Need Panny DMRE80H video rescue help

[oldngrey]

Help! Somehow I managed to format the HDD on my panny DMRE80H. The process only took a couple of seconds so I KNOW the video is still on the disk and I must find a way to retrieve the 80 or so hours of very important video. I'd rather not pay a data retrieval service all that money if the video is not watchable.
I removed the harddrive from the machine and replaced it with another 80GB drive which it gladly formatted and is saving video to.

How can I get to the video? What format is the video in until you finalize a DVD? If I somehow pull off the video, how can I watch it and save it?

Any help will be greatly appreciated

[RDS1955]

Not sure. cause I've never seen whats on the hard drive on mine.. And I don't know if it writes it in it's own format or if it just creates a regular video type file...Hook it up on a pc as a secondary drive and see what shows up on the drive.. it may be MPG, VOB or VRO.. If it's VRO, you can simply rename it to MPG..If it's other than that, you'll at least have a little bit more info to come back and see if anyone knows anymore..

[oldfolk999]

If as stated that you formatted your drive, I believe whatever's on it is GONE, unless you have the special applications and knowledge to retrieve them.
Sorry.

[redwudz]

If you just did a quick reformat, you may be able to recover it. Do a Google search for 'data recovery programs' or similar. Some have a free trial version that will at least show you if the data is recoverable.

[handyguy]

You could put it in your PC & see if an unformat program can recognize it. Download.com has programs of that type.

[Bridge]

As long and nothing was written to the hard drive after the format maybe the video is still there. The format might have just wiped the information table but the video is still there as long as nothing new was put on the hard drive.

I would have to agree that it should be put into a computer and looked at with some data recovery software. Just as if something happened to your computer hard drive. Biggest problem is if Panasonic uses some special language or video format unique only to Panasonic.

[oldngrey]

Thanks for the replies. Nothing was written to the disk after the quick and unplanned 'format' was done. I placed the drive in an external USB case but my PC didn't recognize it. My mac using Norton Utilities can see data written on the disk with the start of the disk empty. I guess that means the information table was wiped. My next attempt will be to use some data recovery software. I'd really like to recover that video if I can. I'm hoping that after I recover the video I can actually convert it to something a PC or a DVD player can play.