Attempting to use a WD20EARS as an ESATA external storage with Verizon FIOS DVR

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

I purchased a WD20EARS drive and installed it in a Sans Digital external enclosure to use with my Verizon Fios Motorola DVR STB. The STB sees and formats the drive but has trouble buffering live TV and recording. It constantly drops audio and the picture pixilates. It gets so bad at times that it can’t be watched. When you eject the external drive and go back to the internal DVR hard drive everything works fine. I am reluctant to get a new STB from Verizon because I will have to reformat the external drive and there is no guarantee that it will fix the problem.

I am beginning to wonder if it isn’t the fault of  the “green” features of the WD20EARS. Do any of you know if it slows down and wakes up on its own without help from software? Could this be causing the dropped audio and pixilation? Turns out that Verizon only recommends the 1TB Lifebook, WDBACS0010HBK-NEVI or the WDBABT0010HBK-NESN for additional storage. Their support is no help. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

2

GP drives in general are a bad choice for use in any DVR. I would stick with Verizon’s recommendation.

3

The WD20EARS is an Advance Format drive while the ones that Verizon recommends are formatted FAT32 and are not Advance Format drives. I’m guessing that’s the problem. Try putting a jumper on pins 7-8 and see if that works. That will tell it to use 512k sectors instead of 4k sectors.