I believe the issue is that the P2 Store must be FAT32 which has a 4GB file size limit and a limit of 15 partitions. There is not an easy way around that. Even if you put a 160GB drive in the P2 Store, you would only get 15 4GB partitions.

If there ever is an update to P2 Store it has got to be a lot better in use and value. I would like to see a 160GB version with an LCD screen and the ability to record directly to it. You will never see that though as Panny has a vested interest in selling you more P2 cards. It would truly be a killer app though.



ash =o)

I believe Panny has a box - which comes with a LCD panel and allows you to copy P2 cards to external USB2 drives. Can't remember the model off hand. It takes the normal Panny LiON battery that you use for the P2Store too. Only problem - it does not supply power to the USB2 external drives. So - you have to carry a power source for the external USB2 drive. It does cost 2.5X the price of the P2Store. And does not have an internal HD too :-(((.

The file size limit is 4GB, but the partition limit isn't. An individual partition could be as much as 2 terabytes in size.

So if you were able to put a 160GB drive in there, you could potentially copy 10 16GB cards to it. If you're using 8GB cards, you'd run into the 15-partition limit, so you'd want to use a 120GB drive; with 16GB cards you could almost take full advantage of a 200GB drive.

But afaik nobody's ever swapped out a P2 Store drive, so this is all hypothetical.

That box is the "P2 Gear"; it's basically an HVX200 without a lens, but with a few more features, some of them kind of nice. It has two card slots, can load metadata on an SD card, and can offload to firewire drives. But it can also offload to USB drives, and supplies bus power for USB. And its monitor has a waveform monitor and a vectorscope.

No internal storage, but storage is whatever you have plugged into its USB or firewire port.

I know the partition size isnt limited but the file size is but the cards take care of that. As far as P2 gear, it is missing the internal HDD and is too expensive IMHO. At $2000 with a HDD it would make more sense. At $4000 (the price last time I checked) it is pretty silly, that is a brand new top of the line laptop, 2 16GB cards and 2 160GB external drives.



ash =o)

Barry wrote this -

But afaik nobody's ever swapped out a P2 Store drive, so this is all hypothetical.

I think the real reason why nobody has done this yet - is all the P2 Store drives are still under Panny's warranty. And opening the P2 Store drive voids that warranty. After one year have passed ... I can assure you - some enterprising folks will definitely dismantle a P2 Store and report whether the drive can be swapped out. When that day happens, we can collectively either cheer the news (yes, it can be done) or moan (no !!!).

If we don't want to wait, pass the hat around to collect $2K, and get some gurus to open it and have a report from him on whether it can be done, and how to do it .... I am sure there are more eager folks waiting for this news on the DVINFO.net ....

Many P2 Stores are long, long out of warranty. The P2 Store was introduced two years ago.

If I knew what I was doing... I'd take my P2Store apart. I'll probably do it after I get a few 16GB or 32GB cards. It'd be nice to have a 1TB P2Store.

I wonder whether it is technically impossible to swap out a P2 Store HD? What is so special about this 2.5" HD then? Has anybody tried? The lack of news here indicates that this task can't be done (at least for a layman).

Or even worse, if Panny's firmware on the P2Store restricts the size of HD or checks for some signatures on the HD after powering up - then we are out of luck.

Yeah - yes ... yes ... Jon please go ahead - tell the rest of the world whether it is possible ... hee hee!

I suspect the drives have a custom controller board and cant be swapped out.



ash =o)

Ah ... custom controller card? Might this be one that has accelerometers builtin? One that allows the h/w to sense if the unit is falling - and parks the read write heads before the unit hits the ground? All IBM Thinkpads HDs come with that feature.

Three possibilities here -
1. The custom controller card is physically part of the HD itself - which I doubt - as putting the ASIC interface (EIDE or SATA) card to control the HD is major undertaking that few OEMs want to undo. And all HDs feature the same ASIC interface from the same manufacturer - so I doubt Panny would go for this route.
2. The custom controller card is a separate board connected to the HD via proprietary connections. Again - unlikely.
3. The custom controller card is another board that connects to the HD via some industry standard protocol (EIDE or SATA)?

If (1) or (2) - we can forget about swapping out the HD then. If (3) - we still stand a chance.

In IBM Thinkpad case, the accelerometers are not on the HD - but part of the motherboard. Make sense - otherwise changing HDs will be extremely expensive.

Again, all these discussions are theoretical unless someone actually opens his/her P2 store and take a look what is inside.

TS

When talking to the Spec-Comm guys about the now defunct Cineporter, they divulged that in order to maintain consistency they had to flash every drive with a custom firmware. Since the P2 store isnt recording on the fly, you might be able to get away with it but I doubt it is as easy as swapping out a drive.



ash =o)

Hoodman P2?
 

I remember seeing Hoodman at NAB saying that they were going to be making their own P2 cards. Did this project die? I can't seem to find anything on their website.

I believe that has been discussed in several threads already. Hoodman is putting the project on hold - I think they are having problems matching the functionality of the P2 card.

Where have you read that Hoodman is putting the project on hold?

Never have seen that.