimated time, but it will be worth it!


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Nah...I think the first time I used winMFS it took me about an hour. But now? About 20 minutes...mostly turning the screwdriver. Take your time, and be sure to follow the directions to the letter (and not to skip any steps), but it's really a piece 'o cake. 

Happy upgrading!


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## jayfest (Mar 25, 2003)

I know you keep saying this is easy, but it looks scary to me, even though I have successfully installed new internal hard drives to my computer. I'm worried about losing what I have or my TiVo or messing something up on my computer. I'm also afraid that WinMFS is going to tell me that I'm not the Administrator and I'm going to be stuck at that point. I find that when I try these little do-it-yourself projects, I sometimes wind up doing it twice (or maybe 1 1/2 times) because I make a mistake in the middle somewhere and I have to back up and try it again.

I have a couple of questions:
1. I saw a CNET video on how to do this and the guy there said there were some things that you weren't supposed to touch inside the computer (or was it the TiVo?) even when it is powered off because of charge buildup. If this is indeed something I should be worrying about, does someone know what and where these are? 
2. I also read another set of instructions that suggested that, if I don't already have "_a pair of SATA->USB adapters or a dual drive dock_", I could temporarily disconnect the DVD drive from my computer and use that adapter as one of them. My computer has one DVD drive and a slot for another one which is currently unfilled. Does that mean I probably already have two of these adapters inside my computer? Can they in fact be used for this purpose? I would rather not have to go out and spend $15 or whatever for something I'm only going to use once.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

jayfest said:


> I know you keep saying this is easy, but it looks scary to me, <snip>


Well, I'd generally say that if you've swapped out a hard drive in a computer, you can upgrade the hard drive in your TiVo. TiVo is a computer after all. With regard to being the admin on your PC, you probably already are if you were the one that originally set it up. Check under My Computer > User Accounts and see who the admin is.

It does look a bit complicated, but basically it goes like this:

- Download winMFS to your PC (you'll need to register on the MFSLive forum and then you can download it...free)
- Open TiVo and remove the hard drive
- Connect the TiVo hard drive to your PC (generally opening your PC and connecting the drive directly to the motherboard and power supply is best/quickest, but there are other ways via adapters, USB, etc. listed in the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ)
- Power the PC up start winMFS (only winMFS will recognize your TiVo drive, your PC will not as it's not formatted for PC's and there will be no formatting, nada)
- Follow the directions to copy the TiVo Image to your PC's hard drive (saving it on the desktop is an easy way to find it) and power your PC back down 
- Disconnect the TiVo drive
- Connect the new drive that you'll use in your TiVo
- Power the PC back up and run winMFS
- Follow the directions to copy the TiVo image from your PC's hard drive to the new TiVo drive and power the PC back down 
- Disconnect the new TiVo drive from your PC
- Install your new TiVo drive in TiVo
- Put the original TiVo hard drive on the shelf as a backup
- Button up your PC
- Fire up TiVo and Enjoy!

There are several additional steps that I left out (supersizing and such) but they are clearly defined and easy clicks. As you can see it's really no different than say using a thumb drive to copy files from one computer and transferring them to another.

That method (as described in Section V, #18a of the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ ) saves all of your settings (cable cards, etc.) as well as Season Passes, Wish Lists, etc. If you want to save all of your recordings it entails a little more work, basically connecting both your old and new TiVo drives to your PC at the same time so the files can be copied directly. (See Section V, #18b.)

That's about it in a nutshell though. If you follow each step carefully there's no reason to worry that the process is going to do any damage to anything; your PC, TiVo or you for that matter.

To answer your questions...

1. The YouTube video warns you not to touch the TiVo power supply. Unlike a computer where the power supply is inside a "cage", TiVo's is unprotected and capacitors can remain charged for a long time. It can deliver a good shock, but unless you're in a bathtub full of water, not likely to do any long-term harm. As long as you're only removing and replacing the hard drive, you have no reason to touch anything else.
2. More than likely. What you need is a SATA connection and a power connection from your PC to connect and power your TiVo drives. Most modern computers have several unused SATA ports on the motherboard as well as several unused power connectors. If there aren't any available you can simply use those dedicated to a DVD or CD ROM drive (providing they are also SATA drives) as the video suggests.

Phew! Hope that helps. Again, if you've ever replaced a hard drive in a computer and used a program to make copies of some files, you've probably got what it takes to upgrade a TiVo. Just be sure to carefully read and follow all of the directions in the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ and you'll be enjoying lots and lots of recording space in no time.


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## bowlingblogger (Oct 2, 2007)

Thanks for the overview, richsadams. You have a knack for explaining things succinctly and clearly. I will be attempting this as soon as I receive my new 1TB drive from Amazon. I'll report back, hopefully with news of success. And trust me...if I can do it, anyone can do it!


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## jayfest (Mar 25, 2003)

I think I probably will try it at some point. Now that the fall TV season has started, let's see how long I can keep my HD from filling up. Thanks for the support, richadams.


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## gcsheph (May 13, 2005)

Rich: Your process listing is quite clear. But what if you have an (approved) external drive also? Does this complicate the internal upgrade process? Thanks for your excellent notes.


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## DeWitt (Jun 30, 2004)

Taking the drive out of the Tivo is very straightforward. Opening your PC case and finding connectors, unplugging drives etc. can be intimidating. 

I found an easy and not very expensive (20 dollar range) solution by buying an SATA to USB adapter. This allowed me to connect the Tivo drive to my pc using USB and removed the need to do anything physical to the PC.

The adapptor is handy for copying things off old drives (It does IDE too) so the money was well spent.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

gcsheph said:


> Rich: Your process listing is quite clear. But what if you have an (approved) external drive also? Does this complicate the internal upgrade process? Thanks for your excellent notes.


It adds another step...you have to "marry" the external drive to the internal drive by connecting both drives and clicking on a couple of more options in winMFS. Although you can use the approved WD My DVR Expaner, with this method you don't have to (just use one of the recommended eSATA drives from the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ). One caveat is that once you upgrade the internal hard drive (on any model) the eSATA plug and pray option is no longer available. In other words, from that point on, you would have to use winMFS to marry/connect any eSATA drive in the future. FWIW, unless something like 2TB's is really a necessity, upgrading the internal drive to 1TB is enough for most folks and it limits an additional failure point. (But then I was happy with a 250MB hard drive in my computer once upon a time. Who could need more space than that?!  )



DeWitt said:


> Taking the drive out of the Tivo is very straightforward. Opening your PC case and finding connectors, unplugging drives etc. can be intimidating.
> 
> I found an easy and not very expensive (20 dollar range) solution by buying an SATA to USB adapter. This allowed me to connect the Tivo drive to my pc using USB and removed the need to do anything physical to the PC.
> 
> The adapptor is handy for copying things off old drives (It does IDE too) so the money was well spent.


Good point. One of these HDD converters or one of these HDD docks or a single dock/adapter like this would work just as well. Something like that is an excellent option for anyone not wanting to venture into the inside of their computer. :up:


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## bowlingblogger (Oct 2, 2007)

Thanks to the excellent instructions in the expansion thread, this morning I successfully upgraded to a 1TB internal drive! It took me about an hour, and then I had to do it again because the Supersize didn't take (only took about 15 mins the second time). I had a free SATA connector on my motherboard, so I used that to copy the Tivo drive structure to the 1TB drive. The hardest part was getting that rear left screw out of the drive cradle. Thank you richsadams for convincing me to go this route!

Now I just have to figure out what to do with the DVR Expander. Give it away on craigslist? Or, would it be worthwhile to remove it from the enclosure and install it in my Windows machine as another internal hard drive...ooh, another project!


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

bowlingblogger said:


> Thanks to the excellent instructions in the expansion thread, this morning I successfully upgraded to a 1TB internal drive!


Congrats...but I take no responsibility for your foray into the high-tech world of upgrading TiVo DVR's!  Now that you've done it once (or once-and-a-half as it were) you'll never rest...you'll always be on the lookout as to how to build it bigger, better, faster. You have my advanced sympathies. But welcome to the club and enjoy!


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## jeffw_00 (Sep 19, 2000)

Why don't more people just replace the enclosure? - which appears to be the only thing that fails within a year? Newegg has a lot of well-rated enclosures starting at $35-$40. Seems easier, and you keep all your programs. 

??
/j


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## ajayabb (Jan 12, 2007)

jeffw_00 said:


> Why don't more people just replace the enclosure? - which appears to be the only thing that fails within a year? Newegg has a lot of well-rated enclosures starting at $35-$40. Seems easier, and you keep all your programs.
> 
> ??
> /j


Its the perfect excuse to tell the wife why you need a Terabyte drive!


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## bowlingblogger (Oct 2, 2007)

ajayabb said:


> Its the perfect excuse to tell the wife why you need a Terabyte drive!


Worked for me! Also, I was able to repurpose my Expander as the internal HD in my desktop, which I had been meaning to upgrade anyway.


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

jeffw_00 said:


> Why don't more people just replace the enclosure? - which appears to be the only thing that fails within a year?/j


Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't know that the enclosure was responsible for the majority of failures. I have two boxes that are both still working (1+ years each). But now if one fails, I'll be sure to check if it's the enclosure or the drive.


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## DrMark (May 16, 2007)

b0rg said:


> Conclusion: WD has lost me as a customer. I will never purchase another WD drive again for myself/family or work. With that being said I know I will probably indirectly end up using a WD drive with something I end up purchasing.


I have had three different WD drives fail in my home PC (two that I bought, and one that was a replacement for the first drive that I returned under warranty).  Right around the time these drives failed, WD changed the warranty period for internal drives from 3 years to 1 year. I also vowed to never buy another WD drive again.

As a long time Tivo lover (I still have a series 1 that I bought in 2000), I have finally decided to upgrade to a Series 3. I have been waiting for Tivo to put a real hard drive in the Tivo HD (1 TB drives are only about $100) so that I wouldn't have to upgrade it myself. It doesn't look like this is going to happen, so I'm just going to make the jump.

My series 1 lost its modem about a year and a half after I got it, and because it was out of warranty, I was kind of SOL (I have lifetime service). I added an Ethernet adapter, and it has worked ever since. Still, I've always worried about the short warranty on the Tivo. I saw that Tivo now offers extended warranty's for not much additional cost, so that looked perfect for me. However, I can't upgrade the internal drive and keep the warranty. I figured I would get an external drive and I would be set. Seeing that the only supported external drive is a WD, and that WD still sucks, that route isn't open to me.

So, do you think I am best off just upgrading the internal drive myself and not worrying about getting a warranty? I suppose dealing with Time Warner is going to be much more of a hassle than any warranty issues with the Tivo will ever be. 

Thanks,

--Mark


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

DrMark said:


> So, do you think I am best off just upgrading the internal drive myself and not worrying about getting a warranty?


My two cents? Yes. A majority of failures are hard drives. Replacing a hard drive is fairly easy if you're comfortable with connecting/installing a hard drive in a computer. (You can even use an external adapter if you don't want to open your PC.) Although TiVo "knows" when you've upgraded a hard drive (via their logs) IIRC over the past few years only one or two people have been denied a replacement under warranty if they re-installed the OEM hard drive before returning it (and didn't mention that they had opened the box). That said YMMV of course.

So using winMFS to image a new/bare drive, installing it in TiVo, putting the original drive on the shelf in case something goes south (or you want to image another new drive) is the way to go IMHO. As mentioned, you can have a 1TB TiVo for ~$100 over the original cost in an hour or less.

Everything you need to know can be found on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5616160#post5616160


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## scooterboy (Mar 27, 2001)

Ok - so I'm trying to figure out which way to go here.

