Want to upgrade your TiVo Series3 with external storage? Me too. After a failed journey Micro Center yesterday, I started researching online deals for eSATA drives. In addition to finding a good price, my criteria also included 500GB drives that come enclosed and with an eSATA cable.
So far I’ve found two decent deals worth sharing:
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That Seagate looks like a great drive and a great price. However, check out the reviews on Amazon:
One person said it was a great drive for his Scientific Atlanta HD DVR, but another person wrote "The power switch automatically resets to the default "OFF" position when the mains power to the drive is cut. This switch must then be pressed (and held for a few seconds) when attempting to power the drive up again, and is successful only AFTER the computer has reached some (as yet to me unclear) point in bootup... The power switch should simply stay in whatever position the user leaves it in. This irritates me almost enough to give the drive THREE stars, but it is better than that."
That sounds like a deal-breaker for a TiVo add-on drive. I'd hate to come home some day and find out that a power failure caused my TiVo to reboot, but the eSATA drive is off, and the TiVo has since decided to remove everything from the "Now Playing" list that had been stored to the now "missing" eSATA drive...
I suppose I should ask about this on TiVo Community but if anyone knows about this power switch I'd love to hear about it. Otherwise I'd be seriously considering the Seagate drive as I'd expect it to be reliable and quiet. I wonder if it's possible to just crack the eSATA case and hard-wire the switch to "on"... :-)
Hm, that's a good point and you just stopped me from pulling the trigger. (I'd rather have a Seagate than a no-name brand.) If true, I wonder if there's some sort of management widget that allows you to go in and change the default setting without opening the case. Then again, this may be another good reason to have the Series3 on a UPS. ;)
Its not much more expensive to just blow $240 on a 750gb disk and enclosure at Microcenter after rebate. (Seagate 750gb and $25 powerspec esata enclosure with cable)