I had my camcorder docked and connected to my PS3. I was viewing some of the videos and ended up falling asleep. When I woke up, the camcorder had shut down. I tried to power it back up and it wouldn't start back up. I tried all of the troubleshooting steps, but when it is turned on, a green LED comes on for several seconds and then shuts off. Nothing else happens. No other lights, no noises, nothing. What could have caused this? Is it possible to reflash the FW and bring it back to life? I don't want to send it in for service and ended up losing everything on the HDD. Has anyone else had similar problems? Please tell me there is an easy fix . . . . .

I had my camcorder docked and connected to my PS3. I was viewing some of the videos and ended up falling asleep. When I woke up, the camcorder had shut down. I tried to power it back up and it wouldn't start back up. I tried all of the troubleshooting steps, but when it is turned on, a green LED comes on for several seconds and then shuts off. Nothing else happens. No other lights, no noises, nothing. What could have caused this? Is it possible to reflash the FW and bring it back to life? I don't want to send it in for service and ended up losing everything on the HDD. Has anyone else had similar problems? Please tell me there is an easy fix . . . . .

Have you tried disconnecting the camcorder from the charger and removing the battery?

I once accidentally plugged the wrong thing into one of the ports on mine (I think it was a wired remote into the power jack - never use the camcorder without your reading glasses) :-) It stopped working at all and I thought I'd fried something. After disconnecting all power sources for a few seconds it worked fine once the battery was reinstalled.

If you have a second battery, try that too - maybe your battery is defective? I don't know if it will run without a battery (on the charger only), I am at work and can't test this.

I have gone through all the troubleshooting steps I could find both in the manual and online. That included disconnecting the battery, trying different batteries, doing resets via the button, doing resets via the online tutorial, using just A/C, chatting with tech support . . . . . . nothing works.

First, let me say that I'm really sorry to hear of your experience. I lost a lot of data a few years ago from a faulty HDD and I know the pain it brings to lose precious data. Because of that experience, I always keep multiple copies of irreplaceable data (like movies and photos) and I never trusted my SR1 or my new SR11's HDD to keep the only copy of my movies. I promptly offload the videos to my PC whenever time permits to give me at the least 2 copies. I then proceed to make backups on a monthly basis, which means that I always have at the least 2-4 copies of my data. Call me paranoid... but I won't get caught with my pants down again. :)

To get your data back: what you *could* do if you're not under warranty anymore and you're feeling pretty confident about your computer hardware skills would be to open the camcorder, get the drive out, purchase an adapter to connect it to a PC and extract your data off of it yourself. If that doesn't work it may mean that the drive is the component that died (and not something else in the camcorder). If it's the case AND you're willing to pay the price to get your data out of it, contact your local data recovery company for them to extract the data (warning: this will cost you between $300 and $900, so you'll REALLY need to want that data back). Whatever you decide what to do about the data, if the drive is dead, it should be pretty simply and relatively cheap to replace the drive. Just look at this page for more information: http://sony.hdr.sr1.googlepages.com/. The 80GB on that page is available around $120 online.

If the drive isn't the issue, you already have most of the data off the camcorder (as you should) and/or want to cut your loses, I would probably just contact Sony and get it serviced. It'll be free if you're still under warranty and they may still be able to send it back to you with your data preserved (if the drive isn't the problem of course). Make sure to request an estimate before they do the job to evaluate if it's worth it. If it's more than half of the camcorder's price, I would personally cut my losses and grab another camcorder. I know this is not what you want to hear right now, but it might be what you'll have to do in the end (though I sure hope for you it's not the case).

But I would try the other venues first, just in case it's something you can fix by yourself.

Thanks ericjut for the awesome information! I went ahead and ordered an adapter to try to recover the data off the hard drive before sending it in for service. If the drive is the culprit, I will go ahead and order a new one. The camcorder is still under warranty, but a new drive is cheaper than what Sony will charge for labor for the service ($149).