I have a Tivo HD on the way, and I've already ordered the 1TB My DVR Expander from Amazon (last night, before I found this thread!). I just checked and they're preparing to ship and I can't cancel it now.

My PCs are all too old to have SATA connections, so if I upgrade the internal Tivo HD, I'll need to spend another ~$20 for a USB/SATA adapter.

So the way I see it, when the Tivo and Expander arrive my choices are:

1) Continue with original plan, use the Expander (preserving the warranty), and watch the enclosure crap out within a year or so.

2) Replace the enclosure on the Expander when it arrives (cost: another $50 or so), then install the Expander (preserving the warranty).

3) Yank the 1TB HD out of the WD enclosure and perform an internal drive upgrade with it (cost: ~$20 for USB/SATA adapter, lose warranty). I CAN use the Expander's WD drive to replace the internal drive, correct?

Is that about right? Do I have any other choices?

Also - should I run the TivoHD with just the original drive at first, while Comcast installs cablecards, I set up season passes, etc? Then after everything is in place for a while and seems to be working, perform one of the above options?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

scooterboy said:


> Ok - so I'm trying to figure out which way to go here.
> 
> I have a Tivo HD on the way, and I've already ordered the 1TB My DVR Expander from Amazon (last night, before I found this thread!). I just checked and they're preparing to ship and I can't cancel it now.
> 
> ...


My two cents...well, maybe three. 

Me? I would cancel the Expander order for now. Get your TiVo set up and running and make sure everything is okay...for a month or so. If something's going to go wrong with CE products it'll usually happen quickly. Once you're satisfied that all is well (and there's no reason to think that it won't be) I'd explore adding recording space.

Okay to answer your points...

1) Certainly an option. The 1TB WD My DVR Expanders haven't been around long enough to have a track record. IIRC only one person posted that theirs failed and that's to be expected sometimes. The 500GB models haven't faired as well after one year to 18 months or so. Their enclosures seem to be failing for some reason. Because TiVo recognizes drives by the exact hard drive model number some folks here have successfully moved the hard drive from the WD enclosure into another one of the recommended enclosures in the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ.

2) Removing the hard drive from the WD enclosure will void the warranty.

3) Not a good option IMO. As you mentioned, the warranty would be lost and although it probably will, with continuos firmware and model changes there's no guarantee that the drive would work as an internal drive in your TiVo HD. A new bare drive is less expensive anyway.

Common wisdom here is to be sure that your TiVo HD is working well (30 days or so) then pull the internal hard drive and upgrade (to 1TB) using winMFS. Put the original drive on the shelf as a backup. That way if something does go wrong with your TiVo you can slip the original drive back in for immediate use or to return TiVo to the Company for a warranty replacement. Or just use the original drive to image another new drive if needed. Hard drives are the number one failure point in TiVo's by a large margin. Replacing them is fairly easy but if you need to return your TiVo for a replacement, only one or two people have ever been denied a warranty return as long as the original drive is re-installed and nothing is mentioned to TiVo about the upgrade.

Everything you need to know about upgrading your TiVo can be found on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ.

Enjoy your new TiVo!


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## scooterboy (Mar 27, 2001)

richsadams said:


> My two cents...well, maybe three.
> 
> Me? I would cancel the Expander order for now.


Too late to cancel the order. I checked earlier. I suppose I could return it as soon as I get it though.



> The 1TB WD My DVR Expanders haven't been around long enough to have a track record. IIRC only one person posted that theirs failed and that's to be expected sometimes. The 500GB models haven't faired as well after one year to 18 months or so.


I didn't realize that all of the failures people have reported here were the 500 GB models - I assumed it was more of a mix. That makes me feel much more hopeful that the 1TB version might be more reliable. If it does fail, and like the 500GB failures the problem is the enclosure and not the drive, I can replace the enclosure at that point, reconnect it, and it should come back to life, yes?



> Replacing them is fairly easy but if you need to return your TiVo for a replacement, only one or two people have ever been denied a warranty return as long as the original drive is re-installed and nothing is mentioned to TiVo about the upgrade.


I'd like to avoid that firstly because it's not completely honest, and secondly because with my luck I'll end up being the third person denied. 

I think I have a new plan:

1) Get the TivoHD up and running for a month, as recommended.
2) Backup the image of the internal drive to my PC in case it's needed later.
3) Add the 1TB Expander.
4) Enjoy it for as long as it works.
5) If it fails, test the drive:
5a) If it's fine, replace the enclosure and put it all back together.
5b) If the drive is toast, buy a new bare drive and replace the internal drive with it.

That plan keeps the warranty intact, and also gives me options in case of later failure. What do you think?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

scooterboy said:


> I think I have a new plan:
> 
> 1) Get the TivoHD up and running for a month, as recommended.
> 2) Backup the image of the internal drive to my PC in case it's needed later.
> ...


Your plan is fine with one exception. If you want to be completely "honest" you would drop #2. Opening TiVo voids the warranty, end of story.

I agree, it would be dishonest to return a TiVo for an exchange under warranty if something you had done to it caused it to fail and you were covering it up. Installing a larger hard drive cannot damage TiVo. Moreover, TiVo knows when you have upgraded the hard drive almost immediately by viewing their logs. If a TiVo is returned because something failed, a power supply for example, but it's otherwise unharmed with the original hard drive intact they choose to look the other way.

In fact a number of TiVo employees are TCF members and post regularly. They are keenly aware of what we TiVo enthusiasts do. They cannot condone it for obvious reasons. TiVo CSR's won't assist customers with boxes that have been upgraded and saying that you have ends the conversation. That's the price many of us here have been happily willing to pay to customize our TiVo's for many years now.

That said, I'm sure you'll enjoy your new TiVo and ideally the expansion drive will last a long, long time.


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## scooterboy (Mar 27, 2001)

richsadams said:


> Your plan is fine with one exception. If you want to be completely "honest" you would drop #2. Opening TiVo voids the warranty, end of story.
> 
> I agree, it would be dishonest to return a TiVo for an exchange under warranty if something you had done to it caused it to fail and you were covering it up. Installing a larger hard drive cannot damage TiVo. Moreover, TiVo knows when you have upgraded the hard drive almost immediately by viewing their logs. If a TiVo is returned because something failed, a power supply for example, but it's otherwise unharmed with the original hard drive intact they choose to look the other way.


Good point(s). Though opening the Tivo does void the warranty, I'm ok with that since I'm not modifying it in any way at that point - just grabbing a backup. I guess we all draw the line where we feel comfortable. 

Thanks for your counsel - much appreciated. :up:


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## navyman (Feb 1, 2002)

Just a quick note: I was having problems with my 500gb expander drive for a couple of months. It dawned on me one day to try re-powering the expander drive unit instead of the TivoHD...since then, I've had no problems. It must have reset something important in the expander hard drive/case software? At any rate, try this before declaring your WD expander a failure.


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## HeatherA (Jan 10, 2002)

This thread is full of good information. I recently purchased the 1tb expander from Best Buy. Unfortunately did not get a great deal like the $129 I've seen on the forum, but I was already running out of space so when I saw it I grabbed it. My husband has upgraded all of our previous TiVo units and could have done this one too but I liked the ease of being able to do it myself in just a few minutes. 

I love that we can conceivably replace the enclosure if failure happens and preserve the recordings. Of course if the worst happens after the warranty expires then I'll probably have him upgrade it internally. 

The expanders are a great idea... too bad they have so many reports of failure. I'm really surprised TiVo hasn't done something about this and the bad will it's incurred with the subscribers that have found themselves with failing drives and lost recordings.


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## S3-2501 (Jun 2, 2007)

After roughly 18 months, it appears that my 500GB expander has also bit the dust. This morning when I tried to playback recordings or even do some basic trickplay, the Tivo HD would freeze and reboot. I reseated all the connectors along with cold boots for both the expander and the Tivo with no real luck other than the Tivo would boot and seem to work until I actually tried to do anything other than watch TV passively.

I've decided to try a new (inexpensive) enclosure before I shell out the big bucks for a new internal drive or gamble on another expander and start from scratch. I'll post back with the results.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

S3-2501 said:


> After roughly 18 months, it appears that my 500GB expander has also bit the dust.


Sorry to hear about that. How very frustrating. I know I'll be very interested in the results of moving the HDD to a new enclosure. Fingers crossed. TIA. :up:


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## S3-2501 (Jun 2, 2007)

I picked up a new enclosure today and gave it a try, but unfortunately after what initially appeared to be success, I soon started having the same lockup/reboot problems. Running a kickstart 54 test gave several "Fail 7" results for the external drive. 

So now I have to decide which drive upgrade/replacement path I'm going to go with...


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

S3-2501 said:


> I picked up a new enclosure today and gave it a try, but unfortunately after what initially appeared to be success, I soon started having the same lockup/reboot problems. Running a kickstart 54 test gave several "Fail 7" results for the external drive.
> 
> So now I have to decide which drive upgrade/replacement path I'm going to go with...


Sorry to hear that...losing a hard drive is a pain, but losing recordings is really frustrating. My two cents...go with a 1TB internal upgrade. You won't regret it. All the info you need can be found by clicking the link below my sig.

Thanks for letting us know how things went. :up:


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## S3-2501 (Jun 2, 2007)

richsadams said:


> Short answer...if it were me right now I would go with one of these two drives:
> 
> 1TB Seagate Pipeline
> 
> ...


Richadams, thank you for your comments about my deceased WD expander, and especially for the above recommendations from the upgrade thread. I was just about to overpay for a weaknees or dvrupgrade drive when I saw your post. My eyes were crossing trying to decipher and find one of the FAQ's suitable drives for my unplanned DIY upgrade. The clear recommendations (and explanation why they are recommended) gave me the courage to go with the Seagate linked to above.


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## jeffw_00 (Sep 19, 2000)

If you have a desktop and so can run the wdidle tool, I wouldn't rule out the WD green drives. Running the tool takes only a moment and is very easy to do.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

S3-2501 said:


> The clear recommendations (and explanation why they are recommended) gave me the courage to go with the Seagate linked to above.


Happy upgrading and enjoy!


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## chrishicks (Dec 31, 2003)

I just removed my DVR Expander from my S3 today. I was having some pretty bad "bad drive" symptoms minus the rebooting. I think my drive lasted longer than the 12-18 months that most have but I'm not exactly sure(how long have they been out anyway?). I purchased mine at Best Buy shortly after they were available and it was connected the day I got it home until earlier today.

I was lucky in that I was able to transfer most of my recordings to a few other Tivos so I'm not missing too many recordings(I got tired of waiting for the HD shows to transfer so I just skipped a few of them). I'm currently using another external setup(MX-1 + WD 1TB) after 2 days of failed attempts in trying to replace the internal drive with another.


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## mbellofattosr (Jan 30, 2010)

okay i am having issues connecting the tivo hard drive to my computer to copy it, i have tried direct connections and also a sata to usb connection and the program does not see the tivo drive when i start Winmfs

any thoughts?

thanks

mike


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## rocko (Oct 29, 2002)

mbellofattosr said:


> okay i am having issues connecting the tivo hard drive to my computer to copy it, i have tried direct connections and also a sata to usb connection and the program does not see the tivo drive when i start Winmfs
> 
> any thoughts?
> 
> ...


Let me guess - Windows 7?

Run WinMFS as Administrator and you should be good to go. I pulled out a few handfulls of hair before I figured it out ...


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

I have mostly Macs in the house, so I don't have easy access to SATA or eSATA. Since I can't test things very easily, I will have to operate "blind" to a certain extent, in terms of shelling out cash before I'm sure of the problem.

I think I have one of the dreaded failed expanders. Now I need to decide whether I should a) go for a strictly internal replacement or b) try to salvage the external drive in a different enclosure.

