Ah, I love the Internet! I especially appreciate communities that are made up of people who use the same toys I do and are committed to making those toys work better. This post is a perfect example. A poster at AVS Forums discovered the secret that allows you to plug an external SATA drive into an 8300HD DVR and magically increase your storage capacity:
I plugged the unit in as described in the 8300HD manuals found online, and the 8300HD recognized the external drive and asked me if I wanted to format it. Once this was done (it did this very quickly) the remaining disk space on my existing 8300HD increased accordingly.
I tried this months ago, with no success. The secret, it turns out, is to get a cable with a standard SATA connector on one end and a SATA II connector on the other. (A standard SATA cable will not work.) I searched extensively, and I can confirm that only one vendor appears to have this cable available for sale. Will I order it on Monday? Oh, you betcha! And then I will quadruple my high-def storage capacity. Woo-hoo!
(Now, if only someone could figure out how to activate a 30–second skip function for the execrable SARA software. Anyone?)
Update: When I wrote this item, SATA II cables were nearly impossible to find. It appears now (late August 2005) that they’re a little more common. If anyone has tried this and succeeded using a standard SATA II cable, leave a note in the comments, OK?
Reader David Adams reports: “I found the following link to a company that prepackages all that’s needed to hook up to the SA Explorer 8300HD. They definitely indicate the sata 1 to sata 2 (esata) cable is required. Their prices are decent, but I can do better by purchasing the individual components off eBay and online stores.
But at least their site is very helpful for this and you can refer anyone else who inquires to it. Thanks again for your help.
“Link
“PS: cheapest place to find the cable is here.”
Thanks, David!
Ed Bott 
I had a sucess story to adding a SATA drive to my Explorer 8300HD. My provider is Cox(Phoenix, AZ).
Buy drive and connect to case. External SATA cable included with case.
Then followed the instructions I read on the net:
1. disconnect wall outlet from Explorer.
2. Connect hard drive. Power it on.
3. reconnect power to Explorer. After boot, message appears: “do you want to format the external drive ?”. 30 sec later, it was done.
4. My space taken has dropped from 75% to 16%.
The equipment I bought at newegg.com:
– Seagate SATA II 500GB
– Penguin Gear PG380 SATA to eSATA enclosure.
no fan but alum case
cost $325 with shipping.
I successfully attached an external SATA drive to my 8300HD some months and it worked just fine up until yesterday. Now when I try to play back anything from my recorded list, nothing plays and the until simply jumps to the channel 900 (DVR Playback) screen. I’ve tried unplugging everything and starting from scratch. The DVR recognizes the external drive, says it’s compatible, all my recorded shows are in the listing, but nothing plays back.
Any ideas anyone??
I’m having the same problem that Phil is having. It seems that the external is not properly attached anymore, yet the recordings are all there just not accessable. I’m not getting an active data light on the external drive when rebooting or while working (it ussually bliks all the time .. any suggestions … anybody please …
Paul Debreceni
pdebreceni@charter.net
I found what my problem was… the drive had shifted when I moved it recentlly and it had become disconnected within the Drive Enclosure from the drive adapter. I recoonected with ease and did a normal boot and all my saved shows were there. – I hope this helps – Paul
I called comcast and was told that I could not attach a SATA hard drive to the Explorer 8300HD. I was told that this was true for all customers from Monmouth County NJ south. The recommendation was to get another DVR box to increase number of recordings. Here’s the hitch after the first of the year the boxes will coat 11.95 for the first and 16.95 for the second. to rent EACH month!
Anyone doing the hard drive thing successfully with Comcast NJ?
I just added Seagate 500 GB eSATA (external hard drive) to my Explorer 8300HD, and it works great! Setup was a little tricky at first. I almost gave up with no success initially as I precisely followed the directions in the Explorer manual by connecting and powering everything in the sequence directed in the manual. The hard drive did not appear to be recognized by the cable box as there was never a message letting me know that there was a new external drive connected. As I was getting ready to call it the quits, I powered off my external hard drive, by mistake, first (out of sequence from the recommended order of disconnecting the units written in the manual) and suddenly the first message regarding the drive appeared on the screen telling me that “the external drive is now disconnected”. I powered the drive on again only to read the second message letting me know that “an external hard drive is being detected” and it gave me the option of formatting it. So I did and voilá! It started working like a charm. The hard drive is 7200 RPM and very quiet! I have a ton of room now to record HD movies and shows.
Has anyone done this on Time Warner? I’m in the Raleigh, NC market… I’ll buy this today if it will work – I just don’t know anyone with an external sata drive for me to test with.
I saw somewhere an article about replacing the original hard drive on SA83000HD (in my case 160 gig) with a drive up to 300 gig for extra storage on the original box. Apparently it’s only possible on SARA boxes and is as easy as replacing the drive and rebooting the system. As far as I remember the article was in “Popular Mechanic” about a year ago.
Found it…..
