and the usb ports and the sata port arent active yet but the firewire port is supposed to be active. so i connected the hard drive with the firewire cable instead of the usb. and i dont think the dvr knows there is anything connected to it cause i still get a message saying that there isnt enough space to record shows so how can i get my dvr to know that there is a hard drive connected to it? Someone said something about drivers for it but how do i do that with an optical drive for the software installation disc that came with it? thanks for an advice! Star trek is the best!