Before I go through a lot of trouble, what is the consensus on the probability of the drive being OK, and just the enclosure failing? Is it 50% chance the drive is OK? Is it 90%?

If I went with an external enclosure I would probably opt for a fancy one with a fan, but that is hardly cheap at $55. At that price I'm halfway to buying a 1 GB internal replacement drive.

I feel comfortable technically going the WinMFS or InstantCake route, but would like to avoid the hassle. Ideally I'd buy a pre-formatted 1TB drive from someone like weaknees or dvrupgrade. But they charge a lot for "convenience". Paying $150 above the price of the drive just for someone to put the bits on seems expensive.

Does anyone know how to open the external drive enclosure? Destructively? Non-destructively? There's a rubberized material that runs along the outside on three edges. I suppose that's the key to it.

Edit: OOPS, I didn't look carefully enough. That particular replacement external enclosure seems out. Too expensive. They want $110. Who sells a cheaper external enclosure that's not junk?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> I think I have one of the dreaded failed expanders. Now I need to decide whether I should a) go for a strictly internal replacement or b) try to salvage the external drive in a different enclosure.


If it were me I would absolutely go with an internal upgrade. Wait...that was me and that's what I did! We're all Mac's in our house now but I did keep a PC I built just for that sort of thing...plus it was my "ultimate machine" (at least until I got an iMac  ) and I couldn't part with it. If you can't get access to a PC there are a few posts on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ from folks using a Mac to do the upgrade. Either way, you're a savvy guy and the upgrade will be a cake walk. My two cents.


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## chrishicks (Dec 31, 2003)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> Does anyone know how to open the external drive enclosure? Destructively? Non-destructively? There's a rubberized material that runs along the outside on three edges. I suppose that's the key to it.


I've been toying around with my "dead" DVR Expander for a while now. I wondered about salvaging the drive so I've been running Spinrite on it. Now for the kicker, it's been running for over 2 weeks on the drive so far and for all but 1 hour and 40 minutes it's been stuck at 43% done. It's actually running and hasn't locked up and at this point it's more a curiosity thing to see how long it takes to finally finish more so than actually reusing the drive. I took my case apart wondering if heat was a factor for why it's taking so long to run so I went to work.

About disassembling the case, what I did was peel back and remove the entire strip of rubber(while the drive was still connected to the pc and running Spinrite so it's not much effort in taking the case apart if you're careful) and then took a small flat screwdriver and inserted it in the tiny gap that the rubber fills. Then I just slowly worked my way around the entire case separating the two pieces. If you take your time I think you can actually reassemble the entire thing and it would look like it was never opened. I haven't slid the outer case back on yet for fear of bumping something and screwing up the 2 weeks invested in my little test. It looks like I'll be able to reassemble mine if I wanted to after Spinrite finally finishes(if it ever does that is) as I already have the rubber strip reinstalled. All I need to do is slide the outer shell of the case back on and get the tabs to relock.


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## mbellofattosr (Jan 30, 2010)

rocko said:


> Let me guess - Windows 7?
> 
> Run WinMFS as Administrator and you should be good to go. I pulled out a few handfulls of hair before I figured it out ...


Okay that got it to see the Tivo hard drive, but I do not get the option to copy it to any other drive, i have checked show mounted drives, but nothing comes up under destination drive.

what now?


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## rocko (Oct 29, 2002)

mbellofattosr said:


> Okay that got it to see the Tivo hard drive, but I do not get the option to copy it to any other drive, i have checked show mounted drives, but nothing comes up under destination drive.
> 
> what now?


What happens when you select "Tools-MFSCopy" It should give you the opportunity to select a target drive.


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## mbellofattosr (Jan 30, 2010)

rocko said:


> What happens when you select "Tools-MFSCopy" It should give you the opportunity to select a target drive.


nope, shows only a: which is the tivo drive and b: which says none.


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## rocko (Oct 29, 2002)

mbellofattosr said:


> nope, shows only a: which is the tivo drive and b: which says none.


What type of drive do you have for the target and how is it connected? Does it show up in the computer BIOS when booting?


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## mbellofattosr (Jan 30, 2010)

I was going to first copy to my desktop, then attach new drive and copy it to the new drive.


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## rocko (Oct 29, 2002)

mbellofattosr said:


> I was going to first copy to my desktop, then attach new drive and copy it to the new drive.


So why would you expect to see it if it's not connected to the computer?

In this event you'll want to do a "File-Backup" to create a truncated backup - then a "File-Restore" to restore the backup to the new drive.

http://mfslive.org/winmfs/quickstart.htm

Keep in mind that this method doesn't preseve your recordings.


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## mbellofattosr (Jan 30, 2010)

rocko said:


> So why would you expect to see it if it's not connected to the computer?
> 
> In this event you'll want to do a "File-Backup" to create a truncated backup - then a "File-Restore" to restore the backup to the new drive.
> 
> Keep in mind that this method doesn't preseve your recordings.


Okay that worked, thanks for the help.


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## JTYoung1 (Aug 13, 2006)

I removed my DVR expander from my Series 3 this past weekend. I've been having major problems with recordings and watching live TV. I'd regularly get macroblocking causing me to miss parts of dialog and I'd also have problems with macroblocking on shows I'd transfered from my TiVo HD in another room where they played fine.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

JTYoung1 said:


> I removed my DVR expander from my Series 3 this past weekend. I've been having major problems with recordings and watching live TV. I'd regularly get macroblocking causing me to miss parts of dialog and I'd also have problems with macroblocking on shows I'd transfered from my TiVo HD in another room where they played fine.


And....  Are things better? How old is your My DVR Expander?


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## JTYoung1 (Aug 13, 2006)

richsadams said:


> And....  Are things better? How old is your My DVR Expander?


The S3 appears to be doing stuff fine now. I haven't had to record 2 programs at the same time with the Olympics going on right now. My DVR Expander was somewhere between 14-16 months old (The first one was 13-14 months old when it crapped out). I am done with WD DVR expanders, my experience with them leads me to believe that they have severe quality problems and I wouldn't recommend anyone purchase one of them. Their internal computer drives, however seem to be fine.

As soon as I am sure that the problem with the S3 has cleared up I am going to replace the drive in it with a 1TB drive from one of the suppliers.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

JTYoung1 said:


> The S3 appears to be doing stuff fine now. I haven't had to record 2 programs at the same time with the Olympics going on right now. My DVR Expander was somewhere between 14-16 months old (The first one was 13-14 months old when it crapped out). I am done with WD DVR expanders, my experience with them leads me to believe that they have severe quality problems and I wouldn't recommend anyone purchase one of them. Their internal computer drives, however seem to be fine.
> 
> As soon as I am sure that the problem with the S3 has cleared up I am going to replace the drive in it with a 1TB drive from one of the suppliers.


Thanks for the additional feedback. FWIW it appears that it's the WD My DVR Expander enclosures that are failing more often than not. Many of the hard drives (standard WD GP drives) work fine when removed from the enclosures. No one has figured out what's failing in the enclosures, but you're right the 500GB models seem to last about a year to 18 months and then fail. A very bad track record.

Happy upgrading when the time comes...you'll be glad you did! :up:


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## raveheart (Jan 14, 2008)

My 500GB Expander starting acting up just after 2 years. The Tivo would randomly reboot, randomly stop recording shows, and would display a grey screen stating that the Tivo had lost its connection to the Expander. After reading these posts I felt lucky it lasted that long. The KickStart 54 Extended test would only run sucessfully on the deva and would get a NO START on the devb (the Expander drive). I tried a new eSata cable but the drive was still failing, so I decided to pull the drive and connect to my PC to run WD Diagnostics on it. The WD Diagnostics ran through no problem, so I decided to replace the enclosure with the Antec MX-1 that Rich recommended (thanks). The reason I chose this was because I had several shows that were copyrighted so I couldn't transfer them using Tivo Desktop, and I didn't want to lose them. I replaced the enclosure over 3 weeks ago, then using the eSata cable included with the MX-1, ran the Kickstart 54 Extended tests successfully on both the internal and expander drive, and haven't had a problem since. So to repeat for anybody whose drive is failing and you don't want to lose shows, try replacing the cable. If that doesn't work, pull the drive and run the WD diagnostics on it from your pc. There's a good chance the drive itself is ok and you just need a new enclosure. That said, if you can get all the shows off of your drive before it totally bombs, I would just upgrade the internal.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

raveheart said:


> My 500GB Expander starting acting up just after 2 years. The Tivo would randomly reboot, randomly stop recording shows, and would display a grey screen stating that the Tivo had lost its connection to the Expander. After reading these posts I felt lucky it lasted that long. The KickStart 54 Extended test would only run sucessfully on the deva and would get a NO START on the devb (the Expander drive). I tried a new eSata cable but the drive was still failing, so I decided to pull the drive and connect to my PC to run WD Diagnostics on it. The WD Diagnostics ran through no problem, so I decided to replace the enclosure with the Antec MX-1 that Rich recommended (thanks). The reason I chose this was because I had several shows that were copyrighted so I couldn't transfer them using Tivo Desktop, and I didn't want to lose them. I replaced the enclosure over 3 weeks ago, then using the eSata cable included with the MX-1, ran the Kickstart 54 Extended tests successfully on both the internal and expander drive, and haven't had a problem since. So to repeat for anybody whose drive is failing and you don't want to lose shows, try replacing the cable. If that doesn't work, pull the drive and run the WD diagnostics on it from your pc. There's a good chance the drive itself is ok and you just need a new enclosure. That said, if you can get all the shows off of your drive before it totally bombs, I would just upgrade the internal.


Thanks for that...very good info. :up:


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## chrishicks (Dec 31, 2003)

I took apart my Expander and finally stopped running Spinrite on it(I let it run for a month straight and it never got passed the dreaded 43&#37; done spot). I installed in in an extra MX-1 case I have and tried Spinrite again. 43% and bam, same as before. I tried a new cable(Siig) and again nothing. I then ran the WD Diagnostics and it reported the drive was fine. 

I then reformatted the drive to use in Windows and try it out. Just for S&G I installed Hard Drive Inspector and it stated that the drive was pretty much toast. I ran the WD Diagnostics again it said the drive was fine so I'm not sure what the difference is between the two. I even tried a few other programs I had laying around(HDD Regenerator and HD Tune) and both of those pretty much locked up after scanning the drive after a while. Even running Windows own error checking it locked up after a while. 

Hard Drive Inspector reports read and write errors. This is while connected to the Antec case. I said forget it, took the drive out of the Antec and put it back in the original case. I decided to see how hot that case gets while having something read from it so I again started up HD Tune. While it was running a quick scan on the drive for errors the temp on the drive in the stock case flew up to over 131 degrees in a matter of minutes and it set off the alarm in HDI. The Antec case never even reached 100 degrees so the stock case is junk in that regard.

Another thing I noticed. While running Spinrite the drive will not report any S.M.A.R.T. info no matter the case it's installed in. It only reports it when Windows is actually running. Not sure if that's because it's connected via eSATA or what.

So it appears in my case I have both a bad drive and a bad case. I'm about to install the drive in the actual PC case next to see if there is some bad eSATA connection somewhere even though all the cables used are new before I write off the drive completely. If after that the drive still fails under everything but the WD Diagnostics I'm trashing it.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Wow...a double whammie. That pretty much stinks. Sooo...you'll be buying a replacement right away I take it? :down: It's too bad. If I were TiVo I'd be more than a little ticked. No HDD is perfect and there's always going to be a few bad apples, but it sure looks like the 500GB Expanders weren't up to the job. Hopefully the 1TB models will fair a little better. You certainly deserve an award for going way above the call of duty trying to make it work!


