Have been wondering: will a HDD such as the Sony DR60 be able to write XDCAM EX files if connected via firewire?

Or should I rather ask: what can be done to make it possible?

Technically the video is a data file, so there's no theoretical reason why an HDD solution wouldn't work.

However, the DR60 is setup to recognize HDV streams, not HDCAM HD files - so without a change in firmware it's not going to work.

An interesting thing that Panasonic have done with the HPX500 is given it an internal HD controller - so it can use regular firewire drives to dump footage from P2 cards.

The same solution for the XDCAM EX would be ideal, especially as you could probably dump two entire cards worth of footage to a fast hard drive in about 8 minutes!

Yeah... the "intelligence" required to that could either be implemented in the drive or the camera's firmware. Anyway, it'd be nice to have some extra recording media, apart from the SxS card - just in case!

If this becomes possible the EX will be my next camera for sure.

Chris