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/0ad08278d3daa010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html
Yes, Chris N. I have a SA8300HD from Time Warner. I live in Apex, NC. I just hooked up a Seagate 300GB SATA External Hard Drive (ST3300601XS-RK) from Circuit City. It took a few times powering up before it asked me to format the drive. It comes with the eSATA cord that you need. (It is an eSATA drive even though it is not clear on the Circuit City website)
My only question is will this model work with the 500Gb hard drive? Does anyone know? (According to the Popular Mechanic article referenced by Sam, 300Gb is the maximum)
See my database for successful/failing drive/enclosure combos:
http://www.baseportal.com/baseportal/xnappo/main
I attached a 400 GB Samsung eSATA drive to my Kansas City area Time Warner SA 8300HD with great success. A friend asked me to do the same for them. I found a 500 GB Seagate SATA and enclosure and installed it. It works, but there is some annoying pixelation every few minutes that goes away when we disconnect the drive.
I found that Seagate makes a DB35 series drive specifically for DVR storage and says it is tuned differently than the Barracuda 7200 10 that I used.
Anyone have any comments?
I just purchased a cavalry 300 gb external hard drive on newegg for $100 with $20 rebate. It came with a cable and works perfectly. I have a question, the manual says to leave the drive on all the time. Is this going to use alot of power and will it wear out too fast. Should I shut it off and reboot everytime I want to use the device?
Jon,
The drive needs to be on whenever you record. Drives are designed to spend a lot of time spinning, but you might want to check the manufaturers web site to see if you can fine the “mean time between failures” (MTBF). FYI there are 8760 hours in a year.
So I just connected a 500GB Seagate Barracuda in a Rosewell enclosure to my 8300HD, the message came up on the box asking if I wanted to format it. I said “yes”, the message went away.
Now something curious; everything I’ve read here and other places says that the available space indicator should now drop to show the total amount of space available. That’s not happening; it’s still showing the same as it was before I plugged in the HD. I’m recording something now to see what effect it has.
Thoughts?
After encountering the same problem Chris (at comment #8) experienced during installation, I followed his instructions and was able to get the drive recognized and formatted without further problem or uncertainties!
The drive is a 500gb Western Digital 7200, $125 w/ free shipping from memorylabs.com. The enclosure is a Kingwin — black with long (disconnectable) orange and blue lights, NO USB port (the model with USB ports reportedly has more DVR connectivity problems), available at newegg for $26 shipped. The eSata cable that came with the Kingwin enclosure works fine.
To answer Chris N’s (at comment #11) question, my service is Time Warner, Central Ohio, and my drive & enclosure setup works fine with their 8300HD and Passport/echo operating system.
Why is this soooooo complicated? I bought a WD My Book™ Premium ES Edition 500 GB HDD and a cable. Using all the advice I could and a call into SA, I could not get this drive to be formatted by the 8300. The SA tech, whom seems very unknowledgeable, was absolutely no help. The price was $169 which is fantastic. I have since returned it and am now looking for success stories using the Seagate FreeAgent Pro esata, ST307504FPA1E2-RK, 750GB HDD. Why should I have to buy and enclosure and drive? What makes the WD DB35 HDD more compatible with DVRs? I heard about pixelation with the home made setup.
I owe my perfect upgrade to Steve (post#18)! YOUR THE MAN!!! I followed his setup to the tee! First let me tell you what I have, I use Time Warner Digital Cable in Fayetteville North Carolina (NC). It runs the Passport Echo software, version 2.6.002. I have the HD package from them too. I made all purchases from new egg which included their item #17-121-020 the External Enclosure by Kingwin, model KH-350SE-BK and their item #22-136-053 the Western Digital 320G 7K 16M SATA2 model # WD3200YS Hard Disk Drive (HDD) (I didn’t need 500GB, I opted for 320GB). I got both items and put them together for just under $110.00 (with S/H). I decided to see if these would be plug and play so I left everything running and just plugged in the external HDD. The first 5 second the screen froze, then it unfroze and displayed the message, would you like to format this drive. I accepted and about two minutes later it said done. I then turned to channel 999 and scrolled down to the DVR AVFS and now my AV Capacity is 426.2GB…there’s the proof, upgrade successful!!! I’m so glad I found this post and I hope my post helps others. If I experience any problems I will be sure to re-post so everyone will know. Wow this is great, and so easy!!!
Question:
Does this work in areas where the cable company says the Sata port is disabled?
Sorry, if this seems obvious in either case, but I cant’ tell if everyone is excited because they got it to work, and it was just difficult, or if they got it to work, and the cable company told them it was impossible.
I used a Segate 300GB external HD pn ST3300601XS-RK from pcmall.com item #7118780 for $110.
I am in San Diego with TWC and Passport 2.6.002
It told me the drivce wasn’t working properly the first time–so i just turned off the dirve and tried again–the next time it asked to format after a minute or so and is working great so far.
Cablevision – Bklyn, NY
I have been thinking about doing the upgrade for a few months and bookmarked this page for the simple instructions.
Saw a good deal on a 7200rpm 500GB Seagate External (to Ken, Post #19 – No Product Name – but Model Number is ST3500601XS-RK) for $179 (included an eSATA PC card) – CompUSA closing a store in Queens, NY – LAST external drive in the WHOLE store.
Tried the cable supplied with the drive, followed the directions. Initially, it saw the drive but said there was an error in the connection? Unplugged the DVR from the wall, repeating the whole process 3X, and finally my recorded space went from 97% to 21%! Sweet! Haven’t had an issue since. Now I have to buy another drive for my computer to archive “Planet Earth” in HD.