For some reason, I didn't see the original "Izmay" post. The WD 160 GB IDE drive (7200 rpm, 8MB cache) will work fine. You will only use 120 GB of it, but no worries. Even a 2MB cache drive would be OK. Those drives run fairly cool, but make sure your fan is working, and not full of dust. I would also be interested in the recovery (using a PC) of a Panasonic DMR series hard drive. I have been hoping some Panasonic engineer would trip into this topic - and has a Windows based utility to be able to "see" (and transfer) the files on one of those drives. I know the file structure of FAT32 & NTFS, but I don't know what Panasonic used (Linux?), and I'm nervous that I might accidentally write to one of those drives and screw the data. Oh well, maybe someday... Oh, and Bob, yes - those pictures were really great, but they should have been shrunk a bit... Thanks for trying to flip to the next page. Roger.
WinHex has a clone Drive feature, the HDD shows up as a physical drive and you can just clone a backup file to a larger HDD, then right click on that file and play it with VLC. There's MPEG video cutters that you can use to cut the file into smaller videos.
My father (Seymour) used to know a "Video Bob" who had a electronics repair shop in Paramus NJ a few years ago, not the same guy is it?
Immersed in life. I got my 4 ReplayTV, 4 Motorola, and 2 DVArchive systems upgraded and stable and have been sucking up shows, burning a couple of thousand DVDs and filling about four terabytes of external drives. (My signature line is about 4 years out of date.) For the last three years I was caregiving my octogenarian parents and managing the family's real estate holdings. Now I'm executing their estates. I spent last summer painting and drawing, last fall and winter studying acting and stagecraft and acting in four plays. I'm spending this summer traveling the Caribbean and Central America looking for retirement property and taking full-immersion Spanish courses. Now and then I look in to see what's happening. I came back this time to get the particulars on the capacitor change for my two DMR-Ex5H boxes, since I'll need all the capacity I can get when I'm gone two or three weeks at a time. ...and *that*'s the short answer. Sorry, Scott. Never been to NJ. I took the moniker for this list. Knew a Scott back in High School in North Carolina once, though. I also ran an electronics repair shop in Denton, Texas for a few years back in the early 70's. bob
Is there a way to manually set the clock on the DMR-E85H? Also are there any of the tvguide feature working for anyone out there?
In reference to replacement hard drives, I remember a posting a while back that mentioned that 7200 RPM drives may draw too much current for the power supply in the DMR-E85H. The post said that replacements should be 5400 RPM drives.
Yes, from the Settings menu, accessible with the remote along with dubbing, etc. (Not the Settings you get from scrolling sideways from the guide.) Yes. Comcast supports it. I don't know about other cable companies, except that Verizon FIOS does not support it. (Which is why I tell them to go away on about a monthly basis.)
No, but I doubt that's going to make any difference. If the signal's in your cable input, you should get it. Best bet is to try to find your local station that supplies the feed. In my area, it was the PBS station for a long time, but recently shifted over to the CBS affiliate. Call them and ask for the engineering dept. They're the only ones who ever seem to know anything about it. Ask about "TVGOS." In my case, the station's chief engineer took up the problem with Comcast, and they fixed it.
After a 10 day outage a month ago Comcast has been just fine with the listings (they took the TVGOS host channel out of my lineup for no apparent reason). However, TV Guide support said:
scustalow check the page 18 of this forum at: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/21/143317#1361798 my post from 13. October 2005 @ 11:05 When you type bogus ZIP 00000 during TV Guide OnScreen setup, you will not have TV GUIDE (usually does not work on Panasonic DMR-E95 or Pansonic SA-HT1500), but this "BOGUS" setting will allow you: 1.to use IR blaster to switch channels on cable box using your DVD recorder remote control, 2. to manually set up your recordings, 3. to set up time manually. In addition, you will avoid waking up in the morning having U99 on the display or no recordings at all. TV Guide is not reliable service. Manual recording is so '80-ties, but you will be sure that what you set up that you will have it.
