Can I attach any HDD to the XL2? I dont need a fancy on screen display one. Just something that I could log the footage to and go direct to edit in Shake and whatnot. Thanks!

Reed, yes you can, take a look in this forum:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=65

Hi Reed,

When I'm doing stationary camera work, I go from my XL-2 through my laptop to a fast GRAID external disk, all via Firewire. I'm running DV-Rack on the laptop which output in AVI format. Of course, this allows you to monitor both the actual video as well as video and audio waveforms before and during recording. For this configuration you'll need a laptop with an internal firewire port and an separate external PCMCIA firewire card (no, you can't use two ports on the same firewire card).

Once you've recorded the AVI to the HDD, presto - you're ready for editing.

Regards, Michael

Thanks alot for the info guys. The FS-4 would be real cool, but its more than I could afford at the moment. Not sure what to look for inside that link posted, so I just googled the FS-4. Stationary shots are hard to come by, but the laptop idea might work for a few shots. I do 2d/3d compositing and the complex shots require me to move around and get paralax movement. What I am really looking for is a way to mount a cheap pc hd and have it store to it. The XL2 and workstation were all I could afford on a college kid budget for the moment.