HowTo: Upgrade a FS-100 to 250GB

Hi - new to forum here, but I just went through this exercise with a WD 320 and wanted to add a couple of things that I didn't see in others' experiences with the upgrade.

I'm using the WD 320 IDE Scorpio something or other. Physical swap wasn't too difficult, though I must say, the build quality and QA of this device has a lot of room for improvement. One of the screws holding down the disk drive bracket was screwed in at an angle at the factory, so it's crooked and almost pokes through the plastic post. Also, one of the power wires (from the battery terminals to the logic board) was pinched by a chassis screw post, breaking through the insulation, so bare wire is exposed (I fixed it with some electric tape). Not wanting to buy a roll of Kapton tape, I carefully pulled the original stuff off the factory drive and applied it to the new one.

After cussing at the plastic bits that wanted to keep falling off the sides of the unit as I put it back together, I fired it up and plugged it into my Mac Pro. Launched Disk Utility, saw the drive and tried to partition it. No MS-DOS or FAT32 choice provided. Quick Google scan and I found the command line below:

newfs_msdos -v focus1 -F 32 /dev/rdiskN

Note, the source I gleaned this from used an upper case -V, which is incorrect. It must be a lower-case v. The focus1 volume name was just something I made up. And, the N in /dev/rdiskN is the disk number for the device you want to format. You'll want to make sure you're executing the command on the right disk. In Disk Utility, you can right-click on the icon of the disk and get more information.

So, after rebooting the FS and connecting it to my Mac again, I see the device mounted as a MS-DOS FAT32 drive in a single just-under-300GB partition (don't recall the exact number). But, after several reboots and even a system reset (which resets the clock, among other things), "Please wait" never went away. My Mac could see the disk, but the FS apparently couldn't.

I resorted to using the FS format utility (even after reading that it breaks up the single partition), but after saying it completed the format, the FS still didn't see the disk (please wait, still). When I plugged it into my Mac, the partition that I created with newfs was gone. So, I re-executed newfs from a terminal window.

I could see a FAT32 partition in Disk Utility once again. But this time, before I unplugged the FS from the Mac, I ran the erase utility. I recalled that the erase utility lets you choose a file system type, and seeing as MS-DOS wasn't an option before, I wanted to check and see if MS-DOS would be offered now. Sure enough it was.

So, I used the same volume name (focus1) and erased the disk with MS-DOS format. Oddly, under physical disk icon, I saw disk 1 and FOCUS1 listed as partitions. I unplugged the unit and rebooted it. Yay! 356 minutes showing. But, when I plug the FS back into the Mac, I only see the one FOCUS1 partition/volume in Disk Utility. Not sure where "disk1" went. I'm assuming it was a temporary representation of slice 1 (disk2s1) that is now FOCUS1.

I'm now going to test it out, but I thought I'd share what worked for me while it was still fresh in my mind. Hope this helps someone that might be running into the same issues I did.
I could see
 
I love this thread. Thank you so much to all of you for providing so much user experience.

So. I just did this to my FS-100. I installed the Western Digital PATA 320gig drive. It works great when I format from my mac in DD Drive mode to Fat32. In P2 mode it says I have 356 minutes. But unfortunately when I format through the firestore menu it wipes out the volume entirely, can’t find the drive and I need to plug it back into my mac and initialize the drive again. I’d be happier if it partitioned the drive, than give no drive at all. Hopefully, with 356 minutes, I’ll never be stuck in the field with a full drive I forgot to format.

Anyone have any ideas?
 
Copperpot13 said:
I love this thread. Thank you so much to all of you for providing so much user experience.

So. I just did this to my FS-100. I installed the Western Digital PATA 320gig drive. It works great when I format from my mac in DD Drive mode to Fat32. In P2 mode it says I have 356 minutes. But unfortunately when I format through the firestore menu it wipes out the volume entirely, can’t find the drive and I need to plug it back into my mac and initialize the drive again. I’d be happier if it partitioned the drive, than give no drive at all. Hopefully, with 356 minutes, I’ll never be stuck in the field with a full drive I forgot to format.

