Please bare with me i am a complete newbie.. (please excuse my english)

My boss has handed me a HVX200e video cam along with a FS-100drive (100gb). Now when i record to the drive no matter what i do it wants to record only in the highest format on 111 minutes.
I'm trying to get to the 217 minute record time but as soon as i press record button on the FS drive it flicks back to 111 minutes, it doesn't matter what the HVX200e is set to wether its 1080i or 720p, i was hoping if i set to 720p it would reduce the file size.

If i set the FS-100 to DVCPRO 50-rec, it just reverts to the HD mode and back to 111mins instead of the preferred 217 mins

The FS-100 unit has been upgraded to firmware 4.0, i thought this was going to correct my problem but seems to have no affect.

Sorry for being such a novice among professionals.. but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Forgive the assumption, however, can we assume that you're also placing the HVX in SD DV50 mode as well? If so, then your results would not be anticipated...

However, It sounds you may still be in an HD recording mode on the camera (1080/720), and the Firestore is picking up on that automatically when you start recording (even if you try to initially place the FS in DV50 mode). You can scroll through the display on the firestore when you start capturing and see the format of the signal that's coming in.

I may be wrong, however, I'm pretty sure you need to have the camera in DV50 as well, feeding that SD signal over firewire...

If you're specifically trying to record HD to the P2 cards, and simultaneously record a DV50 downconvert to the Firestore, it's not going to work for you (unless you put some other equipment in the loop). I've simulateously recorded HD to P2 cardson the camera, and an SD downconvert to other P2 cards/Firestore, etc, but it took other gear (like AJA/Teranex boxes, HDSDI, an HPM110 (or other DV50 deck) and then capture from that stream).

Hope this helps...