New 1TB hard drive took my DVR from 96% full to 12%!

Fall season is here, so my DVR is filling up quickly. It stood at 96% with all the PBS National Park episodes and new shows such as Glee and Flash Forward taking up space. Been busy so I haven’t had time to watch any of the episodes so the DVR keeps filling up. On top of that is all the football on the weekend which I’m not able to record. I finally was fed up and looked for a solution which led me to Western Digital’s My DVR Expander. I bought the 1TB version which works with Tivo DVRs and my Scientific Atlantic 8300HD cable box. Setup was easy as I just plugged in the included SATA cable into the eSATA port on my DVR while it was powered off. When powered back on, it asked if I wanted to format the hard drive which  I selected “yes.” After that, my DVR space went from 96% full to 12%!

I haven’t tried it, but external hard drives designed for computers probably won’t work. Most of them automatically turn off when not in use which a DVR would not be happy about. The WD My DVR Expander doesn’t even have an on/off switch in the back.