External Hard Drive for Cox DVR

It's not something we officially support and therefore haven't done any testing however it does call for one that supports eSATA.

Have you tried the eSATA drive?  Did it work and on what model of DVR did you try it on?  I have been looking for this answer myself as I remember the call, but thought it was an email.

The eSATA port was only recently enabled on the Motorola DVRs--as of today, Tulsa, Georgia, and both Louisiana regions have it, and the software upgrade is pending for other Motorola-based service areas--and we're able to provide about the same level of support as we do with the port on the Cisco/Scientific Atlanta boxes, which is basically to let you know which models have the port and tell you where the port is. 

The official compatibility list for the Scientific Atlanta eSATA port was outdated, so we don't even have one for the Motorola receivers. However, as far as I know, most any eSATA hard drive should work. The Cox Solutions Stores in areas that have eSATA enabled will begin carrying a Western Digital "My Book AV DVR Expander" for this purpose, and the ideal drives to use aside from that will be ones listed as "DVR Expander" or "DVR compatible" because they have the spin-down timer turned off by default, basically meaning that access times are better for this application.

When you plug the drive in, an on-screen prompt will appear to activate the drive, and in the rare case the DVR doesn't accept the drive then either you'll get an error or the prompt won't appear. I don't know if we're going to come out with our own official compatibility list, or if we really need one at this point, but Motorola does have a short list of drives they've certified here: http://www.motorola.com/Video-Solutions/US-EN/Products-and-Services/Video-Consumer-Premise-Equipment/Set-Top-Accessories/External+Hard+Drive+Storage+for+Motorola+Set-Tops_US-EN