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## scooterboy (Mar 27, 2001)

I got a bad 1TB expander and returned it to WD for replacement. In the meantime, I upgraded the internal drive to a 1TB seagate so I'll have no use for the 1TB Expander replacement when it arrives this week.

If anyone wants to make me an offer for it, I'm listening, 

Edit to add: Unit is spoken for.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

Add me to the long list of those whose 500gb MyDVR Expanders failed. Fortunately, it happened within the one year limited warranty. I returned it to BB where it was purchased, received full, in-store credit and purchased a new all-in-one printer. Since my TiVo HD is our secondary TiVo and my S3 can store 106 HD hours, I just transfer shows I want to save for awhile or archive.


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## jadziedzic (Apr 20, 2009)

The one-year warranty on my TiVo HD was nearing its end, so I decided it was a good time to take the jump and upgrade the internal drive (and divorce the WD expander), just as a defensive nature given the issues some folks have had with the expanders.

The expander was working when removed two weeks ago; anyone interested in making me a reasonable offer for it, please contact me offline via PM or e-mail. The expander was purchased in April 2009.

Tony


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

jadziedzic said:


> .....The expander was purchased in April 2009.
> 
> Tony


That's when mine was purchased....it's due....


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## pgoelz (May 1, 2005)

Just as a small additional data point...... we just had an IDE drive in a generic USB/FW enclosure fail in exactly the same nammer as described here for the SATA MyBooks. It was being used for storage of Acronis TrueImage backup disk images. The failure minifested as intermittent read failures. CheckDisk found errors and repaired them but afterwards, TrueImage still claimed all drive images were corrupt when they were verified. 

Since I have been reading this thread, on a hunch I removed the HD and placed it in a different USB enclosure. It checked out clean according to CheckDisk and TrueImage now shows each image as valid and un-currupted. 

So it is not just MyBooks that have failing adapters. This generic USB/FW version was maybe 4-5 years old and until the other day was working perfectly. However, it got extremely light use since it was a backup drive. 

Paul


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

pgoelz said:


> Just as a small additional data point...... we just had an IDE drive in a generic USB/FW enclosure fail in exactly the same nammer as described here for the SATA MyBooks.


Thanks for that Paul. :up: Interesting that the drives are often outlasting the enclosures which have no moving parts. Heat? Bridge/chip failure? Who knows.

BTW, the drive's official name is the My DVR Expander. Just so there's no confusion, Western Digital also makes a "My Book" line of back-up drives...which do NOT work with TiVo.


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## Xemendios (Aug 24, 2009)

The easy solve, and the cheapest is to use TiVo desktop plus and have your programs auto-transfer to an 1tb drive connected to your pc. Less compatibility issues, cheaper about $120 total, and you can change the file format then put them onto compatible portable media devices. Not to mention if you need to you can remove the drive without losing all of your recordings


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

richsadams said:


> Thanks for that Paul. :up: Interesting that the drives are often outlasting the enclosures which have no moving parts. Heat? Bridge/chip failure? Who knows.


I buy a lot of electronic junk. Which means a lot of my junk fails after a number of years. I'd say the majority of my failures are the cheap wal-wart power supplies.

I wouldn't be surprised if, when a wal-wart fails, it has a good chance of (at least for a while) supplying too high a voltage. Which would have a good chance of taking out whatever it was attached to.

Not that the manufacturers care. I can't believe how many Netgear boxes I had fail before I finally wised up. Not that Linksys/Cisco is any better. I've taken to buying HP and Apple networking gear; we'll see if it lasts any longer.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> I wouldn't be surprised if, when a wal-wart fails, it has a good chance of (at least for a while) supplying too high a voltage. Which would have a good chance of taking out whatever it was attached to.
> 
> Not that the manufacturers care. I can't believe how many Netgear boxes I had fail before I finally wised up. Not that Linksys/Cisco is any better. I've taken to buying HP and Apple networking gear; we'll see if it lasts any longer.


That would certainly explain a lot! I've settled on D-Link and Apple and not much else. So far, so good.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Xemendios said:


> The easy solve, and the cheapest is to use TiVo desktop plus and have your programs auto-transfer to an 1tb drive connected to your pc. Less compatibility issues, cheaper about $120 total, and you can change the file format then put them onto compatible portable media devices. Not to mention if you need to you can remove the drive without losing all of your recordings


Welcome to the forum. That's not a bad plan. The downside is that it's time consuming to save things that you might not want to "archive" (even w/auto record) and then if/when you want to watch them some sort of TiVo Come Back has to be employed to reinstate the recording on your TiVo.

BTW, KTTMG and PyTiVo as well as iTiVo and PyTiVoX for Mac users have some additional flexibility over TiVo Desktop and Desktop Pro (which are good programs none the less). YMMV of course.

For me an internal upgrade is the way to go.


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

richsadams said:


> For me an internal upgrade is the way to go.


I've recently started to use the "TiVo to go" features. One big attraction is, once the bits are on your computer, they're easy to back up. E.g. on my Mac, Time Machine kicks in and automatically copies files to a 2nd drive.

There are many sad posters in these forums who lament the loss of their programs when their TiVo hard drives go south for the winter (and never come back).


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> There are many sad posters in these forums who lament the loss of their programs when their TiVo hard drives go south for the winter (and never come back).


Oh you said it. Believe me, if it's a recording I want to really keep it quickly gets copied or migrates from my TiVo to my NAS (RAID 1) for safe keeping. I'd hate to lose some of those shows that seem to never ever air twice! :up:


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## spacemn2 (Apr 1, 2010)

I just bought a 1TB my dvr expander and my less than 2yo S3 HD started locking and rebooting 3 days later. Disconnected the drive and everything was fine for a week. Re-attached and same thing, 3-4 days later started having problems again. Locks up and re-booted almost every other day. My 15day return window to B&H is expired now, what should I do? Call WD and get them to replace it? Is there a way to re-format the drive from scratch with the Tivo? Buy a better eSATA cable? I really really hate having to spend hours on the interweb researching all this BS constantly, I trusted that I was buying the right product the first time out.

Our first Tivo worked for 6 years flawlessly and this one was great with no issues up until I attached this drive.

Thanks for any help.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

spacemn2 said:


> I just bought a 1TB my dvr expander and my less than 2yo S3 HD started locking and rebooting 3 days later. Disconnected the drive and everything was fine for a week. Re-attached and same thing, 3-4 days later started having problems again. Locks up and re-booted almost every other day. My 15day return window to B&H is expired now, what should I do? Call WD and get them to replace it? Is there a way to re-format the drive from scratch with the Tivo? Buy a better eSATA cable? I really really hate having to spend hours on the interweb researching all this BS constantly, I trusted that I was buying the right product the first time out.
> 
> Our first Tivo worked for 6 years flawlessly and this one was great with no issues up until I attached this drive.
> 
> Thanks for any help.


Welcome to the fourm...sorry it's under such frustrating circumstances. Have a look at this troubleshooting post and see if anything makes sense (you've already done some of the suggestions):

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7553444#post7553444

Me? I would get an RMA from WD. The unit has a one-year full replacement warranty. It's unfortunate but hard drives can go bad and more often than not if they do it'll happen almost immediately.

FWIW although the 500GB WD My DVR Expanders are less than satisfactory (problems with eSATA cables initially and now short life-spans of 12 to 18 months), yours is one of the very few problems posted about the 1TB models and they've been out long enough for people to notice if they are trouble. So a replacement will more than likely work just fine.

Best of luck and let us know how it goes!


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## jgantert (Jan 24, 2008)

richsadams said:


> Me? I would get an RMA from WD. The unit has a one-year full replacement warranty.


Doesn't the 1TB edition have a 3 year warranty? Maybe you just got a dud? I'm thinking about picking one up, but after about 18 months my 500GB version died.

So far I haven't really heard too much bad about the 1TB version, but it hasn't been out long enough yet. I see supplies are back, and the prices are down a bit.


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## JTYoung1 (Aug 13, 2006)

I've had two bad 500GB WD Expander drives for my S3. They both failed (the electronics not the actual drive) after just over a year. I finally gave up and just put a 1TB drive in my S3.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

jgantert said:


> Doesn't the 1TB edition have a 3 year warranty?


Both the 500GB and 1TB WD My DVR Expander have a 1 year limited warranty.


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## jgantert (Jan 24, 2008)

richsadams said:


> Both the 500GB and 1TB WD My DVR Expander have a 1 year limited warranty.


Must be a typo on Best Buy's and Newegg's website then. They both show 3 years. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western...47&skuId=9341143&st=my dvr expander&cp=1&lp=1 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136384&Tpk=my dvr expander


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

I think the issue might be that Newegg.com lists the warranty as 3 years. However this Western digital support page lists it as 1 year, what is also interesting is that WD Caviar Black drives have a 5 year warranty.

Thanks,


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

jgantert said:


> Must be a typo on Best Buy's and Newegg's website then. They both show 3 years. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western...47&skuId=9341143&st=my dvr expander&cp=1&lp=1 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136384&Tpk=my dvr expander


That is interesting indeed. AFAIK WD has always listed both w/1 year warranties. In any case, anyone buying them from BB or Newegg would be wise to print out the web page and save it JIC!


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## turbobuick86 (May 3, 2002)

richsadams said:


> That is interesting indeed. AFAIK WD has always listed both w/1 year warranties. In any case, anyone buying them from BB or Newegg would be wise to print out the web page and save it JIC!


WD website and Amazon offer just 1 year limited warranty on the 1TB model. Be interesting to know if Newegg or Best Buy would honor 3 years. With the current price at BB($169+tax), it would be much cheaper to buy Amazon ($119) and add the 3 year Square Trade warranty($17).


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

turbobuick86 said:


> ...and add the 3 year Square Trade warranty($17).


I've come to rely on Square Trade for extended warranties almost exclusively. Although I have yet to use one, all of the reviews I've read...and I check periodically on various forums...have nothing but good things to say about them. Mind you, I don't buy extended warranties for everything, in fact I'm of the mind that most CE products, if they are going to fail, will do so right away and an extended warranty isn't usually needed and/or cost-effective. But for some of those high-end products, ST seems to have a very good offering. :up:


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## S3-2501 (Jun 2, 2007)

I was just watching the long weekly episode of Tekzilla on my Tivo, and they had on a data recovery expert talking about hard drives. He mentioned that newer WD drives in the last year or two have had problems with their circuit boards that can cause a drive to fail with symptoms similar to a bad head and the like. 

He said a tip-off to a newer WD drive that is more likely to have problems is a triangular shaped circuit board on the bottom of the drive. I took a look at the bottom of my dead WD Expander drive, and sure enough it has a triangular circuit board. It may be coincidence, or this may have something to do with why these drives have been so unreliable. Unfortunately, I didn't know to check if the WD10EVDS I put in my TivoHD a while back has a triangular circuit board as well. *gulp*

For those interested, you can download the Tekzilla episode to your Tivo and the information on WD drives is about 17 minutes in.


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## bowlingblogger (Oct 2, 2007)

S3-2501 said:


> Unfortunately, I didn't know to check if the WD10EVDS I put in my TivoHD a while back has a triangular circuit board as well. *gulp*
> 
> For those interested, you can download the Tekzilla episode to your Tivo and the information on WD drives is about 17 minutes in.


Good find--I'll have to check out Tekzilla. Just wanted to note that I had my WD10EVDS out of my Tivo earlier today and the circuit board is most definitely rectangular. I can't remember the build date offhand, but I'm pretty sure it's from Sept. or Oct. 2009 (it was a pre-Intellipark version of the drive).


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## S3-2501 (Jun 2, 2007)

bowlingblogger said:


> I had my WD10EVDS out of my Tivo earlier today and the circuit board is most definitely rectangular.


