Dsr-du1
 

Ok, trying to revive some interest to an old stuff.
I got the opportunity to purchase 2 DSR-DU1 (direct to disk from Sony) for a good deal (1800$ for both).
So i decided to risk to sacrifice one in an attempt to upgrade from 40Gig to 80gig. The original disk is a 2.5" IBM travelstar 4200rpm.
I put the Travelstar 80 gig 5400 instead and it works.
Easy to dismantle and tricky to reassemble but it works...
I just use Symantec ghost to make an image of the orginal 40gig partition (FAT32) to the new 80gig disk.
As far as i can test now, it records and play fine.
My only problem is the capacity counter shows now 737 min.
It is probably wrong since the original capacity is about 180 min (3 hours) and the new capacity is showing 12 Hours !
I am trying now to fill the disk to see where it fails.
If somebody has the service manual, it seems it is possible to reformat the drive from the DSR-DU1, it should correct the bug.

another interesting fact is that the drive when mounted on the PC, shows some folders like MPEG, DV, WEB.
I can understand the DV folder (actually containing the video), but what about the mpeg folder ? is there some hidden feature in this device. (compatibility with HDV ?)

Dag!

What a price! I hope they weren't hot.

Are you using them with a Sony?

If not, how are you mounting them, and how are you powering them?

the guy has the stuff in stock since two years and it seems it is really hard to sell. they are totally new, unused.
The power can be either a sony battery (i use an NP-F930) the same one than i use for my vx2000, or with the power supply (same plug as on the sony camera, the small flat connector ... why sony is always doing thin differently ?).

for the mount, except for big shoulder cam (you can use the special mount as an option) , i will try to find a bag than i can clip on belt. that is not really an issue as i do not plan to run with it.
My problem was that i sell my old VX9000 with big tape (up to 4 hours with a 184min DVCam tape), so i am a bit short with 1 hour miniDV tape (i.e. corporate presentations ) even if you can find 80 min tapes or use the LP mode. So with the drive lying under the tripod, i think there is no problem.
I am a bit disappointed by the file transfer speed with the PC. It has nothing to do with a firewire HDD. But at least i am not using my camera to capture back to the PC.