Sure, but the tablo just uses it for storage. It will only steam as fast as it streams… video playback processing takes place on the device/app your watching on.
As for recording, not sure how you can tell. It can write and reading is limited to network bandwidth, which is likely below slower than R/W bus of the drive.
So even though a high performance SSD is awesome, it’s probably not going to benefit you much in a tablo… but won’t hurt - as recommended put the $$ in more TBs.
Thanks to all of you for the very informative, and helpful replies.
Here we are in September, and here’s my situation now. After a lot of researching, hemming and hawing, and with very limited discretionary monthly dollars from my SSI, I decided to first get a Dual Lite to jump into this pool at the shallow end first. I first decided that when the Dual Lite was selling for $99, but didn’t pull the trigger until last week. The price for the Dual Lite had gone up to $139. Bummer!
I still had the original 8-year-old WD MyBook USB 3.0 2TB that had been attached to my C-M, but was now just laying fallow. First jump into the shallow end, I attached the old MyBook 2TB to my Dual Lite. It still work great!..and still very silent.
With the great Tablo database management, I decided that would also be a great help with my ancient Channel Master, which only has the primitive 2-week TV schedule to manage recording. Last night, I looked in on the Channel for the first time in a few months. I wanted organize my tuners better. Use the Channel Master for the more of the SD stuff, which would clear up some of the annoying schedule conflicts on the Dual Lite.
Shazbot!
At some time over the last few months, the cheapo “No-Name” USB 3.0 2TB I bought to replace the ancient MyBook has died. It’s still making “I’m working; shakin’ it here, boss” noises, and the indicator LED has been flashing, but it is ‘dead to’ the Channel Master. It appears that for now, the ancient MyBook will return to the Channel Master again. No more “No-Name” drives for my DVRs.
Next SSI ‘check’, I’ll be looking for a bargain “brand name” external 8TB for the Dual Lite. The Channel Master will have to soldier on with the bulletproof MyBook for a while longer.
I do love the Tablo, and no doubt, there will be at least one more in the future, and I hope it will be a Quad with an 8TB buddy.
If you are looking for an affordable 8tb drive, I would recommend this:
It’s currently on sale at Best Buy for $139.99. I have purchased several of these and the last one I purchased, I got on sale for $129.99. They have the equivalent of a WD Red drive in the enclosure. I have used 4 of these in my NAS Server by removing the drives from the enclosure and installing them in the NAS. So far they have worked nonstop for over a year without any problems.
I’ve not used Red, but I have several WD drives running non-stop. I have Green, supposedly low power - inteli-speed what-have-you in my DVR/Storage and for my tablo. Also use WD 2.5" Blue, got these used off ebay. Can’t say how old they are, but they’re still running virtually non-stop for several years I’ve had them.
I’d recommend WD, which ever color fits your needs.
Channel Master TV DVR in 2011…and hoped to recover the saved 2TB of files with my computer…No luck with that.
If this is the CM-7500, you can do what you are wishing to do. I have a DVR+ and have extracted many recordings off of it. There is a file named ‘record_event_index’ that contains all of the information about the recordings, including all of the information from the guide. It has a strange format to it. A few guys in a forum on AVSForum figured out the format. One guy with the handle of pachinko wrote a program called DVR+ Lister to decode it. He shared his findings with me and I created my own PowerShell to decode it to a CSV and open it in Excel. I am happy to share it with you, if you like.
You will need to install the Linux file system drivers on your computer. I originally used the free Ext2Fsd program, but found it to be a little too buggy for my tastes. I purchased a license for Linux File Systems for Windows by Paragon Software.
Thanks for the info, OKC. Friday night I ordered the WD Elements 8TB drive for the same price. As I’ve seen discussed here, it is probably the same thing as the Best Buy version. It just arrived. Now, I’m concerned about moving it to the Tablo, without messing up file table. I haven’t seen how to do that anywhere on this site.
I have been saving my files to my computer using Tablo Ripper, so they won’t be lost. I have an hour free from scheduled recordings between 4 & 5 PM today, so I’m just going to do it. I’ll likely lose the 100 or so recordings I already have, as far as Tablo is concerned, but the sooner I do that the better.
My ancient 2TB MyBook, now on the Tablo, will get moved over to my Channel Master, where the new “no-name” HDD has died after less than 6 months.
Once again, thanks for the kindly tip. I hope the Elements drive is as silent, and long lasting as the 8-year-old MyBook.