 Thanks for posting this! My WD10EVDS is from February 2010, but knowing yours was made within roughly 6 months of mine and has a rectangular board gives me reason to think that my drive doesn't have the problematic triangular one either. At least I know that unlike the crummy WD expander drives, the WD10EVDS has a 3-year warranty regardless of which board it has.


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## holmete (Aug 28, 2007)

Question to those with lifetime service for the Tivo HD, was your system drive stock or aftermarket? My DVR expander died a few months back and I am debating whether or not to upgrade the internal drive to 1TB. Prior to my knowing the expander was the problem Tivo said they would not support my system if I took it to Weaknees to figure out what was wrong. They only offered to swap my HD for a ($149.00) refurbished unit. If I change the drive can I still get the $99 dollar lifetime service?


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## bowlingblogger (Oct 2, 2007)

S3-2501 said:


> knowing yours was made within roughly 6 months of mine and has a rectangular board gives me reason to think that my drive doesn't have the problematic triangular one either.


Well, I feel like an idiot...I started doubting myself and pulled the drive out of the Tivo again, and lo and behold, it is the triangular board they show in that Tekzilla video. I was also wrong about the build date--it is actually Aug. 1, 2009...quite a bit earlier than I thought. Thank goodness for that 3-year warranty!

Sorry about that! Here's a photo I just took of the drive so you know I have it right this time.


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## S3-2501 (Jun 2, 2007)

bowlingblogger said:


> Sorry about that! Here's a photo I just took of the drive so you know I have it right this time.


 No problem. Thanks for the follow-up. It's no fun having to disconnect everything and open the Tivo up, so I appreciate your doing so to make sure. Like you said, thank goodness for the longer warranty on these drives!


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

holmete said:


> Question to those with lifetime service for the Tivo HD, was your system drive stock or aftermarket? My DVR expander died a few months back and I am debating whether or not to upgrade the internal drive to 1TB. Prior to my knowing the expander was the problem Tivo said they would not support my system if I took it to Weaknees to figure out what was wrong. They only offered to swap my HD for a ($149.00) refurbished unit. If I change the drive can I still get the $99 dollar lifetime service?


I can't speak to the $99 lifetime service you mentioned (in fact I'd like to hear more about it because I've never heard of it being that cheap!). However I can tell you that TiVo's Lifetime Service is tied to the box, not the hard drive. So if you replace the hard drive in your TiVo and it has lifetime service life will go on as usual.

Hope that helps, but if I missed the point completely feel free to have another go.


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## holmete (Aug 28, 2007)

richsadams said:


> I can't speak to the $99 lifetime service you mentioned (in fact I'd like to hear more about it because I've never heard of it being that cheap!). However I can tell you that TiVo's Lifetime Service is tied to the box, not the hard drive. So if you replace the hard drive in your TiVo and it has lifetime service life will go on as usual.
> 
> Hope that helps, but if I missed the point completely feel free to have another go.


I currently do not have lifetime service. My service contract ends in August and I want to know if I change the drive (upgrade to 1tb) can I still get lifetime in a few months? As far as the $99 dollars goes. It has been offered to certain Tivo useres because the service was not an option when they originally purchased their Tivo. See the link below....

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=442625&highlight=%2499+lifetime+service


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

holmete said:


> I currently do not have lifetime service. My service contract ends in August and I want to know if I change the drive (upgrade to 1tb) can I still get lifetime in a few months? As far as the $99 dollars goes. It has been offered to certain Tivo useres because the service was not an option when they originally purchased their Tivo. See the link below....
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=442625&highlight=%2499+lifetime+service


Ah, got it now. Wish they'd make me that offer! 

The answer then is yes, you can get lifetime service even if you've upgraded the hard drive since the service is tied to the box, not the hard drive. (No need to mention the upgrade to anyone of course.)

After you upgrade simply put the original drive on the shelf. If your new drive goes south one day you can pop the old one back in and be up and running in a few minutes. Plus you can always use your original hard drive to image a new drive in the future.

Happy upgrading!


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

richsadams said:


> Ah, got it now. Wish they'd make me that offer!


Did you do 3 yr prepaid? I think that's the key. If so, email to plead your case. Mention that others have been getting this deal. Link to the post. Mention that lifetime wasn't available when you purchased.

Worked for me. But I had a lifetimed unit from back in 2000 showing up on my account. Also, all except my 1st TiVo HD were already lifetimed, so TiVo knows that I would have definitely done lifetime on the 1st HD if it was available. Also, that was back in April, and other posts in that thread said that the deal was ending that month. But still other posts said that they were still being given the deal in May. YMMV.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> Did you do 3 yr prepaid? I think that's the key.


Unfortunately no, I've just gone w/1yr subs.  Thanks for the tip though...maybe it'll help someone else. :up:


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## bowlingblogger (Oct 2, 2007)

Aw man...I had a 3-yr subscription expire in April and I renewed it with a 1-yr. Doh!!!


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## Hawkeye22 (Aug 8, 2007)

My 500GB my dvr expander just died the other day after 3.5 years use. I'm guessing it's the IDE board or motor since whenever I plug in the power, the LED on the front lights up, but I can't hear the drive spin up. Luckily I had no problems divorcing the drive.


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## timcooper62 (May 31, 2010)

ZeoTiVo said:


> I had one expander given to me as a present. It died out of warranty - drive was burning hot - obvious it was dead. I just junked the whole thing and put in an internal 1TB drive and never looked back. Internal drive is just a much better solution and 1 TB more than serves my purposes.


When you installed the 1tb internal hard drive in your Tivo, did you have to re-pair the cablecard(s)? Charter is such a PIA to work with regarding cablecards, it makes the external drives more attractive to me.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

timcooper62 said:


> When you installed the 1tb internal hard drive in your Tivo, did you have to re-pair the cablecard(s)? Charter is such a PIA to work with regarding cablecards, it makes the external drives more attractive to me.


If you use the original hard drive to image the new one w/winMFS all of your settings will be saved including your SP's, cable cards, etc.

Visit the Expansion and Upgrade FAQ, linked below my signature, for everything you need to know.

EDIT: Just noticed that you're new to the forum...welcome. Since you can't "see" links until you have five posts...this is the FAQ thread's URL:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5616160#post5616160


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## timcooper62 (May 31, 2010)

richsadams said:


> If you use the original hard drive to image the new one w/winMFS all of your settings will be saved including your SP's, cable cards, etc.
> 
> Visit the Expansion and Upgrade FAQ, linked below my signature, for everything you need to know.
> 
> ...


----------



## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

timcooper62 said:


> richsadams said:
> 
> 
> > If you use the original hard drive to image the new one w/winMFS all of your settings will be saved including your SP's, cable cards, etc.
> ...


----------



## timcooper62 (May 31, 2010)

richsadams said:


> timcooper62 said:
> 
> 
> > Hi Tim. I did in fact buy a drive from Weaknees a long, long time ago for a Series1. They did a fine job then and from what I read here and there on this and other forums, still provide good products and service. They're a sponsor of this forum so they'd better!
> ...


----------



## timcooper62 (May 31, 2010)

richsadams said:


> Welcome to the fourm...sorry it's under such frustrating circumstances. Have a look at this troubleshooting post and see if anything makes sense (you've already done some of the suggestions):
> 
> Me? I would get an RMA from WD. The unit has a one-year full replacement warranty. It's unfortunate but hard drives can go bad and more often than not if they do it'll happen almost immediately.
> 
> ...


I have had similar issues with my 1tb MyDVRExpander. It works fine for a while. It seems like when the drive gets full I start having issues. The picture will stutter and at times the TV screen goes blank, the TIVO freezes, and this horrible screeching comes non-stop from the TV speakers. It only stops when you pull the plug on the TIVO.

I have run the kickstart programs to check the drives and all pass with flying colors. What I have been doing is divorcing the drives, then reinstalling the MyDVRExpander. It will work great for a few weeks and then start the same stuff over again. Naturally its out of warranty.

Thanks to this forum, I am going to attempt to do the internal upgrade myself with one of the Seagate Pipeline drives listed on the upgrade FAQ. I did not want to deal with the soft restart issues noted with the newer WD "green" drives. And those drives were all I could find from WD searching at stores like Newegg.


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## Brighton Line (Mar 15, 2006)

Just adding WD 500GB expander on a Series 3 (Hey it was a gift alright) and it went 14 months after install. I just bought a 1TB drive and put it in the S3, now have a backup drive for when my Tivo HD one goes.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

timcooper62 said:


> richsadams said:
> 
> 
> > Thanks. I purchased one of the Seagate Pipeline drives listed on the FAQ here from Newegg and will try my hand at upgrading myself to keep my cablecard settings. Charter is a royal pain in the ... to get any response regarding cablecards. They only make cablecard appointments between 1:00 and 1:01 on a rainy Tuesday..HA HA just kidding. But its almost as bad.
> ...


----------



## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Brighton Line said:


> Just adding WD 500GB expander on a Series 3 (Hey it was a gift alright) and it went 14 months after install. I just bought a 1TB drive and put it in the S3, now have a backup drive for when my Tivo HD one goes.


Congrats and welcome to the club! I'm not clear on what you did exactly, but a Series3 hard drive can't be used to image a TiVo HD hard drive. But maybe I misunderstood. Anyway, enjoy!


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## Brighton Line (Mar 15, 2006)

richsadams said:


> but a Series3 hard drive can't be used to image a TiVo HD hard drive. But maybe I misunderstood. Anyway, enjoy!


Didn't know that, when the Series 3 and it's Expander goes (on its 11th month) I'll just get antother TB drive for the Tivo HD. 
Thanks


----------



## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Brighton Line said:


> Didn't know that, when the Series 3 and it's Expander goes (on its 11th month) I'll just get antother TB drive for the Tivo HD.
> Thanks


Good plan. :up:


----------



## John Wilson (Dec 30, 2001)

richsadams said:


> timcooper62 said:
> 
> 
> > Although the upgrade instructions look a bit complicated, it's really pretty easy once you get going. Basically all it involves is copying the image from the original drive, copying that image to a new drive and "telling" the OS that the new drive is bigger than the old one. There are a few more steps than that of course, but in a nutshell, that's it. Just be sure to follow each step exactly and you should have a "brand new" TiVo in no time. :up:
> ...


----------



## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

John Wilson said:


> My questions about this are;
> a. Will the image work correctly on the new drive even though the old drive was once "married" to the extrenal drive?
> b. Will the cablecard info be saved onto the new drive?
> c. Will letting the TiVo divorce the external drive corrupt the internal drive prior to getting an image using winmfs?
> ...


You're making it too easy on us today.  First your plan is a solid one that's been done many times by many folks here.

The steps to remove the eSATA drive are correct as noted here:

http://www.tivo.com/mytivo/howto/getconnected/howto_add_recording_capacity.html

To answer your questions...

a. Yes. Once properly divorced TiVo reverts back to single drive status.
b. Yes. Cable card info, SP's, etc. are all saved.
c. No.

Bottom line is that as long as you properly divorce the external hard drive you should be fine. Be sure to let TiVo do its housekeeping work after you divorce the drive. It can take a couple of hours or more (but probably less since you have an OEM drive inside TiVo) depending on how many recordings you had (both existing and in the recently deleted folder). Once it reboots after the divorce I'd try a couple of quick recordings to make sure it's working properly. If so you should be good to go.

Happy upgrading!


----------



## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

John Wilson said:


> Everything is working fine now but I'd like to go to a 1 TB internal setup for long-term reliability reasons. I've been hesitant because of the horror stories on this forum about divorcing the drives using the TiVo and then having the internal drive not behave as well.


