Panasonic DMR hard drive data recovery - It CAN be done!! - Page 5

I've noticed this thread for a few years, waiting to try the methods mentioned if I ever suffered a hard drive corruption.

Well, it happened last weekend. I was trying to dub stored video programming onto DVD-Rs. My DMR-E80H hard drive became unreadable by the machine. I took the hard drive out, and mounted it in a Linux system. But, the hard drive was totally unreadable.

It appears I suffered a head crash, and nothing I tried could resurrect it. I could not even reformat it for future use.

Lost about 50 hours of programming. I will now be sure to offload content much more frequently.

Bummer, while rare in our DVDRs, HDD failures can happen and like you said if it's a true HDD failure and not a DVDR issue, nothing will get your data back
Keep us posted on how your HDD replacement goes, I haven't had to go that route but I'd think it will only be a matter of time.....

I think the hardest issue now will be finding IDE drives that are reasonably priced. Do they even make them anymore?

I just saw this deal posted on Woot this morning, $19.99 shipped for a 250GB IDE/PATA drive. It's refurbished but do you think I should pick one up for a spare?
You know far more about HDDs than I, are IDE getting hard to find? I haven't even looked other than this deal I noticed.
http://deals.woot.com/deals/details/5964823d-7b0d-4877-9dc3-6d0b43be3539/western-digital-caviar-250gb-7200rpm-se-wd2500jb-internal-hard-drive#1

Or Neweggs direct link:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136096&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10440897&PID=3668349&SID=

Found on my own, a 80GB IDE for $15.99 shipped which is the exact size of tomwil's but probably more RPMs
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136292
Edited by jjeff - 4/24/13 at 9:57am

I did have a spare 80GB 5400RPM drive that I installed in the DMR-E80H and is working fine now. Remember that the drive has to be set up as a slave.

I will probably order an exact replacement drive for $25 here. I might check Microcenter first; they sell refurbished IDE drives, which are very hard to find new since SATA took over. I've read that faster drives (7200/10000/15000 RPM) use more power, which could damage the power supply.

Well I though so but apparently not. I just took a look on price-grabber for new internal IDE drives and turned up over 1700 listings

I wrote to Panasonic UK and they very quickly sent me a firmware disc. With the aid of a secondhand IDE disc I am now back in business.
Panasonic tell me that 'the latest firmware updates are always available directly from Panasonic UK free of charge', which is exactly what you'd hope.
I suppose they can't keep all the legacy ones on their current-models site, but it would be useful if clearer directions for old kit were on site. Maybe they'll ber able to do that.