HowTo: Upgrade a FS-100 to 250GB

i tried the double partitiion (2 partitions of ~115 gb) after switching out the fans. it worked fine and is still working fine so far.
 
What is the model number of the fan available from digikey.com?

I changed my FSC from a 60gig to a 120gig about 20 hours of usage ago. I haven't had any problems with the fan.....yet!

Added (got a little paranoid)
My fan is a Sunon Maglev GM0502PEV3-8 DC 5V .25W
 
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Did the upgrade over the weekend... from 90 to 278 minutes!! I love it, No problems

I cant thank you enough for helping us save money and increase our bottom line.

Ron Nava
 
Ok, I did this a while ago, using the Westerndigital 250GB, since that is the only 250gb IDE drive I could find.

Now, everything works fine, says I have 270+ minutes befcause I formatted it fat32 single partition before putting it in, so all is well except I did not put the tape on the drive like the old one had.

The old drive has yellow/orange tape on it, and also a metal plate on the underside of it. I did not put the tape on, nor did I move the metal plate to the new drive. Did I need to do that?

p.s. - as soon as the solid state drives go down, I am putting one of those in. you can get a very short/small cable that converts from sata to ide, so it will fit inside, and be identical to the P2 cards, all solid, no worries about moving platters! right now the 256gb SSD drives are $600, but I am sure they will be half or less than that by the end of the year :) I will never need P2 cards, yay!! :)
 
Actually, you guys could upgrade to 320GB using this drive...
http://www.streetprices.com/Products/Western-Digital-WD3200BEVE-SP33937844.html

This is the largest IDE 2.5" drive available. anything above 320GB is going to be SATA, which is not the interface used by the FS-100.

I upgraded my FS-100 with the 250GB WesternDigital 2.5" drive about 6 months ago, and all works fine. It actually runs cooler than the Hitachi drive, so the fan does not have to work too hard, and I am using a single FAT32 partition.

In order to make the drive just have one large FAT32 partition, you have to download a program called Fat32Format. It is freeware, but it is the only tool that can format large drives as FAT32

Here is the link for it:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/FAT32format.shtml

Command line Usage: "format e:"

If your drive does not have a letter (meaning it is just free space/blank) then right-click on MyComputer and select "Manage", then click on Disk Management. you should see your drive in the right side, just with no letter or partition associated to it. You can right click on the free space and make a new partition. Just make it NTFS (quick format) for the max size of the drive. This will at least give it a drive letter so that you can now run Fat32Format from the command line to convert it to FAT32

Good luck.
 
NOTE: When you take your 100GB or 160GB drive out of your FS-100, make sure you keep it in a safe place. I recommend against using it or putting it into an external enclosure and using it for something else, because if you ever need to send in the Firestore to Focus Enhancements, you will have to send it in with the original drive in place or they will know that you modified it and thus voided the warranty.

You see, there is no sticker or seal that gets broken when you do this upgrade modification, so as long as you hang on to the original hard drive and dont use it for something else, then you can always put it back in if you ever need to ship it in.

-crobs808
 
FYI - If you upgrade to the WesternDigital 320gb (uses the same voltage settings and temperature requirements as the original Hitachi drive that Focus Enhancements puts in, then you will get 355 Minutes of Recording Time!

I think I will upgrade my 250gb to the 320gb now :) Which means...I have a 250gb WesternDigital drive to sell. Anyone want it? I will let it go for $50, and will send it to you already Fat32 formatted as a single partition if you like :)

Good Luck,
-crobs808
 
Ive sent mine in to change over to PAL, will change the drive when it returns.

What would be good - hot swappable drives in the fs.
 
monday1313 said:
the double partition did not crash.
Click to expand...

hi,

today i tested recording with one big partition and it didn´t crash. recorded some 3 hrs 50 minutes or so. left 40 minutes free space on the firestore. wanted to record longer but the accu of the hvx was empty. ;-)

maybe your crash was caused by another thing?
 
crobs808 said:
FYI - If you upgrade to the WesternDigital 320gb (uses the same voltage settings and temperature requirements as the original Hitachi drive that Focus Enhancements puts in, then you will get 355 Minutes of Recording Time!

I think I will upgrade my 250gb to the 320gb now :) Which means...I have a 250gb WesternDigital drive to sell. Anyone want it? I will let it go for $50, and will send it to you already Fat32 formatted as a single partition if you like :)
Click to expand...

@crobs808:
did you test it with 320gb? the readme in the 4.01 bios says that only 250gb hdd is supported.
 
Can anyone attest to the fan problem actually being caused from the "square of metal"? I will be upgrading my FS-100 in a week or so and wanted to be sure. We have some of the HD-100's (JVC version) at my work and decided to upgrade one since it had been dropped once or twice! It was a seemless upgrade, however we seem to be having the same fan issue. But there is no "square of metal" attached to the old HD-100 drive?! I'm trying my damdist to get this thing hot enough to engage the fan but no luck so far. I don't seem to remember the fan on my FS-100 going on too often, only during mid-day summer shoots. I wonder what temp the diagnostics have to read in order to start the fan? Anybody?
 
Does anyone have pics or video of the inside of a FS-100? I have a 160 gig model not sure if it's Sata ot IDE? I tried opening it but couldnt open it al the way seem like something was holding it close together. I had all the screws out. I think it was the ribbion it seemed very tight? I'm looking to either replace the dive with on that has better shock & vibrations rating or to a SSD. I think I have an IDE model will switching to a Sata HD help with vibrations? Or is therre just better IDE HD's? I have seen HDrevolutions site and am thinking about their kit but do I need to switch to Sata if I have IDE?
 
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I have a 160 version two partitions 100 & 60 works fine as far as seamless recording. My trouble is vibrations which why I'm thinking bout going with a SSD. Unless I can find a HDD with better shock & Vibrations ratings.
 
Frantic said:
no, i´m not concerned about performance issues. i am just curious why the BIOS is asking me to make two partitions although it would be compatible with the 250Gb partition.
i think the bigger the cluster size is, the better the write performance. video files are normally very big. so my way should be the one with better performance.

anybody with original 250GB fs-100 here?
if you know someone who owns such a original 250GB fs-100, ask him how it is partitioned and how it works, if there are two partitions!
Click to expand...
I have a 160 gig model and it aways makes 2 partitions 1 is 112 minutes in DVCPRHD & 2 is 62 minutes. Been like that from brand new works seamless but I never have used it in P2 only in QT. I'd like to swap to a bigger and better drive for vibration reasons. I'd really like to get a SSD anyone done that yet?:huh:
 
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what happens if you make a file which is going over the first partition? is it cut into two pieces and the rest of the file is stored onto the second partition?
 
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