Anyone have any ideas?
Click to expand...

Do not EVER use the internal (or computer based for that matter) formatting feature on the Firestore once you have it setup as one big FAT32 partition. All you have to do is select the "Organize Reel" function after you finish a shoot, then everything will be in the "CONTENTS" directory, then when you plug it into your computer, just move that whole directory off, and you will have all your space/recording-time back...no need for formatting ever again after the initial time.

That is how I use it, and since I installed the 320gb drive, I have done this process about 10 times w/o formatting...works great.

I am going to update to a solid state IDE drive soon once the prices come a bit more down, then it will basically be like having a 250GB P2 card (250GB is the biggest that SSD comes in IDE...everything else in the SSD world is SATA unfortunately, and the FS-100 is IDE based)

Thanks, and good luck - hope that helps!
-C
 
daryn@cashmarkmedia.com said:
I have not had any sucess getting the 320 gig drive to work. After installation, I was getting the "Please Wait" message that never went away. I have been able to use a FAT32 formatter to partition and format as single partition using an old USB External enclosure. ... Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

i would suggest you to READ CAREFULLY my first posting in this thread! :Drogar-Thinking(DBG

12.) if your firestore says "Please wait" after the boot screen, use the arrow keys on the fs-100 to navigate to the "DD DRIVE" option. Enable the computer connection. you should hear a ding dong (=recognized firewire device).
Click to expand...

so please, guys, read my manual step for step and follow it briefly!!! then it will work great.
 
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crobs808 said:
Do not EVER use the internal (or computer based for that matter) formatting feature on the Firestore once you have it setup as one big FAT32 partition. All you have to do is select the "Organize Reel" function after you finish a shoot, then everything will be in the "CONTENTS" directory, then when you plug it into your computer, just move that whole directory off, and you will have all your space/recording-time back...no need for formatting ever again after the initial time.

That is how I use it, and since I installed the 320gb drive, I have done this process about 10 times w/o formatting...works great.

I am going to update to a solid state IDE drive soon once the prices come a bit more down, then it will basically be like having a 250GB P2 card (250GB is the biggest that SSD comes in IDE...everything else in the SSD world is SATA unfortunately, and the FS-100 is IDE based)

Thanks, and good luck - hope that helps!
-C
Click to expand...
that is not quite right. at least on the 250GB drive, you can use the internal formatting routine, but then you’ll have 2 or more partitions (depends on the capacity of the hdd). that’s not really a problem, because the original 250GB models from focus have the same behaviour: after the first partition is full, the fs-100 will use the second partition automatically. after that the third and so on.

i am not 100% sure if it works this way also on 320Gb and 500GB, because i have only a 250GB drive. but one of the first postings in this thread says, that you can format it also with the internal routine and bigger hdd’s. anyway, it’s important to follow my how-to briefly.

btw., i can see all partitions of my upgraded 250Gb model on windows xp.
 
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hey all!

don't know if this is the place to drop it, but i read a lot of problems about making the fs-100 PAL instead of NTSC or the other way around for that matter.

Well, here it goes! I bought a NTSC version of the f-100 on ebay, not knowing there's 2 versions.
After a lot of searching i found out that Holdan in the UK does the job for 100,- euros.

I send my NTSC FS-100 to them, along with 100,- euro's cash last week and got it back today, and it's all good now! PAL hvx-200 works perfectly on the FS-100 now!

If anyone needs their FS-100 converted from PAL to NTSC or vice versa, I highly recommend them!

here's their info:

Warren Bowler
Sales Office Manager

Holdan Limited
Unit 2 Waterside Business Park | Hadfield | Glossop | Derbyshire | SK13 1BE | United Kingdom.
E-Mail: warrenb@holdan.co.uk | Head Office Telephone: +44 (0) 1457 851 000 | Fax: +44 (0) 1457 850 964 | Skype: warren.holdan I Web: www.holdan.co.uk. & www.holdan.eu




Now let's make that baby 250 gig ;)
 
Ratzy said:
I have a FS100 that was dropped and the hard drive has failed. I would love to ugprade the 100gig drive to 250 but I wonder about your pt#1 that says to get the 4.0.1 update first. My firestore is not currently working. Will I need to install a 100gig drive just so I can do the BIOS update to make it ready for a 250gig drive? Or is there a way I can go straight to 250 and update the BIOS afterwards?
Click to expand...

sorry, i didn´t see your question. i think you can update your firmware even without a working harddrive installed (but i'm not quite sure). just try that, if that fails, try to install the bigger hd and after that install the firmware update.
 