On my DMR-E85 you just hit the functions button and in setup you can set the clock manually, also you can set the timer recording manually by pushing the function button and then "timer recording".
I have one of those rare boxes, a DMR-E500. It's been fine for years, that TGO usually drops once a year for a couple of weeks but now it's been a couple of months for zip 93940.
I do not know whether it will be helpful for Panasonic, but I found this web page that says that the Pioneer DVR HDD is formated with OpenBsd system. Here is the link: http://www.pioneerfaq.info/english/dvr630.php?player=DVR-630H&question=recover_hd I mention it because I actually own Panasonic SA-HT1500 (do not get confused with number. It is a part of home theater system, but it is almost same as Panasonic DMR-E95 from dvd-ram drive point of view, e.g. they both use the same replacement part) and Pioneer DVR-550H (multisystem dvd recroder.) What I mean, I can record anything on HDD in any of dvd recroders, burn it to DVD-RAM, rename it, change chapters, and they are interchangable and compatible after all changes. It does not matter what changes and in what dvd recorders I do, they do not show any errors, and thet seems to use the same codes, etc. (In contrary to Toshiba RD-XS54 that always shows for DVD-RAMs - recorder either in Panasonic or Pioneer dvd recorder - some on-screen message about different characater codes, non-standard recordings, bit rate, etc.) There is only one thing, unfinalized DVD-R on either of Panasonic or Pioneer are not recognized in the second unit.
rekoj: Thanks for that info. I have noticed that I can read a DVD-RAM disk on my computer with no problem, using a DVD drive that stated it was able to read DVD-RAM. (Not all DVD drives can.) That format has been somewhat standardized. However, the hard drives are invisible to Windows because there is no valid Windows style "Partition" information on the drive. Perhaps because the DVD-RAM is removable, and the DVD-RAM driver I use understands the file format, I can read those video files. I can copy them to a Windows folder and even play them with a MP2 player. Not true with the hard drives. Now, I do know it's possible to write a program running on Windows that can then access a physical drive that has a non-windows partition. I just don't know what program to try, or what format is being used with the Panasonic series of DMR drives. It may well be similar to, or an extension of, the DVD-RAM file structure. I am still waiting for that Panasonic engineer that knows about all this to come forward... One other comment on an earlier topic about replacement drives: 7200 rpm drives these days are much less power hungry than earlier ones. I have had a 160 GB 7200 RPM drive in one of my DMR-E85H units for years with no problems. (Because I happened to already have that drive laying around.) If I had needed to go out and buy a new one, I might have gotten a 5400 RPM. I just wanted to mention that a 7200 RPM can also work as well, especially if isn't the older higher power type. I think the closest available new drive, using "PATA" (EIDE), is the Western Digital 160 GB, Model: WD1600JBRTL, for about $60 - if you look around. Since everything is going SATA, these types of hard drives might not be around much longer. Roger.
