Expanding capacity of HR20

[paul2020]

I'm scheduled to have two HR20s installed in my house this Saturday,
and I'm considering getting an external hard disk drive to upgrade the recording and storage capacity on at least one of the Directv DVRs.

I've been told that you can't combine an internal or external
hard drive with the existing one on the HR20. Is this still the case?

So with the existing HDD enclosed in the HR20, I would get 50 hours of HD recording capacity with the MPEG4 compression, right? By the way, what size is the HR20's hard drive?

How many HD recording hours would I get by connecting the HR20 to a 500 gb HDD? What about 750 gb or 1 terrabyte drives? Could I combine two 500 gb drives to one DVR to get 1 TB of capacity? Would two separate external drives work in tandem on one DVR? Has anyone here tried connecting their own HDD to the HR20 ?

I'm told I need eSATA drives and would connect the new HDD to the HR20 with a USB 2.0 cable.

 

[Brewer4]

to Satellite Guys!

Yes you can expand the HR20 with an eSATA drive kit. Thats just an SATA hard drive in an enclosure with its own power supply and cable that connects to back of the HR20.

The use of the drive disables the internal drive. So no combining yet. The HR20-100 has a 320 GB drive and the HR20-700 a 300 GB.

300 GB roughly equals 50 hours MPEG4 HD or 30 hours MPEG2 or OTA. So the ratio is 6 GB per hour for MPEG4 and 10 GB per Hour for MPEG2. So 500 GB is........ 83/50 and 750 is..... 125/75, etc. etc.

You can combine the drives to make them look like one drive using a RAID external box similar to the simple eSATA enclosures. No matter what they connect via an eSATA cable and not USB. Most eSATA enclosures come with eSATA cables but not all premade Drives/Enclosures come with them so read the specs. They come with USB ones by default.

Here are some good sources of info.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/living-edge/100775-hr20-external-hard-drive-fyi-support-esata.html

HR20 Information Resources - DBSTalk.Com

 

[Brewer4]

BTW, I upgraded both my HR20's with 750 GB Western Digital drives. So my total recording capacity is 250 HD hours MPEG4 or 150 HD Hours MPEG2. So far they are running great. Exact same enclosures and drives. See the Living on the Edge link above to see more details how to install and what to expect. Its long but my log is at the last few pages. So far they are running great. I will know more in the Fall when more shows are around and all that new HD to see how they perform under stress. Summers are light and boring for me.

 

[ckjackson]

How much do those compatible external hard drives cost?

 

[Brewer4]

I got a special deal at Fry's for 179 but they sold out. I then got the same one at newegg.com for $199. Enclosure was $30. Here are the details.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/living-...ard-drive-fyi-support-esata-6.html#post956741

Enclosure: ESATA NEXSTAR3|VANTEC NST-360SU-BK
Hard Drive: WD7500AAKS 750GB SATA SATA/300 HARD DRIVE

750 appears to be a good mark for making a capacity difference yet not breaking the bank. There a few 1 TB drives and you can always RAID array them but I figure 250 hours of HD with 2 receivers was enough for me. At $440 total cost, not too shabby.