I'm one of those who has posted "horror stories". But my problems were after my WD expanders broke. I don't think there's any problem divorcing drives while both the internal and the external are still working.


----------



## timcooper62 (May 31, 2010)

richsadams said:


> timcooper62 said:
> 
> 
> > Although the upgrade instructions look a bit complicated, it's really pretty easy once you get going. Basically all it involves is copying the image from the original drive, copying that image to a new drive and "telling" the OS that the new drive is bigger than the old one. There are a few more steps than that of course, but in a nutshell, that's it. Just be sure to follow each step exactly and you should have a "brand new" TiVo in no time. :up:
> ...


----------



## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

timcooper62 said:


> Thanks alot for your help. I upgraded the TIVO last night. It was "stupid" simple to do thanks to the excellent directions on the forum. The new drive is in and running fine. My cablecards worked perfectly, no reprovsioning needed.
> 
> I had to purchase an additional SATA cable to accomadate the back up and restore process. I only have one drive currently in my computer. While at the computer store, I was chatting with the guy there about upgrading the TIVO and he was telling me that Seagate has had a lot of failures on their 1 Tb disk drives. GREAT, thats what I need to hear  Hopefully its limited to the Barricuda drives and not the Pipeline series. I got my fingers crossed.


Most of the issues Seagate has had are with their 1.5TB drives. It started with firmware problems and has continued with a high failure and DOA rate. Hard to say what happened, but for the most part their 1TB drives seem to on par with most others AFAIK so I wouldn't be too concerned. The Pipeline series is supposed to be fairly quiet and cool. How is yours doing?

Congrats on the upgrade and enjoy your "new" TiVo!


----------



## timcooper62 (May 31, 2010)

richsadams said:


> Most of the issues Seagate has had are with their 1.5TB drives. It started with firmware problems and has continued with a high failure and DOA rate. Hard to say what happened, but for the most part their 1TB drives seem to on par with most others AFAIK so I wouldn't be too concerned. The Pipeline series is supposed to be fairly quiet and cool. How is yours doing?
> 
> Congrats on the upgrade and enjoy your "new" TiVo!


It was working perfectly. Running very quiet. At least I could not hear it with my ear pressed against the TIVO.

I did get excited for a few minutes. The "Now Playing" list showed all my recorded programs after upgrading. I thought nice, it backed up the recorede programs too. Yeah the program names were there but once you clicked on it, an error came up about a signal loss or something like that. No big deal, I just deleted them before it started recording on the new drive.


----------



## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

timcooper62 said:


> It was working perfectly. Running very quiet. At least I could not hear it with my ear pressed against the TIVO.
> 
> I did get excited for a few minutes. The "Now Playing" list showed all my recorded programs after upgrading. I thought nice, it backed up the recorede programs too. Yeah the program names were there but once you clicked on it, an error came up about a signal loss or something like that. No big deal, I just deleted them before it started recording on the new drive.


Yeah, the recordings list can fake people out. Glad to hear that you cannot hear it! Nice work. Enjoy!


----------



## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

Interesting that there hasn't been any activity in this thread for 2 months. I have two of these things running in TiVo HDs, one is about to be a year old and the warranty will expire so I was just thinking about this thread I recalled following here many months ago. I have of course been expecting mine to fail and with my luck it will be after the warranty period is up so I thought I would refresh my memory about the various issues. Nothing I can do now as an expected failure is not covered under the warranty which runs out in a few days. My TiVo warranty is up in a couple of days now as well. I must say without reading this thread I wouldn't think there is any serious problem, mine have been quiet and perfect so far.


----------



## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Chris Gerhard said:


> Interesting that there hasn't been any activity in this thread for 2 months. <snip>


There have been ongoing reports of 500GB WD My DVR Expanders failing (usually between 12 and 18 months) but most are posted on the Drive Expansion and Upgrade FAQ thread.

It appears...at least so far...that the 1TB WD My DVR Expanders have a better track record than their smaller siblings. Fingers crossed that continues.

So hang in there, but if you do start to see some "bugs" make sure you transfer any recordings you can't live without to another TiVo or to your computer and disconnect your external drive ASAP.

FWIW a few folks have posted about their 500GB Expanders still running after two or more years so you could easily be one of the lucky ones!


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

richsadams said:


> ...FWIW a few folks have posted about their 500GB Expanders still running after two or more years so you could easily be one of the lucky ones!


Seems like those are few and far between unfortunately. I was one of many who had the 500gb model crap out at around one year. Fortunately I bought it at BB and netted a full refund.


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## aglowlight (Nov 21, 2008)

Most people may have tried this, who knows. I've had several external hard drives fail lately and the culprit was the power supply. After replacing the power supply all previous issues went away. It was really frustrating, but a good lesson learned. Always check the power supply by replacing it with a different one first (same or nearly same power specs).


----------



## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

richsadams said:


> There have been ongoing reports of 500GB WD My DVR Expanders failing (usually between 12 and 18 months) but most are posted on the Drive Expansion and Upgrade FAQ thread.
> 
> It appears...at least so far...that the 1TB WD My DVR Expanders have a better track record than their smaller siblings. Fingers crossed that continues.
> 
> ...


I have one 1TB and one 500GB. The 1TB warranty expires in a few days and I purchased a used TiVo HD with 500GB DVR Expander, no warranty.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

In some ways, I am very glad my 500gb expander started dying several months ago. The upgrade process was far easier than I could have ever expected. And now with a backup image, I am armed and ready if my Hitachi 1tb driver ever goes.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

jlb said:


> In some ways, I am very glad my 500gb expander started dying several months ago. The upgrade process was far easier than I could have ever expected. And now with a backup image, I am armed and ready if my Hitachi 1tb driver ever goes.


Agreed. I know upgrading the internal drive isn't for everyone and that "plug and pray" is the easy way to go, but I have to believe there are a lot of unhappy people out there (most of which never find their way here) that end up losing all of their recordings. Both WD and TiVo must be taking a good amount of heat for that. Maybe that's why they no longer make the 500GB models.

What's a bit surprising (or maybe not) is that I've never seen a "reconditioned" WD My DVR Expander for sale anywhere. By now I'd think that there s/b oodles of them. I do see reconditioned 500GB WD bare hard drives now and then but no Expanders. What that tells me is that WD is just tossing out the enclosures and not even making an effort to fix them. Not a good sign IMHO.

Hopefully the 1TB models will have a better track record.


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## budweisr33 (Aug 23, 2010)

Installed My DVR Expander today.All went well so let the countdown begin!


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

budweisr33 said:


> Installed My DVR Expander today.All went well so let the countdown begin!


500GB or 1TB?


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## budweisr33 (Aug 23, 2010)

richsadams said:


> 500GB or 1TB?


1T. was very easy. I ordered it 2 days ago and expected it on the 9th but was surprised this morning by FED EX. NO tax and shipping was free.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

budweisr33 said:


> 1T. was very easy. I ordered it 2 days ago and expected it on the 9th but was surprised this morning by FED EX. NO tax and shipping was free.


Sweet! (Was that info in your signature earlier? If so, d'oh!  ).

FWIW as mentioned the 1TB Expanders seem to be doing much better than the original 500GB models. Only time will tell, but by this time in the 500GB life cycle there were a lot of complaints here and elsewhere. That hasn't happened with the 1TB's. Maybe WD has learned their lesson.

Enjoy!


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## budweisr33 (Aug 23, 2010)

richsadams said:


> Sweet! (Was that info in your signature earlier? If so, d'oh!  ).
> Enjoy!


No I't was not.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

budweisr33 said:


> No I't was not.


Phew! Thought I was losing it!


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## budweisr33 (Aug 23, 2010)

Good deal too @ Total: $106.95


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## dave13077 (Jan 11, 2009)

budweisr33 said:


> Good deal too @ Total: $106.95


Where did you find it at that price? Also is it the new ( USB ) model or the older 1tb model?


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## budweisr33 (Aug 23, 2010)

dave13077 said:


> Where did you find it at that price? Also is it the new ( USB ) model or the older 1tb model?


http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=Western+Digital+My+DVR+Expander+1+TB&N=0&InitialSearch=yes


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## kdigit0l (Nov 29, 2009)

I guess it's worth mentioning that my 500GB WD Expander failed after about 2 years. Still unacceptable for a drive I spent $200 on. I recently did the internal 1TB upgrade for a grand total of about $80. Awesome upgrade. Awesome price. I did it with the instructions on this forum (thanks again!). I would never add an external drive again. BTW the drive itself inside the WD enclosure) is fine and resides as part of a RAID array in my FreeNAS box now. Like other users report, the drive enclosure is usually the faulty part of the equation, not the drive itself. Aside from the failure issue, we often had problems rebooting the TiVo with the expander attached after power failures, causing us to miss many recordings when we went on vacation and had power outages. I will not buy another WD expander ever.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

kdigit0l said:


> I guess it's worth mentioning that my 500GB WD Expander failed after about 2 years. Still unacceptable for a drive I spent $200 on.


Agreed, and a bummer but thanks for the info...it may help others that follow.

Glad to hear that you were able to upgrade the internal drive. Ours is still humming along after several years.


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## mphtrilogy (May 29, 2007)

I am having problmes with my Tivo, but I am not sure if it is my Expander which is 2 years old. I have several channels usually in HD that are not fully taping the shows and they are shown as "partial" and do not tape the whole show. I have not noticed on standard channels.

I have FIOS, and I have added attenutation etc, and have had Fios for 2 years, with no problems like this.

Is it FIOS or is it the Expander?

Any thoughts?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

mphtrilogy said:


> I am having problmes with my Tivo, but I am not sure if it is my Expander which is 2 years old.


See my response to your same post here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8123422#post8123422


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## mphtrilogy (May 29, 2007)

richsadams said:


> See my response to your same post here:
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8123422#post8123422


Rich,

Can I move my cable cards from one Tivo HD to another TIVO HD? Or do I need to call in Verizon for the switch?


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## aglowlight (Nov 21, 2008)

mphtrilogy said:


> Rich,
> 
> Can I move my cable cards from one Tivo HD to another TIVO HD? Or do I need to call in Verizon for the switch?


You'll have to call and have the cards paired to the new box.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

aglowlight said:


> You'll have to call and have the cards paired to the new box.


Probably not.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

mphtrilogy said:


> Rich,
> 
> Can I move my cable cards from one Tivo HD to another TIVO HD? Or do I need to call in Verizon for the switch?


Unless VZ has paired cable cards in your particular area (they probably haven't) you s/b able to move them freely. VZ has begun pairing cable cards in some areas, but mostly those that they are going to sell (to Frontier).


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## mphtrilogy (May 29, 2007)

richsadams said:


> Unless VZ has paired cable cards in your particular area (they probably haven't) you s/b able to move them freely. VZ has begun pairing cable cards in some areas, but mostly those that they are going to sell (to Frontier).


Thanks Rich, I'll be giving it a try probably this weekend.

Looks like ye-olde 500G extender is indeed on the Fritz.


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## Torino (Oct 5, 2006)

I have a 500gb Expander. I bought the Tivo and expander used so I have no idea how old it is. There is so much info on this thread I can't take it all in. So, what is the best course of action to take? If I decide to do away with the expander can I use it with one of my other computers?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Torino said:


> I have a 500gb Expander. I bought the Tivo and expander used so I have no idea how old it is. There is so much info on this thread I can't take it all in. So, what is the best course of action to take? If I decide to do away with the expander can I use it with one of my other computers?


To answer your last question first, yes. The WD My DVR Expander is a normal external hard drive with an eSATA connection. If you have a computer with an eSATA port you can connect it directly and use it that way. If you only have USB ports you can remove the hard drive from the enclosure and install it in an appropriate USB enclosure or you could install it internally if your computer has SATA ports (and most computers built in the last five years or so do).