Hello,
I upgraded my fs-100 with a 320GB WD drive and now it says "no drive detected." I tried swapping it back with the 100GB drive and it says the same thing. Would anyone have ideas on what might be wrong and what I could try? Thanks
 
if both drives aren't recognized, it's probably an issue with the firestore. check all cables inside the hardware, check if the flashing is correct (bios 4.01).
 
Can I just wait until I have a harddrive failure and then try this?

Is the proprietary Firestore element likely to fail before the actual harddrive element? I'd feel like a god having 300 minutes of HD to shoot. But I don't want to risk it at the moment.


Jesus, someone has 557 minutes of HD they can shoot? No ****.
 
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According to Barrack: Yes, you can! :laugh:

But: if you know where (on which end) a soldering iron is getting hot you should not brick your firestore if you pimp it up. Just do exactly what i wrote in my first posting.
 
My original FS came on as a 250GB SATA by Hitachi HDD.. was wondering if anyone else have a similar device ? Any bad experience from it? I'm thinking of swapping it to 500GB.

I'm wondering if the internal re-formatting would still automatically partition them to 150mins each, would it be partitioned into 4? (Since. 250GB = 150mins x2 - P2 format, so 500GB = 150mins x4)??

Thanks.
 
vx-2 said:
My original FS came on as a 250GB SATA by Hitachi HDD.. was wondering if anyone else have a similar device ? Any bad experience from it? I'm thinking of swapping it to 500GB.

I'm wondering if the internal re-formatting would still automatically partition them to 150mins each, would it be partitioned into 4? (Since. 250GB = 150mins x2 - P2 format, so 500GB = 150mins x4)??

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I cannot speak for how it works on a 500GB (I did not even know there was a 500GB in IDE available, I thought 320GB was the biggest IDE in 2.5" size)

Anyway, I am using the 320GB successfully, but you cannot use the formatting feature on the Firestore itself. Just format it once, the first time as FAT32, single partition, which gave me 356minutes of recording time. When done recording perform the Organize function, then just CUT/PASTE (rather than copy) the files off to your Desktop. After that is done your drive will be back to 356 minutes available (you never have to format again).

The reason it works with the 250 and not anything higher than the 250, is because Firestore uses the same firmware in both their factory shipped 100gb and 250gb models. The Firestore does not know how to partition anything bigger than 250, so it just leaves the extra space higher than 250 as unused and not partitioned (that is why you see lower recording times when you use the device's partitioning function - NEVER do that after you have done it once)

:) Good luck - I am selling mine if anyone is interested (or will trade for a 64gb P2 card)
 
I have a few FS-100's and need to upgrade them, but it looks like focus us no longer and the link for the bios upgrade is history. Does any one have the Bios update for version 2.0 to 4.0, 4.1 and 4.0 to 4.1 that they can send me?
 
Hello,

First off, I just want to say. Thank You for all the information given in these threads. Just so much you can learn from everyone.

Request: I have a FOCUS FIRESTORE FS-100 that the IDE 2.5 80gb HD is starting to go bad. I was curious about swapping out the drive. So started to google search around if anyone did it. And came across this threads. I would love to upgrade it to a larger drive. But notice you need to update the Firmware to 4.01 and my device is still at firmware 2.0 on it. So went and notice that Vitec doesn't have any of Focus original devices archived on there site to download. So wasn't able to find any firmware updates for my device. So if anyone still has this laying around it would be great if someone can share it. PLEASE!!!

Thanks,
HELMINATOR
 
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