Problem with Panasonic DMR-HS2

[rmhartman]

I have seen some people complaining about the UNFORMAT problem with the DVD-R media. I am having a problem with the hard disk. A few months back the darned thing just packed up and said RECOVERY then complained that the hard disk was not formatted and should it do it now? I didn't want to lose the data on that disk, so assuming the problem was the hard disk itself, I replaced it with another I had handy. Now the HS2 comes with a 40g hard disk, and I read somewhere online that you could put in a larger disk but it would only use 40g no matter what the size of the replacement disk was. I put in a 60g drive and that worked ... for a while. That one had the same problem about a week ago. It seems that both times this occured the space had been almost compleely used up. Now I had taken the 60g out and put in another ... and that one lasted one week before it did the same thing! And this time it was nowhere near full!

1) does somebody know what is going on that it keeps mangling the hard drive this way?

2) does somebody know how to read data off one of the HS2 drives? There appears to be no filesystem...

3) as a last resort I would like to replace this, but apparently all the panny dvd recorders these days have no hard disk ... I really like to record to the disk, edit the commercials out, then burn a dvd-r. is there something out there these days that I can do this with? Most DVRs seem to be TiVo, and I have no phone line near the tv so that is out. Also, it would be nice if the DVR/DVD-recorder device were compatible with the Panny-made DVD-Rs.....

Any help and advice welcomed!

TIA,

-rmh

[classfour]

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f106/newbie-has-unformat-problems-dmr-hs2-154177/

[rmhartman]

Yeah, I read that but there are no real /answers/ there.

If nothing else, do you have a recommendation for a replacement device?

[swkenney]

If you get a TiVo you don't need to have a phone line. I got rid of my landline phone and then realized I had no phone for my Tivo Series 1. Then I discovered that you can connect to a serial port on your PC if it has an internet connection and "dial in" to the serial port.

If you get a Series 2 or 3 (Hi Def) you can connect to a wired or wireless router that is connected to the internet. Then you can download recordings to your PC over your network. Videoredo can quickly edit out the commercials on these.