Need help picking an external hard drive for my TV PVR - confused

L

Lauraetco

New Member
Hi there,
In order to turn my Bell satellite receiver into a PVR, I need an external hard drive with the following criteria (according to the Bell website):

7200 RPM rotation speed
between 50mb and 2tb capacity
holds a single hard drive (enclosures holding two discs are not supported)
plugs into AC power outlet
has a USB 2.0 connection
has no sleep mode (cannot power down when idle)

I don't know anything about external hard drives so I thought I'd go to bestbuy.ca and read the specs. Unfortunately, they don't all report the rotation speed (whatever that is), don't say whether or not they connect to an AC power outlet, and don't say if they have a sleep mode.

Can someone suggest which one to buy? I'm in Canada so bestbuy.ca or amazon.ca is fine. I don't need/can't afford the most expensive ones! I just need a basic one.

Thanks so much!

P.S. Here is the link that tells me what to get: http://support.bell.ca/TV/Receivers/How_to_turn_my_Bell_HD_receiver_into_a_PVR#displayStep
I have the 6131 receiver.
 
Anything really should work. You will have to go into power management settings in device manager and uncheck "allow computer to turn off device to save power". You won't find hardly and usb 2.0 external drives anymore as usb 3.0 is the new technology but it is backwards compatible.
 
You will require a drive fast enough to cope with the required throughput. USB3.0 with a 3TB WD black would be ideal.
 
Johnb35, Good to know about the USB. It won't be attached to a computer so I won't be able to uncheck any options. Do you know of any particular external hard drives that don't go to sleep?
If anything should work, do I have to worry about the RPM rotation speed? I really have no clue what that is, and they don't advertise it on the hard drives.

Okeydokey, I had a look at the one you suggested. It's on sale right now at Staples! I read somewhere that it can't be above 2tb capacity. Could that be true? Why would they set the criteria as between 50mg and 2tb? I can't see that it would matter, would it? Once again, it doesn't say the RPM rotation speed, but I did find out that it has an AC power cord! Looks like it has a sleep time:( Could I hook it up to my computer, turn the sleep timer off and then move it to the TV? Would it save the information that tells it to not turn sleep or is that not how these things work?

Sorry guys, I'm am idiot when it comes to this stuff. Not sure why it has to be so complicated!
 
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