Connecting the camcorder HDD directly to the computer, is it possible?

[Bencuri]

My friend asked me to help him archive the data from his Panasonic SDR-H20 camcorder that went wrong. It doesn't switch on. The hard drive works, but the camcorder has an error, and there is no way to switch it on to get the data off the drive through the camcorder interfaces. The repair center cannot solve the problem. And taking the hard drive to an archiving specialist would cost too much. I wonder if you can purchase a plug or an interface that can connect the camcorder hard drive to your computer directly (if you remove the hard drive from the camcorder, of course), so that you can copy the data from it in Windows? Does such an interface exist? Like an IDE or SCSI interface, I am thinking about that kind of solutions. If it exist, what is the name of that thing?

[themaster1]

In theory it's possible to plug it to you motherboard via IDE, Sata or usb depending. The problem of such hhd's i believe are that they are proprietary generally they use EXT3 file system (not readable on windows by default)

Take a look at this adapter:
https://www.dealextreme.com/p/usb-sata-ide-cable-set-474

[sanlyn]

The way some of those camcorder drives are formatted, Windows or Linux might not even recognize the drive as having a partition. Only one way to find out. The external enclosure for the removed drive must have connections for the drive's power and data line. I recall some time back seeing a DOS program that reads unusual drive formats. But I don't recall where I saw it or who makes the program.