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[Nickbat]

Friend of mine just called. His Panasonic DVD-R has given the ghost in that it won't play DVDs anymore. The store said it was uneconomical to repair and have offered him a full refund under guarantee. Only problem is, he has about 4 hours of home movies on the HDD. The store have let him keep the machine for a couple of days to see if he can retrieve the data. I suppose he could use a scart lead to another DVD-R (mine) and shovel in blank DVDs, but I was wondering if it was possible to access the HDD via a PC and just copy the files across to the PCs HDD for the time being. Would they be AVI files or something like that?

Anyone got any tips?

[Martin_1962]

Take lid off and see what make the burner is.

Try a PC burner

[Markjay]

It would typically be IDE or SATA, and I believe you should be able to take it out and Ghost it to another drive using a PC.

[TheBoy]

Some HDD recorders use non standard filesystems optimised for AV, some use EXT2/3 (Linux type) filesystems, some FAT32.  FAT ones should be readable in PC, and likely to be MPG2 or MPG4 files.

[Nickbat]

Thanks guys. He turned up with the DVD and the only realistic way to do this (as I have limited time right now) is to just connect his machine to my DVD-R and burn in the discs direct. On the second hour of home movies now ( while I put another coat of varnish on the cupboard. Only two more hours to go.....  

[Kevin Wood]

Is the replacement machine the same as his old one? Hard drive transplant from one to the other?

Probably not going to do the warranty on the new machine any good, though.

Without gaining physical access to the innards of the new machine I think a copy from one to the other is probably the best you can do.

Could he remove the hard drive from the old machine and substitute for a suitable paperweight before returning it in case a better solution comes to mind?

As TB says, hard drive format is likely to be linux and the content on it could well be proprietary format and encrypted but you never know...
<resists the temptation to take apart his DVD recorder - but for how long?>

Kevin

[Nickbat]

Is the replacement machine the same as his old one? Hard drive transplant from one to the other?

Probably not going to do the warranty on the new machine any good, though.

Without gaining physical access to the innards of the new machine I think a copy from one to the other is probably the best you can do.

Could he remove the hard drive from the old machine and substitute for a suitable paperweight before returning it in case a better solution comes to mind?

As TB says, hard drive format is likely to be linux and the content on it could well be proprietary format and encrypted but you never know...
<resists the temptation to take apart his DVD recorder - but for how long?>

Kevin

Hi Kevin! Yes, he reckoned his warranty (and refund) would be in jeopardy if we took the HDD out. So we agreed I'd do some copying.  

[Markjay]

Is the replacement machine the same as his old one? Hard drive transplant from one to the other?

Probably not going to do the warranty on the new machine any good, though.

Without gaining physical access to the innards of the new machine I think a copy from one to the other is probably the best you can do.

Could he remove the hard drive from the old machine and substitute for a suitable paperweight before returning it in case a better solution comes to mind?

As TB says, hard drive format is likely to be linux and the content on it could well be proprietary format and encrypted but you never know...
<resists the temptation to take apart his DVD recorder - but for how long?>

Kevin

Don't know about the Panasonic DVD-R, but the Tivo-type appliances are mostly linux-based and can be imaged, on some you can even upgrade the hard drive yourself (using a PC with with the right utilities).