Firestore FS4 - 40GB Upgrade to 100GB
 

Hi

I am about to buy a Z1 and have started looking Direct To Disk. Firestore seems to pretty much the only solution- unless there are any others out there??- but they are expensive.. The 40gb solution is ok (£600 ish) but the hard drive is not very big.. This is my idea.. Replace the 40gb hard drive with a 100gb hard drive -£120 off ebay for a Hitachi 5400rpm 8mb cache-..
Has anyone looked inside a firestore device? I would imagine it is simply a matter of changing the drives..
If there is a partition with "system" files on it then connecting it up using a 2.5 " to 3.5 " converter (£10 off Ebay) one could Ghost the image from the 40gb drive to the 100gb drive, after connecting it to a PC running XP, Linux, OS X etc..
Has anyone tried something like this?
What do people think?
For £140 one could upgrade their 40gb drive to 100gb and increase the recording time from 3 hours to 7.5 hours!!

mat

Interesting idea, but until the FS4 has a bigger battery available, the limitation for mobile use is power, not disk size.

Ray Liffen

Sounds like a very possible idea, I took mine appart and took a couple of pictures

http://www.videomemoriesinc.com/pics/firestore.jpg

http://www.videomemoriesinc.com/pics/disk.jpg

Also I have an external battery pack (do a search Jon East has a write up) that powers the FS-4 for about 7 hours, and costs around 80 bucks.

7 Hours of video and power would be great!

Excellent
 

As i suspected it is jsut a standard 2.5" drive..
Funnily enough the 100gb is a Hitachi aswell.

To check to see if there is anotrher small partition with "system" files on it one could do the following!

Connect the drive to a PC running Windows XP
Right click on the MY COMPUTER icon in Windows XP and left click on MANAGE.
Then left click on DISK MANAGEMENT and on the right hand window you should see a list of drives C, D etc.
One of those will be the FIRESTORE drive
If one could report on what they see it will tell us if there is a partition on the drive ..

cheers

gonna check out the exteneded battery pack idea..gotta be good..

matw

Matt,

There are no system files on the drive.

There we have it then..
 

Welll there you go!!!
Purchase a 2.5" Hitachi 100gb Drive
Replace the 40gb Drive with the newly purchased one..
7.5 hours of recording time..

Jsut a thought..
I am about to buy the Sony Z1..
If I shoot in HDV mode will the output from the Firewire port be in HDV format?
If so I would assume that I would need the HDV updated Firestore device?
7.5 hours would equate to how much HDV??

mat

Assuming it remains an m2t it should be about the same as DV size wise.

Battery Upgrade
 

Hi
I have done a search for Jon East and ofund nothing about upgrading the battery?? Does anyone know where it is??
cheers
mat

Mathew,

I think this is what you're looking for:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=43420

aha..thanks!

Deleted...wrong thread

So can anyone confirm whether it's a fairly simple matter to replace the hard drive in a Firestore FS-4? I already have an 80GB laptop drive I could swap in if I buy the 40GB model, so that would be a handy thing to be able to do.

HI

I havent tested it as I do not own one but I do have extensive experience with computers and a hard drive is a hard drive.

Kevin..

I have taken mine apart also and from what I can see its a very simple change over..HOWEVER....what we dont know until you try is if their is something in the firmware that limits your FS4 to 40GB, or if a format on it when its installed will show the increased store time...

I don't suspect Focus will be too eager to chip in as the upgrade is a small fraction of the cost of an 80GB pro unit. Here in the UK its about a £400 difference, and after having used both I only really need the extra space the 80GB gives me. The other features I can live without..

Bottom line I think is someone is going to have to 'bite the bullet' and see, although I don't see why you should do any harm, so long as you don't do anything to the original HD..

Mark

If nothing happens with the new drive for wahtever reason jsut swap the old one and u r back where u started.. if u have a 40gb hard drive u might want to test it with that.. i doubt very much it would blow anything up!! it is after all still a hard drive..just bigger!!