Loosing connectivity when hard drive is plugged in

Hello, I have a Tablo Dual-lite and I like it very much. I hooked up an old mechanical drive to it and everything worked well until that drive took a fall and met its demise. I tried a couple of other drives I had on hand and it has odd behavior. As soon as I plug in the hard drive, it goes offline. I can’t connect to it with my android app, Roku, or windows 11 PC. I ordered a brand new 1 TB SSD which arrived today, but I am still getting the same behavior. I have reset the TABLO, unplugged it and reset it, and reset my router, still not working. If I remove the hard drive it comes back online. Weird??? Has anyone else had this problem? is there a fix for this? I did open a ticket with Tablo, but thought I would get input from the users here as well. Thanks, Everyone. Bob

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It’s the weekend so don’t expect Tablo support till Monday but there are some smart people here. What’s the model of the drive? Are you being given the option to format the drive?

EDIT: I’ll assume you followed this article.

If you really want the Tablo back before Monday you could go through this article on factory resetting. The article will show you some other troubleshooting options to try first. There are some warnings about doing a factory reset. Read those but since you are changing drives you don’t have recordings to lose. You would still lose your schedule.

WARNING: Proceeding with the factory reset steps below will erase all recordings and recording schedules from your Tablo DVR.

Maybe it could be a weak power supply. Tablo sells them for $12, and I remember a thread that included a link to a compatible power supply they bought from Amazon (here’s a link to that thread).

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Thanks for to that suggestion, I had never considered that.

Maybe the first drive had a lower draw then the others I tried. I can see if I have a compatable ps in my junk box.

I bought a hard drive and that one was also not recognized. I took it back and ordered one that is on the Tablo website. It should get her today. Meanwhile, I found a workaround that supports your theory. I have a drive duplicator so I put the unsupported drive in that and connected it to the Tablo. The Tablo recognized and is using this drive now. That supports your theory as the drive duplicator has its own power supply and does not rely on the USB port on the Tablo for power. Just thought I would let you know that you were on the right track.

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Here is my latest update in this saga. I ordered a Seagate expansion 1 tb hard drive per the website, with USB 3.0. Tablo loses connection as soon as I plug it in. I am really regretting buying this Tablo. I can’t believe that 0 out of 3 portable hard drives work on this device. All of them work on my PC. All of them are name-brand drives. To return the latest one is about a 90-mile drive.

Are you using external hard drives that have an external power supply (not powered by the USB cable)? The problem may be the current draw from the hard drive exceeds the power that the power supply for the Tablo can handle.

Every drive I purchase for heavy use, I make sure it has it’s own power supply.

I have a drive working now. It’s in a drive duplicator dock. This is kind of hokey and I want to use an external USB drive that is power my the Tablo. I have bought and tried 3 different drives including the ones the recommend. I am pretty sure that the Power supply overloads when the drive is plugged in. I am super frustrated with this. I have been a professional IT guy for decades and have never seen any device with a USB port not able to support it’s intended drive. Thanks for taking the time to try to help me. I sincerely appreciate the kindness. Bob

The main reason I put drives with their own power on the Tablo DVRs (they are on my HDHomerun DVRs as well) is if the Tablo crashes during a read/write cycle of the hard drive, power is yanked immediately from the drive which can lead to problems with the drive. If I were just copying files between two computers (I know - why not use the network :smiley:), it wouldn’t make as big of a difference.

I have had two hard drives corrupted on my home security cameras (internal hard drive) where something happened to the unit, and the only way to get it back up was to reformat the drive.

On my computer systems, I have backups of the data, so if that hard drive takes a crap, I can put Windows (or Linux) on the computer, and restore the data. There isn’t a mechanism to backup the Tablo drives.

On my “DVR stack” (two Tablo units, two HDHomerun units, home security cameras) has a battery backup on it that powers the DVRs & Hard Drives. We have frequent thunderstorms in Texas, and blinking power is common, not to mention power outages. The beauty of networked DVRs is the ability to hide the units where people can’t see them, and access them with a streaming device.

The only other option would be to get a larger power supply for the Tablo (higher current capacity, same voltage) so that it would be able to power both. I have read several posts where they have a power supply that feeds multiple devices (one plug into the wall, multiple plugs into the devices).

It could be that the power supply shipped with your Tablo is defective as well.

Dang. I thought my house was wired, but you put me to shame :slight_smile: .

I might try getting a higher-capacity power supply. I have my DVR in the office and connect to it through a Roku soundbar. I agree, it’s nice to have it out of sight. I also hardwired the office with a switch in there. We live in central Tennessee, so we know about Thunderstorms as well. Thanks for the follow-up.

Also, my typing is terrible tonight.

Backup-tablo.sh - Backup all recorded shows from a Tablo

can you tell me what drive you used. I have been out shopping today and all I seem to find in hard drives are very large (8TB) and up at 200-300 dollars. I would like to keep that to 100 or less.

thanks

This is what I purchased in the past:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-8tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/6425302.p?skuId=6425302#anchor=productVariations

The 8TB is $149 - you can get up to 20TB for $379. They don’t make the 4TB that I have. This is the model that has the external power adapter - they have quite a few that do not. Make sure to get the one with the external power adapter.

Normally, you’re not connecting huge drives to the Tablo, but YMMV. I use 1TB drives (which, actually are harder to come by nowadays). Therefore, to backup, you probably don’t need a big drive. 4TB drives can usually be purchased easily for less than USD $100 (search Amazon), but I’d only get one that big if I were using a 4TB drive on my Tablo. Up to you of course.

Hello techies, I am so very happy to say that my problem is finally resolved. It turns out that the power supply was underpowered so almost anything I did to it would cause it to fail. The power supply that ships with it has an output of 9V at .06 amps. Their tech support sent me a different one that puts out 12V at 2 amps. It has been rock solid since that happened. I have tested it with 3 different drives and all of them work with the new PS. Thanks for everyone’s input on this. I hope that Tablo will make this a standard troubleshooting step as it took me well over a month to resolve this. If you are having problems as I had, check the power supply first.

Did you purchase a used or refurbished Tablo? A 12V 2A power is standard. I’m surprised that your Tablo would even boot up with a 9V power supply.

I purchased a used Tablo in 2017 and the power supply with it was 12V, but the center connector was too small to plug into the Tablo. I contacted the seller and he realized that he had pulled the power supply for his harddrive and not the Tablo. We swapped power supplies and it has been working ever since.