I'm not sure what you're looking for otherwise. If you're asking if you should use the Expander with your TiVo my opinion, based on a few years of posts here and elsewhere, would be no if you value your recordings.

The original 500GB Western Digital My DVR Expander was troublesome from the start, mostly due to it's poor eSATA cable design (which was improved after about six months). Since then they have proven to be marginal with respect to longevity. The average life is somewhere around 12 to 18 months. Often the problem turns out to be a failed enclosure with the actual hard drive still being useful.

That said, you can try using it for a while, but keep in mind that if it goes south all of the recordings made from the day it was attached will be lost. Most folks would recommend upgrading the internal hard drive and removing a second point of failure (the eSATA drive).

If you do decide to upgrade or just want to find out more about your eSATA drive, everything you need to know can be found on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5616160#post5616160

Hope that helps!


----------



## John Wilson (Dec 30, 2001)

I have an old expander that refused to play nice with my TiVo. I expanded with an internal drive upgrade and now have this Expander just sitting around. Can you give me any hints on how to get the case open so I can use the drive(probably good) in another application? I can't figure how to get in there

Thanks for hints/procedure.


----------



## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

John Wilson said:


> I have an old expander that refused to play nice with my TiVo. I expanded with an internal drive upgrade and now have this Expander just sitting around. Can you give me any hints on how to get the case open so I can use the drive(probably good) in another application? I can't figure how to get in there
> 
> Thanks for hints/procedure.


I've never opened that particular case but I have opened other WD enclosures and they don't make it easy. If you're not worried about saving the enclosure, brute force is generally the way to go. Prying the box open at the seams around the edges with a screwdriver will usually do it. Be careful not to insert the tip any further than necessary or you risk damaging the hard drive itself.

Once you have it out it's a good idea to run a full diagnostic on it. Western Digital's Lifeguard is what the doctor ordered. Run the extended read/write/read test and if it passes it should be good for repurposing. If not, at least you know and won't lose any valuable data.


----------



## Torino (Oct 5, 2006)

I guess what I will do is transfer the shows to my pc and maybe try some of the cheap fixes like changing the cord. How can I tell if I have the newer cord or not?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Torino said:


> How can I tell if I have the newer cord or not?


The issue was with the eSATA cable's connector itself. Generally the connection was loose at the TiVo end as the original connectors did not seat properly because they were too short. Some folks started trimming the plastic insulation back to get a better connection.

It's difficult to tell the difference unless you have a good cable/connector and a "bad" one side-by-side but here's what it looks like:










If the connection is loose (at either end) it's best to get a replacement cable. Keep in mind there are still cables in the wild using the "short" connector so I wouldn't just pick up the first one you see at the local electronics store. The recommended SIIG Serial ATA external cable is less than $10.


----------



## md_lloyd (Nov 26, 2010)

For what's it's worth- I just upgraded a HD unit (mfscopy did not transfer my recordings). I have found some interesting things out about WD drives. They have an autopark after 8 sec., TIVO is a Linux OS and apparently it polls the drives every 11 sec., so, run for 8 sec., then park and in 3 sec. , restart.... up..down..up..down... MTBF is calculated by number of expected landings.


----------



## Torino (Oct 5, 2006)

Thanks for the info Rich.


----------



## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

md_lloyd said:


> For what's it's worth- I just upgraded a HD unit (mfscopy did not transfer my recordings). I have found some interesting things out about WD drives. They have an autopark after 8 sec., TIVO is a Linux OS and apparently it polls the drives every 11 sec., so, run for 8 sec., then park and in 3 sec. , restart.... up..down..up..down... MTBF is calculated by number of expected landings.


Welcome to the forum. I believe you're referring to WD's "Intellipark" feature. It's been problematic for about a year now and can cause upgraded TiVo's to either not boot up at all or not reboot after a menu restart (or after an OS upgrade) and requiring a full power cycle to recover. However WD drives manufactured after 09/15/10 changed and no longer present a problem.

More info can be found about how to address the issue (by extending or disabling the timeout) on the Drive Expansion and Drive upgrade FAQ, specifically Section IV, #29:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5616160#post5616160


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

richsadams said:


> It's difficult to tell the difference unless you have a good cable/connector and a "bad" one side-by-side but here's what it looks like:


That image "does the job". But, ouch! My eyes! The lack of focus! I think this is why many cameras have a "macro" setting!


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> That image "does the job". But, ouch! My eyes! The lack of focus! I think this is why many cameras have a "macro" setting!


LOL. Yeah, that image actually came from another TCF member (can't recall who or I'd give credit), posted way back when. I saved it for posterities sake. It is pretty tough to look at but gets the idea across. If I had one of the "bad" eSATA cables I'd create a new one. There was another, much clearer shot like that posted by someone else a couple of years ago but for the life of me I can't find it anywhere.

EDIT: Ha! I found the original post for that one by kdmorse back in May '07: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5147117#post5147117


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

I just remembered that Spike (mfslive.org) had a good shot of the various cables! The Tripp-Lite and the Antec MX-1 cables are examples of "good" eSATA connectors.

As mentioned, WD started using eSATA cables with the correct connectors about two years ago. However the recommended SIIG Serial ATA external cable (http://www.provantage.com/siig-cb-sa0111-s1~7SISE00F.htm) is a good replacement, works for everyone and is less than $10.


----------



## qdemn7 (Jun 7, 2005)

John Wilson said:


> I have an old expander that refused to play nice with my TiVo. I expanded with an internal drive upgrade and now have this Expander just sitting around. Can you give me any hints on how to get the case open so I can use the drive(probably good) in another application? I can't figure how to get in there
> 
> Thanks for hints/procedure.


 My 500GB Expander started failing, so I took it apart, checked the drive and installed the drive in a Rosewill external enclosure, and now the drive works fine with my Tivo. I thought my drive was failing, as it was making a clicking sound. I even made a thread about it. Turns out it was just the controller. The Expander is a cheap piece off junk, not even a fan to cool the drive, so WD must consider these things disposable.

*You end up destroying the enclosure, so realize that from the start. Only the drive is salvageable the rest become trash.*

(1) Brute force, and both flathead and Phillips screwdrivers are required.

(2) Start out by looking for the end or seam of rubber strip that goes around the edge of the enclosure. It yours is all one piece, just pick a convenient place to start.

(3) Use the flat head screwdriver to start peeling up the strip. Peel off the entire strip and toss in the trash.

(4) Again using the flathead looks for plastic clips around the edge of the enclosure that were hidden by the strip. Start popping them loose.

(5) Once you have all the clips loose, then pull the enclosure case apart. It's like a clamshell. * Watch for sharp edges!*

(6) Now use your Phillips screwdriver to unscrew all the Phillips screws holding the drive to the controller and the rest of the enclosure. *Again watch for sharp metal edges. *

(7) Toss everything but the drive into the trash.

(8) Hook your drive up to your computer and use the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic to test the drive.

(9) If it tests out then install in your new external enclosure.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

qdemn7 said:


> My 500GB Expander started failing, so I took it apart, checked the drive and installed the drive in a Rosewill external enclosure, and now the drive works fine with my Tivo.


That's good news about your eSATA drive continuing to work with your TiVo in a new enclosure. Based on posts it's been about a 50/50 success story for folks being able to keep them going that way so it's always worth a shot.

Nice step-by-step destruction instructions as well.  :up:


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## qdemn7 (Jun 7, 2005)

richsadams said:


> That's good news about your eSATA drive continuing to work with your TiVo in a new enclosure. Based on posts it's been about a 50/50 success story for folks being able to keep them going that way so it's always worth a shot.
> 
> Nice step-by-step destruction instructions as well.  :up:


Yes, I was VERY lucky. I was going to go with the Antec MX-1, but Newegg had their house brand Rosewill on sale on Black Friday for half the price of the Antec.

When I heard the drive start clicking at a very rapid rate, I figured it was toast. I was completely disgusted to see just what a piece of junk the Expander truly is, with absolutely no fan at all for cooling. I think this lack of a fan is what is causing the high failure rates. Seems silly to not spend an extra $2 adding a fan when building these things.


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

richsadams said:


> I just remembered that Spike (mfslive.org) had a good shot of the various cables!


Wow. those are really good. The only thing missing is the penny for scale (can you work on getting that into the picture)? I suppose the ruler should make up for that, but it's marked in CM. What are those? Is that the French abbreviation for inches? 

I wonder if the problem is a badly written eSATA spec, or if some of the manufacturers just don't care about meeting the tolerances in the spec?


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## tmesser (Apr 12, 2003)

My roughly 30-month-old 500GB Expander connected to my TiVo HD is on its way out. It's been occasionally glitchy for the last year, but I pushed it and now it's uncooperative. It rarely gets through playing or recording a whole show without rebooting at least once.

I have solved the problem for now by buying the $60 woot.com Premiere  but I was hoping to copy as much of the content as possible. It always continued to boot just fine using the original WD enclosure, so I thought the drive itself might be fine. Today, I transplanted it into a Vantec NexStar3 enclosure. The drive spins up, but the TiVo gets caught in a "Welcome! Powering up..." reboot loop. If I disconnect the drive, TiVo gets to the "External Storage Missing" warning screen (I have not proceeded to divorce the drive yet).

My only available computer is a Mac laptop, and I don't see a version of WD Data Lifeguard diagnostics for Mac to test the drive.

Any suggestions?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

tmesser said:


> My roughly 30-month-old 500GB Expander connected to my TiVo HD is on its way out. It's been occasionally glitchy for the last year, but I pushed it and now it's uncooperative. It rarely gets through playing or recording a whole show without rebooting at least once.
> 
> I have solved the problem for now by buying the $60 woot.com Premiere  but I was hoping to copy as much of the content as possible. It always continued to boot just fine using the original WD enclosure, so I thought the drive itself might be fine. Today, I transplanted it into a Vantec NexStar3 enclosure. The drive spins up, but the TiVo gets caught in a "Welcome! Powering up..." reboot loop. If I disconnect the drive, TiVo gets to the "External Storage Missing" warning screen (I have not proceeded to divorce the drive yet).
> 
> ...


Sorry to hear that. Testing the drive won't actually help your situation. If it passes or doesn't won't cure what ails it. Even if you ran the extended test (write all zeroes) that would wipe all of the data from the drive and you'd be left with nothing.

You might instead try running a couple of TiVo's built-in diagnostic and repair programs while the drive is connected. More here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showpost.php?p=5643823&postcount=2

If you have recordings you can't live without and don't mind spending some money (about $100) a program called SpinRite can sometimes repair the data on a drive to make it serviceable again.

FWIW 30 months is far beyond the average 12 to 18 month lifespan of the 500GB WD My DVR Expanders (and of course they only have a one-year warranty) so it's done well. It sounds like the drive has bitten the dust, but you never know. KS57 or KS58 may be able to resolve things long enough for you to move your recordings.

Going forward your best bet is to upgrade the internal hard drive and remove one fail point. More here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5616160#post5616160 (Up to 1TB)

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968 (Up to 2TB for TiVo HD/HDXL and Premiere and Premiere XL)

Hope that helps a little, best of luck and let us know how it goes.


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## tmesser (Apr 12, 2003)

I pulled the WD enclosure out of the garbage and put the drive back in it. KS57 has gotten it working again for now. (I'm still confused as to why the TiVo wouldn't even boot with the Vantec enclosure.)

Thanks for the help!


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

tmesser said:


> I pulled the WD enclosure out of the garbage and put the drive back in it. KS57 has gotten it working again for now. (I'm still confused as to why the TiVo wouldn't even boot with the Vantec enclosure.)
> 
> Thanks for the help!


