Which hard drive?

[mahrkpat]

What sort of hard drive is the best usb powered or external power source?
If usb powered does it make any difference to the recordings?

[microchick]

Re: Which hard drive?

It all depends on your taste and budget. If you are travelling a lot then go for the USB as they are compact and doesn't need an external power supply. But they are expensive and not much capacity.
The external powered ones are good for desktops. They are cheap and you can get a huge capacity. Again, they are not good for travelling.
I dont think it makes any difference to the recording if you use an expernal powered or a USB hard drive.

[skytec]

Re: Which hard drive?

If you will use HDD 2.5" is possible to use USB power port.
If you use 3.5 "drives I think it is not possible.
Personally I would use an external power cable.

[pan1300]

Re: Which hard drive?

hi

Depends also on the combination brand/type of HDD and the box you have ; certain makes of boxes don't work well with all brands/types of HDD ; best to search here if you find something about this and your specific box (some boxes only support to eg 500 GB).
Back to your question: I have 2 HDD's 2,5" (usb) ; regularly freezing because of recording, often in combination wit timeshift or watching a recording with timeshift (so watching the recorded program with delay). I've read (can't check) that a 3,5" with external power is better for this (reason seems to be to much power/streaming for the usb). So think external power should be better.

[vanbasten]

Re: Which hard drive?

i am using 2 western digital (2 tb,usb 3) and was thinking about switching to usb powered external drives. i went to bestbuy and the geek squad technician there told me that they frequently have people coming to have their usb ports fixed since after so many plugging in and plugging out the usb is damaged easily.
so my advice would be get the high capacity external drives with external power option

[bokkie]

Re: Which hard drive?

it really depends on what stb you have. I have a Vu+ duo with a 1tb Hitachi deskstar and it works perfect. But there are certain hard drives that don't work well with vu+

[microchick]

Re: Which hard drive?

Always check the drive compatibality with the box before you buy. Also check what size drive the box can handle.

[mahrkpat]

Re: Which hard drive?

Thank you for all the replies I think I'm going for a external power source drive mainly due to the bigger capacity.

[pan1300]

Re: Which hard drive?

good decision - as written here before: ask around before you buy ; surely (and I know from experience) better less 'working' capacity than big 'useless' capacity.

[bokkie]

Re: Which hard drive?

Initialize and format to fat32 for most stb.
some require hdd to be formatted with a tool on your pc first..

[vanbasten]

Re: Which hard drive?

dont forget to change it from fat32 to ntfs. if you are using large files(more than 4gb) i think fat 32 will not recognize them

[microchick]

Re: Which hard drive?

I would suggest to buy a Hard drive and the enclosure seperately. It makes it cheaper and gives you a bit of DIY to do. It reduces the costs about 30%.

[pan1300]

Re: Which hard drive?

Initialize and format to fat32 for most stb.
some require hdd to be formatted with a tool on your pc first..

most boxes can format it to FAT32 itself (check your box) ; if you use a tool: FAT32Formatter works fine for me

dont forget to change it from fat32 to ntfs. if you are using large files(more than 4gb) i think fat 32 will not recognize them

how do you mean?
As bokkie said: most boxes only recognise FAT32, why do you want to change into NTFS?
In my case a large or long movie is divided in several pieces (think all of them about 1,5 GB), after recording it plays well on the box, by pc or other player, it even needs renaming the file-extention (also has to to with the box).

[vanbasten]

Re: Which hard drive?

I was able to record a soccer game to western digital which i formatted into ntfs. but my digital receiver is not in linux, maybe that is the reason. But I am also using the external drive with me personal files and some of the files i have are pretty large. for example the new versions of matlab iso files are around 4.5 gbs and fat 32 will not recognize them

[pan1300]

Re: Which hard drive?

hi vanbasten

thanks ; the box I was refering to isn't linux either, but only works with FAT32 (as said before one buys a HDD: check before the capabilities of your box). You're right that FAT32 can't handle large files. That's why my HDD's always stay connected to my boxes (I had some bad experiences after deconnecting) and for my other personal/PC files a use another (also 2,5") HDD.