Is an External HDD possible w/ a DVDR?

I've been playing around with the Polaroid 2001G. I discovered that is was possible to do an easy plug and play HDD upgrade after reading the Polaroid thread on this forum. So I thought I'd give it a try. The Polaroid comes with an 80gb Western Digital drive. I was able to install a 200gb Seagate, a 250gb Western Digital, and a 500gb Maxtor.

My next step was to move the drives to the outside of the case. I thought making the storage removable would be pretty cool. So I ordered a two foot rounded IDE cable. With it still not delivered yet my impatience took over so I rigged the following today:

- a one foot ide ribbon cable fished through the case
- direct external power cable to power the HD drives
- 500gb Maxtor HDD
- 250gb WD HDD
- 80 gb WD HDD

Not pretty but it proves it does work. When the new ide cable arrives I will clean up the current installation. I also will add a removable drive enclosure to protect the drives.

Here are the pics:
1- the drives
2- the "rigged" IDE cable fished through the case (ugly I know)
3- one of the HDD's sitting on top of the SA8300HD cable box (it's running with the Polaroid).
4- The 80gb drive running the Polaroid
5- The 250 drive running
6- The 500gb running

The recording times shown are at SP (2 hour mode). The 250gb drive is almost full with 51 titles recorded to the drive.

I can pretty much add storage at will.

The rest of the pics:

The 500gb when in SLP mode (6 hr mode) slows 703 hours. Almost one month of continuous recording.

Thanks! I'm going to build a HDD library by genre. TV/Sports/Comedy/Drama/etc.

Well here is another pic - some progress. I moved the hard drive (s) into an IDE enclosure. Still ugly but I was encouraged that the enclosure worked. I'm going to order a black enclosure which should look better.

Newest update:

This configuration using the external drive case is hot swapable. By this I mean I am able to change HDD's while the Polaroid remains on. It is not necessary to power down the Polaroid when changing HDD's.

At $220 it is affordable. And it has the LSI Domino chipset so the PQ is excellent. It has no (very little) copy protection which is a plus for moving store bought DVD's to the HDD (analog transfer only). Plus it a tinkerers dream.

Great suggestions. Actually I'm going to try to read the drives under Linux. I can't read the drives under XP2. If I am able to read the HDD's then it would be possible to move the data off the HDD without having to burn to a DVD for PC editing. Only problem is I do not currently have a Linux distribution installed. Plus I haven't worked with Linux for a few years now.

Minor update here.

I decided to format the drive that originally came with the Polaroid under XP2. The process went as planned. After allocating and formating the drive under XP on a PC I put the drive back into the removable enclosure and booted the Polaroid. The Polaroid recognized the drive. I was able to use the drive as normal. Record, delete, etc.

When I moved the drive back to the PC the drive was recognized. I had assigned the drive as letter Z under XP when I formatted it. This drive allocation was retained post Polaroid use. I thought I was almost home but even though the drive is recognized, when I open the drive window under explorer no files are listed. It is as if the drive is empty.

Getting closer. My goal here is to be able to move the hard drives to a PC so I can move and edit files. I want to eliminate the step of burning to an optical disc in order to get the files to a PC. Using this method I will be able to move huge files and not be hobbled by the 4.7gb barrier.

Close but no cigar.

Yes. Plug and Play. Open the case. Remove the HDD. Put in your new HDD. Close the case. Turn on the Polaroid. That's it. Even I can do it.

Here's the first report as discovered by Dartman that the Polaroid is plug and play:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post7739060

I can only say I took advantage of Dartman's discovery. I will take the credit for finding out that the Polaroid is essentially copy protection free though....

It's not a USB connection. It's the IDE connection that the internal HDD uses. I ran a long IDE cable from this connection to outside the case. I then used a removable IDE enclosure. It is all explained above. When the IDE cable I ordered arrives and I finalize the installation I will put together a tutorial with pictures that explains it step by step and post it. It is actually dummy proof as you will see. If I can do it anybody can.

By the way you can also "down grade" the HDD . I found an old 40gb drive laying around that works fine too.

Here's a few more pics:

1- unit with HDD removed. Easy deinstall only 4 screws.

2- new IDE cable installed

3. case closed

Project is pretty much complete.

A word of caution on the HDD upgrade. I am having no problems with WD 250gb drives. I have filled and emptied them many time and have done a significant amount of editing with no problems. I am having some performance problems with a 500 gb Maxtor. I don't know if the problem is the brand or the size. At this point I have made a decision to only use WD 250gb drives. Plus the 250's are around $50 with a rebate or sale. The 500's are around $200. No brainer with removable capabilities. Also the 500's are almost too big from an organizational perspective.

Final pics:

1. 7 drive bays. I need more HDD's to fill them. The 8th is running with the Polaroid.

2. Hard drive enclosure running and recording. (black case on the right)

3. Another view.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=42

This drive has 8 megs of cache - a "JB" model.

The "BB" model with 2 megs of cache should work too. The 80GB stock drive is a 2 meg cache "BB" model.

I've also used old generic 40GB drives with no problems. The only drive I had a problem with was the 500GB Maxtor.

I have no I idea. I bought the cheapest one I could find. At the time it was the 8 meg cache model.