My investigation is complete. The suspicion that the esata port or the esata cable might be faulty was incorrect. I received today an esata to sata cable, so could connect my external enclosure directly to the second sata port (for esata drives) on the NVR motherboard, bypassing the esata port and cable. The drive would not format, as before!

On to plan B. I connected the esata enclosure to the first sata port (for the internal drive). The external drive now formatted and worked perfectly. Conclusion – the second sata port on the motherboard is faulty. To confirm, I plugged the internal drive into the lower sata port, and it would not format either. I presume this can only be rectified by a replacement NVR.

Swapped the drives. The WD worked fine inside the NVR. I’m suspecting the esata port on the NVR.

Hi derek are you in the USA or another country. The one I purchased on Amazon is for the USA: S351BMU33ET the other is S351BMU33ETG (note the G on the end)

Hi
I’m in the UK. Got the one with the power adapter. I’m awaiting a response from Reolink Support.

I expected it just to work! I’ll investigate a firmware update on the drive. It worked OK when mounted inside the NVR. I could also try swapping the drives in that case.

Many thanks

I’ve got that enclosure and that drive, like yours, but the client fails to format it. It states format failed. I even tried a different esata enclosure, but the result was the same. I have no idea what the problem is.

Did yours just work?