thanks daniel..

yeah well i have the FS4 pro simply for Avid use (if i wasnt using avid on some corp jobs, i would have gone the standard model),
Anyways... to me, the price here in aus is on the ridiculous side.. put it this way, with the money for a pro unit, i can build a kick ass workstation... or even better, by a mid to high end laptop and run DVRack...

dont get me wrong, i love the fs4.. but right now price wise... well, its a joke..

if i could up the capacity, then i can make the unit work itself off to shoot weddings.. but as it stands, the unit is only useful for corporate or directed/storyboarded jobs..

From 40 to 80 in 1800s
 

My experience on the subject:

Purchased an Hitachi Travelstar 5400 rpm 80GB - HTS548080M9AT00 HDD.
Formated it (FAT 32) using a WIN98 installation CD (XP only allows formats up tp 32GB on FAT 32).
Changed the volume name to the same name of the old drive.
Swaped the drives and voilá.

Best regards.
Arnaldo

nice post arnaldo, people need to know that there is an easy proven way to put a bigger hard drive into the fs-4.

if you don't have a win98 bootable disk, you can use aftermarket utilities like partition magic, or there are a number of freeware ways to go about it... i found a couple on the 'net, i have not used 'em myself:

http://www.mager.org/mkdosfs/

http://www.allensmith.net/Storage/HDDlimit/FAT32.htm

using a 5400rpm drive instead of a faster drive is probably a good idea also, from the standpoint of possibly less power consumption, and less heat generation.

Hi Dan.

The drive I used is of the exact same series of the original drive, only bigger.

Best regards,
Arnaldo

FS3 HDD Ugrade
 

Hi ALL. Is there any easy way to a similar upgrade Job on FS3 HDD !!!
Thx.

Just another chime in....
 

I purchased a 100GB Seagate 5400 RPM Drive / 8MB Cache in a external USB enclosure at Fry's for 169.00 - I swapped it out by hooking it up to my mac powerbook, formatting MS-DOS and giving it the same volume name as the FS4 drive that was already in the FS4.
Swapped it out, had to do another format once in the FS4 and it works great - 463 minutes record time!!!!
Instead of the water bottle battery (tooooo cheesy) - I use a DigitalCameraBattery.com battery with IBM laptop cable from them as well - fits the FS4 perfectly!!! And it will power the FS4 for over 10 hours.... my longest test so far.

Now I can go a whole weekend and shoot without a computer etc.....

For what it’s worth…..
 

The FS-4 will both partition and format your hard drive ….. at lest mine did….. and I did not have to hook it up to my desktop……

Thats good info to know. I hooked it up to the mac primarily to give it the same volume name per an earlier post in this thread. If that is not required, one step saved!!!

Lets see if I can make a long story short. I had other problems but not with the hard disk. There were times when I did have hooked up to my desktop thinking there was something wrong with the hard dive. I can't remember if I gave it a volume name or not. My problem turned out to be a bad ribbon cable so when I replaced it I took the partition table off and installed the hard disk in the FS-4. The first message I got from the FS-4 was that it was partitioning the hard drive. Then it proceeded to the normal startup routine. At that point I went to the drive utilities and formatted it.

Well I guess this was not so short.....
For more info:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=63372

Has anyone tried swapping in a 320gb or 500gb drive in a FS-4?

It will be a waste if you put more than 120g in there. Beside the FS4 can only use IDE hard dirve. I have my DRHD100 and i put 250 in there but it can only see 120 at one disk and it split the other half to another disk. So check to see if it IDE or SATA.

My FS-4 is an IDE model so I can't use my 320gb SATA Hitachi Travelstar I had laying around. I ordered a 160gb IDE drive and it should be here tomorrow so I'll report back.

I believe if you format it outside of the FS-4 so it's all in 1 partition instead of 2 or more.

Also is there a way to mount the FS-4 to the Shoe connector on the XL2?

Got the 160gb Western Digital today, popped it in, formatted it from Windows. Now i've got 693 minutes of 24p DV footage :)

Re: Firestore FS4 - 40GB Upgrade to 100GB
 

Right. with DR-HD100 or FS4 you need a IDE-ATA hardisk , ofcourse of 2,5'' ....
is not easy to foud on shops...and If you found the more bigone is around 160Gb... is really hard to found more bigs IDE , 2,5'' !!!
unfortunatly the focus see max 120 GB...so if you put inside a model with 160Gb....the unti ask to format , and he create 2 partitions...one with 120Gb and one with the rest...
nice is he see two units...so whe is finish the 120Gb , you have another 40Gb for recording!!!