Well that's why I'm going to try to fake the unit out. I'm going to copy the files onto the hard drive that is in the unit. Hopefully it will not change whatever the unit reads, that requires a reformat when you change drives. Once I have the files on a computer hard drive and if I can get the computer to write to the good drive. I can try all kinds of combinations. Or just sve them until I figure a way to convert them. [bold]This has become a quest The machine cannot/must not win![/bold] I got the program from a friend. I had forgoten I even had it. Yes the program gives a list of files it can recover but you have to have another drive to write the files to. Since my original E85H drive was almost full I need another 120 Gb drive. (Busy cleaning up one of my server drives so I can steal it) I'm not sure about recognizing different types of drives since I don't know what type of file system this was to begin with. (I may find out when I take the other drive out of the unit and hook it up to the computer)The program did say that the sectors that contained the file info were trashed and unrecoverable. I originaly tried ran it on a W98SE box i had sitting around and it found most if not all the files but I didn't have anywhere to send them to. I then tried it on a W2K box but I think the program has trouble with the RAID array on that unit. The program wouldn't run properly. So... when I get another evening free I'll move both drives back to the W98 unit and see what happens. Always somthing...
Can you play those files with a software dvd player on your PC ? I tried some programs called badcopy and disk scavenger. They managed to find some stuff that was put on the drive by my pc a while ago, and some bizarre video that I don't remember at all, but not one of the things that was put on the drive by the unit at the time of the U99.
So far the only program I've found that will play or convert them in Ulead Video Studio 7 or 8. In another thread http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/117115 jacota20 said: I'm going to have to give that a try. When I don't know, But sometime!?!?!?! D&C
The Tmpgenc DVD author is invaluable, especially for putting mpeg files quickly into DVD format to use with Nero Recode's mpeg4 shrinker. Does that program you use ask for the filesystem (fat or ntfs) or did you use RawRecovery ? I think that particular program might no longer be available.
It has RAW recovery as an option. But I used file recovery. No it doesn't ask for a format. It just goes in and starts looking for files. D&C
I ran another test where I removed a good drive from the E85H, put it in a USB drive, and allowed XP to write a signature. This was enough for the drive to become "unformatted" to the unit.
Well I gave up! I wiped the original 120 Gb drive and reinstalled it in the unit and reformatted it. Neither Linux, W98 or W2k could read the good drive fresh out of the unit. Both Partition Master and fdisk found a small Fat 32 partition on the drive but could not read it. The W98 system would read the drive on boot up but not in windows. When I put the drive in the W2k box and booted the system, W2k insisted on running scandisk on the drive. It found several unreadable sectors on the small Fat 32 partition. Wouldn't read the rest of the drive. When the system booted the system would not read the drive. I think that Panasonic is doing some weird things with the drive to make sure you can't record a one time viewing movie or protected content and move the drive to the computer and copy it. I'll put up another post with the file structure that EZ Disk Recovery found on the disk that gave me the U99 error. In case anyone wants to continue the quest. Any info that is learned, I would appreciate it being posted here as I archived the saved files for future use if a solution becomes available. Dazed& Confuzed