K2SMN, first, I do not know how a ram.cfm" class="forum_link" target="_blank"> gets into my message. I tried to type only DVD-RAM as media. That's just for clarification. HDD in stand-alone dvd recorder is unpredictable, and when it fails, you will eventually loose all your recordings, unless you know the format and proper way of recovery. This can be explained by PANASONIC engineer - if one comes to this forum and has willingness to share the knowledge. There are people who think that HDD in Panasonic DMR-E85H and similar models was formatted using UNIX. I also read at pioneerfaq.info website that they format a new HDD for upgrade (to get bigger HDD capacity than factory installed) in Pioneer dvd recorder models using LINUX bootable CD. No one really knows for sure what system was used to format those HDDs installed in Panasonic dvd recorders. And definitely, if you have valuable recording on these HDDs, you do not want to fool around to loose them. Many people reported than when they removed HDD from the Panasonic dvd recorder (or disconnected cables from HDD and plugged it again (old one or new one)), the machine reformatted the HDD. So, bye, bye, recordings. Since HDDs have hight failure rate, I already made a great collection of DVD-RAM media (there was time when one DVD-RAM media cost $1 plus tax directly form Panasonic with free shipping, so I made my stock,) and I used them as a backup medium for my recordings from Panasonic dvd recorder. These days, as you also mentioned, DVD-RAM media are pretty good and easy to access and use on PCs. For those who are interested, I usually save a copy of DVD-RAM on my computer HDD in a specific folder. First, I create a new folder with some name for that whole specific DVD-RAM disk - e.g. SummerVac08, and than I copy the whole DVD_RTAV folder from DVD-RAM into that folder, as I would dowith any data folder. If I need recordings from specific DVD-RAM again, I format DVD-RAM in my Panasonic dvd recorder. That way, you can be sure that you have DVD-RAM formatted for UDF 2.0 format (not UDF 1.5 which is for PC use exclusively, and will not be read by standalone dvd recorder) to have a clean empty DVD-RAM. Then I copy the DVD_RTAV folder to the DVD-RAM in my PC's dvd drive. If computer asks me to owerwrite some files on the empty DVD-RAM (especially DVD_RTAV folder and files inside,) I confirm it. That way, I will have correct files in correct place. It takes approx. 30 minutes to burn DVD-RAM in my PC's dvd drive, but it can be done. Using this procedure, you will get exactly the same DVD-RAM as you had on the first place (with all titles, chapters, etc. - exactly as the first original you backed-up.) It is something like "DVD image" burning. Of course, if you have good software, you can even use the file directly on your computer for additional editing on PC. I use this option as backup of DVD-RAM media with important files. You never will have enough backups. It's not the best option for hundreds of recordings, but it can be good for most valuable recordings. Burning DVD-RAM on PC is not fun, considering time, but it can save you troubles later if HDD in dvd recorder suddenly fails. Here are another links to check. The second link explains how one guy recovered data from Panasonic HDD (Panasonic DMR hard drive data recovery - It CAN be done!!) That thread is really amazing. Maybe Panasonic engineer would have better and easier solution, but so far, this option is the best available (despite time consuming procedure.) http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1147852 http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1010518
rekoj, Boy, that guy Wade has more patience than I do! Thanks for that link. It looks like he has figured a lot of this out. The real trick would be to figure the method the firmware in the Panasonic uses to re-construct those fragmented files. I'd bet that there is some sort of a directory area that has the title text, time & date, channel number, mode (LP, SP, etc.), total program length (in time), starting track & sector and the physical length of the first chunk. Fat32 uses fixed size blocks, with each sequential block within the directory entry, etc. But from what Wade said, the chunk size changes. It's probably that when the firmware finishes reading the original length of the first chunk, the next few bytes will have some sort of END value, or the length and starting track and sector of the next chunk of the file. I know Unix uses many different styles, but I haven't played much with Unix file structures. If the scheme was known, I'm sure a program could be written that would recover the files. I just haven't had the time or patience to do what Wade has done, and we would need to go further than he has to be able to write that recovery program. I just know it could be done. I have two hard drives with a lot of video that I wouldn't mind recovering. They were recorded about 3-4 years ago. It was then that I discovered the "U99" error that started this thread in the first place. (I sure hope there aren't any users of these machines that haven't made sure that their firmware is the fixed version.) By the way, if you have the unit unplugged when you remove the HDD, as long as you haven't powered the unit back up with either a different HD (or no HD), you can put the hard drive back without the forced re-format. I think they check the hard drive ID (serial number) and make sure it matches the one stored in the battery flash ram. (Windows won't change the serial number.) Every hard drive has a unique ID. If it doesn't match, you're stuck. When the Panasonic re-formats, it updates the flash with the new ID. It would also be wise to avoid writing to the HD when it's not in the Panasonic machine. If you accidentally did, it might not force a re-format, but you might have bad videos - or a bad list of programs. Roger.