Hard to say why the Vantec enclosure didn't work. It may have been a bridge issue or something.

Glad to hear it's back up and running. :up: Transfer those (unprotected) recordings while you can!


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## tmesser (Apr 12, 2003)

Well, I spoke too soon. After getting improved functionality for a while, it's now stuck in a GSOD reboot loop. I may try KS57 and KS58 again.

There is nothing on this particular TiVo that is truly irreplaceable (just a bit inconvenient to lose), so I may also give up and divorce the drives. I'm not sure whether it's worth spending much more time on this.


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## Bassplayer (Oct 5, 2003)

What does failure look like? Last night during the superbowl, the sound on the Tivo feed kept going in and out, but other HDtvs in the house were fine. I started swapping video cables and then my Tivo rebooted and ever since it says External storage missing. I'm trying to figure out if the expander died or if I pulled on a cbale that was tangled with the eSATA cable and stressed out the connector on the Tivo. It doesn't feel any more or any less tight than it did before.

Does anything like poor video/audio quality precede the failure? I'm trying to decide what to do here. I'm probably going out this morning to get a new case for the expander first. Then I don't know what. I don't want to lose everything on the Tivo.


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## Bassplayer (Oct 5, 2003)

Oh well, new case did not work, and that drive in the new case shows up as a working drive on my Windows laptop. So now I'm wondering if I broke the eSATA port on my Premiere when tugging other cables (it was a rat's nest back there - dunno why.)

Anyone know a way to test it? I've plugged in another drive and it says the same thing - I was hoping it would state that "this drive is not compatible) or something to that effect.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Bassplayer said:


> What does failure look like? Last night during the superbowl, the sound on the Tivo feed kept going in and out, but other HDtvs in the house were fine. I started swapping video cables and then my Tivo rebooted and ever since it says External storage missing. I'm trying to figure out if the expander died or if I pulled on a cbale that was tangled with the eSATA cable and stressed out the connector on the Tivo. It doesn't feel any more or any less tight than it did before.
> 
> Does anything like poor video/audio quality precede the failure? I'm trying to decide what to do here. I'm probably going out this morning to get a new case for the expander first. Then I don't know what. I don't want to lose everything on the Tivo.





Bassplayer said:


> Oh well, new case did not work, and that drive in the new case shows up as a working drive on my Windows laptop. So now I'm wondering if I broke the eSATA port on my Premiere when tugging other cables (it was a rat's nest back there - dunno why.)
> 
> Anyone know a way to test it? I've plugged in another drive and it says the same thing - I was hoping it would state that "this drive is not compatible) or something to that effect.


Wow...during the Superbowl? That was some bad timing.

The A/V problems you described do fit the pattern of a failing drive. If you tried it in a new case and still got the "External storage missing" screen odds are it's the drive and not the enclosure.

Plugging in another eSATA drive would cause the same screen to appear as TiVo is looking for the specific hard drive when it boots up, not an enclosure, etc. In other words that message will appear until the drive it's looking for is reattached or until you follow the proper divorce procedures. (After thant connecting another, unauthorized drive would lead you to the incompatible message screen).

It's not likely that the eSATA port would have failed and if it had the A/V problems you experienced probably wouldn't have appeared...it would just stop working. Of course there's a remote possibility that the port was damaged when you disconnected the drive after the issues and now it cannot recognize your eSATA drive in the new case. However I'd say the odds of the actual eSATA drive going bad are much higher than your having damaged the port.

It's remotely possible that the eSATA cable failed. You could try a new cable. The recommended SIIG Serial ATA external cable is about $10. But again, based on the problems you saw, it's more likely a drive failure.

You mentioned that the eSATA drive showed up as "working" when you connect it to a Windows laptop? How did you determine that? The drive shouldn't appear at all since it's not formatted for Windows (unless you were using MFSTools, winMFS or some other Unix/Linux program). The reason I ask is that if you used Windows disk manager to format the drive to read it, it will no longer work with TiVo anyway.

In any case, it does sound like your eSATA drive died. You could try reattaching it and running TiVo's built-in diagnostic and repair programs called "Kickstarts":

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showpost.php?p=5643823&postcount=2

Follow the directions carefully and it's possible that if it's only data corruption TiVo may be able to resolve it. But again, based on your description, the drive has probably failed.

If the drive has failed your only option is to properly divorce it (follow the on-screen instructions). Unfortunately you will lose all of the recordings made since the external drive was connected.

Going forward you might want to consider upgrading the internal hard drive. If you have a Series3 (original HD TiVo) or a TiVo HD the 1TB upgrade DIY instructions are here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5616160#post5616160

If you have a TiVo HD or HDXL you can upgrade to a 2TB hard drive by following these instructions:

http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=462179

Or you also have the option of buying a pre-imaged drive from Weaknees.com or DVRUpgrade.com

Hope that helps and let us know how it goes.


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## Bassplayer (Oct 5, 2003)

Actually, forgot to update this. I drug out my old HD XL and the expander worked on it - at least, it popped up a screen saying that it was the wrong expander. So I called Tivo, and they're replacing my premiere under warranty. So I've lost my shows, but at least it should be working again.

As far as the Windows laptop, it of course didn't show up on the explorer, but it showed up as an unknown drive under the disk management control panel. I didn't format it of course.

Now, the question is - do I move my drive over from the old premiere to the new premiere? It'll void my warranty on the new one, but would I get my shows back?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Bassplayer said:


> Actually, forgot to update this. I drug out my old HD XL and the expander worked on it - at least, it popped up a screen saying that it was the wrong expander. So I called Tivo, and they're replacing my premiere under warranty. So I've lost my shows, but at least it should be working again.
> 
> As far as the Windows laptop, it of course didn't show up on the explorer, but it showed up as an unknown drive under the disk management control panel. I didn't format it of course.


 Ah, got it. Sorry to hear about that, but these things happen.



Bassplayer said:


> Now, the question is - do I move my drive over from the old premiere to the new premiere? It'll void my warranty on the new one, but would I get my shows back?


Since recordings are striped across both the internal and external drives, unfortunately you've lost all of your recordings. If you have one of the approved eSATA drives (WD My DVR Expander or a WD My Book A/V DVR Expander) you could connect it and your warranty will remain intact. Your new TiVo would ask if you want to add the drive and with three thumbs up it would format it and treat it like a new drive.

My two cents? Two hard drives = two failure points. One hard drive is better. Repurpose your external drive and upgrade your new Premiere (after a month or so to be sure everything is in working order). You can put the original hard drive from the Premiere on the shelf in case something goes wrong (besides the hard drive) with your new TiVo. If something did fail (the power supply for instance) you can always slip the original hard drive back in and as long as you don't have a really strong desire to confess your upgrade, you can still get warranty support. If you're comfortable connecting a hard drive to a computer you can upgrade your new Premiere to 1TB or 2TB's of recording goodness. Everything you need to know can be found on this thread:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968

FWIW I (and a lot of other folks) have upgraded our Premieres to 2TB's recently. Now we have 317 HD Recording Hours and are very happy.


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## Bill Freyfogle (Apr 29, 2002)

Well, my WD 500 GB DVR Expander finally called it quits today. After 4 years, 1 month of flawless service, today TIVO told me it could no longer see my external hard drive. After reading the posts here, I figure I got lucky with how long it lasted. I took it back to Best Buy and they told me they had no way to test the unit and also told me WD no longer makes external drives for TIVO.

So, I called my friends at Weaknees and they recommend I put a brand new INTERNAL drive into my 5-year old Series 3. So, I ordered the 2 TB drive which, when installed, will give me 320 hours of HD recording. It set me back $315 including the expedited shipping costs. 

I feel lucky my Expander lasted 4 years, 1 month and now look forward to having MONSTER capacity for many more years.

I still have my original Series 1 TIVO in the bedroom. I bought this machine the end of February 2001 and it runs on a replacement hard drive and an external modem but it still works. I bought the Lifetime Subscription for it in April 2001 so I'd say I am getting my money's worth on that one too!

Thanks for all the help on this board!

Bill


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## cmaquilino16 (Jul 7, 2009)

So if you are getting pixeltion and slow guide menu showing, and audio problems would this be signs that my Wd dvr expander is going to stop working. Will the TiVo Hd let me know. The expander is making hard drive clicking noise. I had the Expander for 2 1/2 years. How do you unmarry the external drive once it goes?


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## Brighton Line (Mar 15, 2006)

cmaquilino16 said:


> ...How do you unmarry the external drive once it goes?


Power down both the Tivo and the External Drive. Unlpug the external drive from the Tivo and then plug in the Tivo.
When the Tivo boots you will get a message the external drive is missing, that yo will loose most of your recordings and do ye olde three thumbs down and enter. The Tivo will reboot and unmarry the drive, it will take a little longer reboot then normal.

FWIW


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

I have a 1TB and 500GB external still going strong after a little less than 3 years and about 4 years respectively. No signs of any problems whatsoever and that provides all of the storage I need. I must say I feel pretty lucky based on reading of all the failures here. I keep planning to buy a replacement enclosure, maybe when I do see a failure, it will be only the enclosure, not the drive that fails. Seeing this thread made me think of that again, the last time I checked, Newegg had a Rosewill case that should work at $25 so I will head over there and see if it is available now.


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## GoEagles (Dec 2, 2006)

Looking to sell mine, how much do you think a good price for a 500GB Expander would go for?


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## milo99 (Oct 14, 2002)

GoEagles said:


> Looking to sell mine, how much do you think a good price for a 500GB Expander would go for?


honestly, you could probably get more for the bare drive nowadays, since expanders have such a bad rep. I'd take it out and either use it myself or sell the bare drive. those fetch a decent bounty on ebay these days with the price jumps of late.


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

I just had a 500 GB DVR Expander failure, after 4 years of use. I had purchased another one a few years ago but never used it since I didn't activate the TiVoHD I intended to use it with. I divorced the dead one and added the new one and it is back up and running, hoping for another 4 years. I first tried using the failed one with a Rosewill 358 external case but it immediately defaulted to the same serious error message, no luck at all so it appears the drive is bad although I will try to salvage it for use with a PC.


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## HeatherA (Jan 10, 2002)

Chris Gerhard said:


> I just had a 500 GB DVR Expander failure, after 4 years of use. I had purchased another one a few years ago but never used it since I didn't activate the TiVoHD I intended to use it with. I divorced the dead one and added the new one and it is back up and running, hoping for another 4 years. I first tried using the failed one with a Rosewill 358 external case but it immediately defaulted to the same serious error message, no luck at all so it appears the drive is bad although I will try to salvage it for use with a PC.


I'm coming up on 3 years with my first 1TB expander and just passed 1 year on my 2nd. I hope to at least get 4 years like you. I love the ease of use with the external drives and my husband is grateful I'm not making him open up my TiVos any more. 

I plan on purchasing a 3rd as a Christmas gift for my daughter to go with her new 45h premiere. (at her request)


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

HeatherA said:


> I'm coming up on 3 years with my first 1TB expander and just passed 1 year on my 2nd. I hope to at least get 4 years like you. I love the ease of use with the external drives and my husband is grateful I'm not making him open up my TiVos any more.
> 
> I plan on purchasing a 3rd as a Christmas gift for my daughter to go with her new 45h premiere. (at her request)


I think we have been lucky, not that 3 and 4 years should be anything special, others have done much worse. My 1 TB external has lasted over 3 years and I won't be happy if it dies at 4 now.


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

The believed to be dead 500 GB drive installed in a Rosewill external case formatted NTFS using a Windows Vista laptop and it appears to be healthy. I wish I could have fixed it for use with my TiVo but at least it appears I will get some further value out of it.


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