Bigger HD in AJ-PCS060G P2 Drive

P

pro---studio

Member
Hi everyone,

I have a hpx500 and a AJ-PCS060G P2 Drive with 60GB Harddisk. Has anyone experience in changing the standard HD Drive which is 60GB to a bigger one?

There are 250GB Drives out there that would hold far more P2 Cards. The drive in the unit is a standard Hitachi Deskstar 60GB IDE Drive. So it should be no problem changing it.

The question is: will the Firmware see the bigger memory or format the drive with a 60GB partition which would be quite useless?

Anyone - maybe Jan?

Thank you
 
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The firmware in the P2 Store will not see the rest of the memory that is on the new drive. So while you might be able to do it, the device will not allow you to see the fruits of your labor.

Sorry,

Jan
 
Thank you Jan for answering.

Is there any chance for a firmware update that is able to use this extra space? I mean 60GB is a standard that is 4 years ago.

Today we shoot with bigger cards (32GB and 64GB coming).

With a 32GB Card I can only store one 1! card on the device.

And the coming 64GB card is not usable with the drive.
 
All that panasonic had to do would be a new firmware version, that sees the complete size of a mounted HD.

That shouldn't be to complicated.

And that would make a lot of P2 users very happy.

Without the update I think in about a year the unit is absolutely useless, as not a single 64GB P2 card fits to this drive.

So please panasonic - please update the firmware and open the possibility for bigger drives in this unit.
 
Jan - is there any chance that panasonic will prrovide a new firmware for this drive with the ability to see the bigger hd?

This is a big factor (not only for me) in the daily shooting process.

Thank you in advance
 
Everyone makes it sound so easy but there is a lot more to it than what is made of the challenge here. Please spare me the "I used to program reponses" because unless you did exactly what Panasonic would have to do to make this something they would put their name on, it isn't really helpful.

It just is not that simple, and the support line would be huge, because everyone would want to buy the cheapest drive and have it be reliable and trustworthy and when it wasn't they would blame Panasonic. That is only one glimpse of the issue here. Think of all of the variables. So as i said before I really do not see this as a forthcoming upgrade.

Sorry,

Jan
 
OK - I understand your point of view. But for me - a professional in daily tv production your opinion leads to this:

"A Panasonic professional broadcast product is only future-proof for a maximum of 2 years. After that - throw it into the... because Panasonic isn't interested in you as a customer anymore."

Sorry - we're not in the 80s - All the units got firmwares that are updateable. Why not provide an update "at your own risk"?
If I buy professional gear and pay professional prices what would be the advantage if I get an item that I cannot use anymore after 2 years? And this only because the manufacturer isn't interested in updating the firmware - only a software based problem?

I really like the products of panasonic. I owned a SDX900 and a varicam - now I'm into 3 HPX500 and a 3000. But if P2 products have such a low half-live - then I doubt if it was the right decision for me - sorry.
 
I would agree that this type of update would HAVE to be at your own risk for the reason Jan is saying - perhaps someone can hack one
 
Hmmm, A couple of years ago we could upgrade our Panasonic DVD recorders with larger dirves. There was even a firmware upgrade. Can't remember if it was a hack. We always used Seagates. Worked perfect. Of course, that was a consumer product. Pro products are a no -no. Heh, wait, aren't Firestrores upgradable?

I've been working with harddrives for 20 years, and I've gone through several upgrades for larger drives. But, remember, the pro division will want to keep their revenue in check. Sony is the worst. Remember their 3 kinds of timecode for Hi-8? Yeh, you had to buy a 3rd party convertor to see the T.C. for editing. It should ALL have been SMPTE T.C.. Haaaaa.

What Harddrive is Panasonic using now?

JohnnyD
 
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Any modern drive controller that supports 60GB, can support larger capacities unless it was intentionally crippled.

Since other P2 products support external drives, the 'everyone would want to buy the cheapest drive' line is BS.

It's just another revenue protection product line decision that will inevitably lead to the demise of P2 for everyone outside of large network user bases.

But it's a great way to drive even more people to external CF recording solutions.
 
Barry_Green said:
Hmm... unless I'm mistaken, it performs exactly as it did when you bought it, yes?
Click to expand...

But see, what I am getting from this is the fact that it's not appearing that Panasonic is dealing with the issue of "futureproofing" their equipment so that it can be upgraded with the times. We all know 60GB is not enough memory and that it needs to be upgraded. So maybe they come out with a 200GB version, but what happens when that needs to be upgraded in 2 years? Equipment is always going to become obsolete / old technology after awhile, but if I knew things like hard drives were going to be upgradeable in a couple of years for the products, and it would work for me for up to 5 years rather than 2, I would probably consider buying it. But for a 2 year investment, I probably would not. It's not a good long term investment.

I think P2 is a good investment, but you need to have the equipment to support it and make it as accessbile for users as possible so that more people are willing to jump on board.
 
Wow - what a response - thank you all.

I agree totaly with you. Of course - you are right - the unit performs as well today as two years ago when I bought it.

BUT - you can still buy it from panasonic with the 60GB HD. And this year panasonic will bring out their 64GB P2 Cards. Strange huh? Not a single Card will fit on this drive.