Thankyou, Jwhitlow. There’s a lot of detailed info in your post. I will get back to that, perhaps in the next few days, after I get more comfortable with what I’m doing with the Tablo & Tablo Ripper.
I vaguely remember trying to read that drive from my PC with some Linux ext “reader”, but it didn’t do anything for me.
I will come back to your post, and see if I can fumble through it - but right now, the Channel Master is telling me there’s a hard drive problem, and it can’t read it. Maybe your tips can recover the files. That would also be great the next time the 2TB HDD is filling up.
I just tried the Paragon program (10-day-trial) and reformatted the drive to ext4 from my PC. Still no change.
I have yet to come across an opportunity withing Tablo to “FORMAT” the new drive.
Even if you format with ext4 - until tablo sees it as “authorised” manually formating a drive is nearly pointless.
It’s been a long time… I think it has to do with a .dot file containing a cute phrase, and maybe the file structure.
I have had success by connecting the drive to a Windows PC and using Disk Management to delete any volumes from the drive (do not add a new volume and do not format) then reconnecting to Tablo and using http://my.tablotv.com/ via Chrome to format the drive by typing “FORMAT” when prompted.
*** Be very careful when deleting volumes from drives using Disk Management - make sure you are operating on the correct drive ***
How long have you been using this drive? I installed a NEW Seagate Barracuda 2TB, and I get reboots, chopped up recordings, etc. I was told it was a HDD problem put an SSD in and it seems to work. They need to provide EXACT models of HDD that have been tested! Many people having the same problems… Is it really a hard drive problem? good question…
https://www.tablotv.com/setup-networking/#harddrive
Includes specific brands - link to recommend lines, and then links to specific models
as well as more tablotv.com related links -
and that further has even more (updated link here) to follow
For all there is to complain about, I’m not sure this is it.
But I agree with this one. One suggestion, adjust your recording quality - no, maybe you shouldn’t have to… but it’s a trouble shooting tactic.
I purchased the HDD the Tablo link points to! And was told I had a HDD problem! A link to only 2 specific models of HDD’s a bit weak.
Yup, it was a month old. I found the very old email with support…
> tablo
We have had a look at the log your Tablo sends to our database; it seems that the Tablo has been experiencing frequent reboots due to the hard drive disconnecting while it is being recorded to. As well, the Tablo log shows the hard drive as being 0% used. It seems as though the drive may be beginning to fail.
In the end I replied
I did try a different drive with the same results. Both tested with no errors. I wanted to save my recordings so I copied them via rsync and there was absolutely no errors (obviously this involves just disk reads, no writing) while both were connect to a pc. Before starting over I used ffmpeg to save the shows via the tablotv device. Again, no errors from either.
I cleared the first drive and factory reset the tabloTV. I haven’t encountered any issue yet after about a week.
I copied everything from the drive - with out any errors. Copied everything to a different drive - no write errors, but same “bad hard drive” problems. I did run diagnosis test via PC… no errors found. I have my recording quality to 720 - 5Mps live TV set to 720 3Mps
I’m not saying there is no hard drive issues. But yes, it seem like it can be a generic message as “many” are getting them while their drives don’t have any real problems.
Drives fail, I haven’t found it to be very common, many of my drive are “used” from eBay and several years later still spinning (not that all of them actually spin). So I’m not going to tell users to not to believe this, but to investigate a bit deeper.
So when you go to the link below and click on your specific model does the description have suggested storage options?
and
Most other brands/models are compatible, but avoid drives whose reviews suggest frequent disconnect problems.
and refers you to a community.tablotv.com post dating back 6 years, drives compatible with devices no longer in production.
That’s strange. When I go to the Western digital WEB site. It implies I can buy an Elements drive. I can even add it to my cart.:
Seagate Expansion still seems to on the seagate site
When I go to the link and click on Quad I get:
Owners of Tablo QUAD OTA DVRs have two options for recording storage:
For USB-connected drives, we recommend Western Digital Elements drives and Seagate Expansion drives.
For SATA-connected drives, we recommend Western Digital Blue or Seagate BarraCuda internal drives.
and when virtually any one else goes to that link and click on Quad (or others) they’ll see all that, and even more… for people reading the entire section I already referenced… " Most other brands/models are compatible"
You can be bored and looking for self entertainment, but it’s there - for any/everyone to click on after then see those two options — that are “most other” for “other people”
I’m only quoting what tablo recommends.
The link to the forum not only contains HHD’s not being made any more but also some models could have production runs of suspect quality.
I’ve had 4 different production runs of the Element and only one needed a firmware upgrade before it functioned properly with tablo.