Panasonic DMR E85H - Corrupt HDD DIY fix Info

[TeeeRex]

Hi,

I have had the Panasonic DMR E85H for about 7 days now and am very please with it's performance - however yesterday the unit froze when I was splitting a title and after turning off and on again, the unit was 'dead' and would not 'boot' properly.

I had a fair few family videos stored on the HDD which luckily I had already copied to DVD but I wanted to wipe the HDD before sending it back and getting another unit - basically this is not possible (according to Panasonic).

(why not have an emergency format disk button on the back of the unit to fix corrupt HDD's ?)

Not satisfied with the answer from Panasonic, I removed the HDD (a VERY quite Samsung HDD BTW) and attached it to my PC - Hey presto, it saw the disk but as expected could not read the format. With nothing to lose, I repartitioned the disk, formatted it with a full NTFS format and then unpartitioned it again using the standard XP Disk Mgr.

I then put it back in the recorder and to my disbelief, the unit span up and asked if I wanted to format the disk - Yes please !

All now appears to be fine !

For the hackers out there (me included..) I tried a spare HDD but the recorder rejected it saying 'try another disk' on screen.

Anyway - could proove useful for someone out there - especially as there is aparently a three week lead time on this recorder in the UK ...

I just hope it doesn't happen again - or it will be going back !

Cheers,

TeeeRex

[spiderman2k1]

You might have bad cable's in your Panasonic I had this problem on my PC when the hard drive still works but there nothing you can do with it.. You might want to change the cable's just to be on the safe side.

[TeeeRex]

Spiderman2K1, Cheers for the thoughts, but I don't think it was the cable - it may be a standard IDE 'block' to the HDD but the cable used is a flat platic IDC type with miniture connector to the motherboard.... not a standard IDE cable.

My thoughts are that the HD got badly corrupt and it didn't recover from this - not good I know but lets hope it was a one off ....

[spxxky]

Same thing happened to my E85 - I returned it to the supplier and got a replacement unit

Haven't tried a split on the new unit yet...

[spxxky]

My second E-85 died on me this evening - continuous system check after it started recording on it's own!!!

I think I'll get a refund and give this lark up - I've lost a whole lot of stuff I recorded on the hard drive

[spiderman2k1]

I have the E80 never had one problem. I think what happen when a compnay bring a new model out they have to make alot of them very fast. it's best to wait unit they are not making them that fast. They have alot store that do not have them and they have to get them in those store's. So they have to make them fast. If your not happy I would get the E80. Then get a E85 after X-MESS.