For my opinion a professional gear should be updatable when there is a hd involved. At least there is nothing but the firmware that prevents it. The Hard Drive inside is a standard 60GB IDE 2,5 Hitachi Deskstar. I checked it but I didn't disassembled it due to the post of jan, that the unit will not see the bigger drive. It will format any drive as a 60GB drive - no matter what size it is.
 
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I can see why the argument is made about the upgradeability of the 60GB P2 Hard drive, but guys seriously. Everyone knew that unit would be out of date sooner or later (most of us knew sooner). Why is everyone jumping on Panasonic's case for not making the unit upgradeable? Honestly if any critique is going to be made, it's that the unit is not really designed for people doing large amounts of P2 transfer, which is what makes the unit obsolete.

And Barry already posted a solution to this problem. There's an article about using a Windows laptop computer for a P2 storage, viewing, and utilities tool. Even if you bought a pretty kick-butt computer, you'd still only spend $800. At that price, you're getting something like a 320 GB hard drive for P2 storage, plus you're getting data transfer rates at about 2 GB per minute. I've personally never had experience with that 60GB Hard Drive, but I'm sure the transfer rates can't beat 2GB/min (if they can it ain't by much). I think the solutions are already out there, and going over this unit is beating a dead horse.

Would it be nice to make the unit upgradeable? Yes. But what size of the P2 Customer Base actually uses that drive? Some, probably not a majority. At $1500 street price, the unit is definitely not what I'd call a bang-for-your-buck. In my opinion the unit is only good for one thing: Having a place to offload a minimal amount of P2 footage (720 or 1080) in the event that power (for a computer or other offload device) is not available. Other than that, it's always been an obsolete solution for those who were shooting lots of P2 HD footage. It simply isn't big enough, and doesn't do enough for the money invested.

Read Barry's article, it was really helpful for me and it should be for you too.
 
IMHO: it should also be considered that if you do start applying 64GB cards w/AVC-I codec and 5 slots, you probably will not have to off oad.

I know this does not apply to all situations but I have not had to offload material from the HPX3000 on 18 hour shoots (not running time).

It made my P2 store redundant, but I still keep it around for my smaller cards/shoots.
 
Sorry but that is no option for me. It is not the problem that I have not enough cards - I want to have a reliable backup of the footage, that is sometimes unique and cannot be shot twice.

I would never rely on P2 cards with no backup. I work with P2 for over 2 years now and had several issues with not playable clips, corrupt cards and so on.

Not very often but it happens. For me, In a professional enviroment it is absolutely esential to have a backup. For that I bought the AJ-PCS060G.

Of course I could use a Notebook - but that is not the point. I have the whole infrastructure for the Panasonic equipment like Batteries an co.
And I dont want to have a sensitive notebook on my set, as I can use the robust and solid panasonic drive that is smaller and better for this need.
 
pro---studio said:
Wow - what a response - thank you all.

I agree totaly with you. Of course - you are right - the unit performs as well today as two years ago when I bought it.

BUT - you can still buy it from panasonic with the 60GB HD. And this year panasonic will bring out their 64GB P2 Cards. Strange huh? Not a single Card will fit on this drive.

For my opinion a professional gear should be updatable when there is a hd involved. At least there is nothing but the firmware that prevents it. The Hard Drive inside is a standard 60GB IDE 2,5 Hitachi Deskstar. I checked it but I didn't disassembled it due to the post of jan, that the unit will not see the bigger drive. It will format any drive as a 60GB drive - no matter what size it is.
Click to expand...

Just consider yourself lucky that the drive still works! Mine worked perfectly for 2 years and then, (by the time I totally had faith in this device and forgot to bring tape as a backup to an event) the p2 store just refused to offload anymore cards- just got an error that wouldn't clear.
Needless to say, after filling up 4 -4 gig cards- (pretty quickly @ 720p 24n)
Panasonic repair did not handle it professionally, which is a story unto itself. Bottom line is, I have a very useless P2 store sitting on my desk. It was a workflow that worked for me, but I would caution anyone who relies on the P2 store- THESE MACHINES ARE NOT INFALLIBLE!. I never mistreated it or operated it in any way that should of caused this. I hopped on the P2 bandwagon early on and although I love some things about it, it hasn't been smooth.
 
pro---studio said:
Sorry but that is no option for me. It is not the problem that I have not enough cards - I want to have a reliable backup of the footage, that is sometimes unique and cannot be shot twice.

I would never rely on P2 cards with no backup. I work with P2 for over 2 years now and had several issues with not playable clips, corrupt cards and so on.

Not very often but it happens. For me, In a professional enviroment it is absolutely esential to have a backup. For that I bought the AJ-PCS060G.
Click to expand...

Just to make sure I understand correctly, your concern of reliable back-up of unique footage sounds more like a long term archiving concern.

Of course I understand that you might be stating that you want an additional back up aside from your P2 in hand after a long expensive day of filming.

Realistically I have moved away from P2 store because:
1-No upgrades
2-Too expensive
3-P2 store interface is too cryptic
3-Laptops+external raid 1 drives are more convenient
4-I can use my laptop to preview/edit and check for FX work on set.
5-Once backed up to the laptop+raid 1 drive, in the shop it is very easy to dump that to our raid 10 edit drives and push another copy to our raid 10 deep archive.(see number 3)

I agree with you with not having an upgradeable/flexible product but I also know what Jan is saying is correct in terms of development of such a product.
 
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