Is an External HDD possible w/ a DVDR? - Page 7

Does anybody know if this HDD will work with the Polaroid:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...HDD&cpc=HDDbsc
Seems like a good price for a 320GB.

The only drive that I've seen mentioned to not work was a Maxtor (500Gb) that Master Yoda (ooops I meant nextoo) tried. I wonder if the problem with that might have been that it was a ATA133 rather than ATA100.

You can get that 320gb for about that price including shipping

see here

Best bang for the buck is those 250gb drives DLSDO keeps filling up though it sounds like Newegg will be running out with him recording 24/7

I think it actually is a diagnosable and treatable condition I suffer from...IGOTMOREMOVIESTHANICANWATCHINALIFETIMEitis

I like the 250s cause like Nextoo notes..its a lot of titles to scroll through and good $.

What did I do wrong or is it the burner? Finally decided to pop open my "K" unit again since I was getting that crunching/growl @ startup. Actually this is unit #2 in the bedroom and its set for a timer recording every morning @ 6:30 (Magic School Bus for one of my little one's) and its waking up the wife so shes upset and if shes unhappy then I am unhappy...well you know the rest

Nevertheless...it was the fan afterall. Changed it out with a spare and now its whisper quiet. Weird that it made that noise and only with startup.

While I had it opened I decided to put in a new burner. Sony DRU-820A. Quick format on the computer. Set the region code. Transferred over to the Polaroid.

I used the external power supply but got bars of slow vertical scrolling interference on the screen?? Anybody seen this before? Was definitely the power supply. When I unplugged it went away. The power supplier is good. I use it to power my laptops external burner.

Well I am creative so I crafted a power supply directly off the board to the burner that worked just fine.

Obstacle #2. Do you have to do the IDE reversal trick with the burner like the HDD? I used a 19" standard IDE. I tried both and I could only open and close the tray. No go otherwise.

Obstacle #3. Master right?

Any suggestions?

nextoo.... I read on another board about upgrading HDD size with the Accurian. Guy found out that there was insufficient memory in the unit to handle the larger HDD correctly and it became unstable.....I just wonder if that might be the problem with a 500gb with this unit?

We need someone with a big ATA100 drive willing to try it out and see if it has the problem or not. I don't have one to give it a shot.

Might have a short in the ide cable. It happened to me when I pinched the cable in the Mapower case I found the crease in the ide cable that caused the intermittant start problem. You shouldn't have to draw power off the Polaroid. I thought it was the power supply to the case because when I was reached in to the back to jiggle the ps connector I created pressure or movement that stress relieved the short in the ide cable. Look the cable over carefully or just replace it with a fresh one and give it a try.

Teach me here. What does the ATA 100 provide? More memory? Help a computer challenged guy

Tried another IDE and still no dice.

Does the IDE need the "nub fix" like the HDD swap?

Could I have messed up the burner with my power supply fix? I ran from the original burners 4 pin power supply on the board and spliced in a molex to the new burner. Seemed to power it up just fine. I could open and close the tray but thats it!

refers to the specs for transfer speed over the bus ie 100Mbs vs ATA133 (which Maxtor hyped) @133Mbs. My thoughts were this might be the cause of the apparent problems nextoo had with his drive. I build my own pc's and typically stick to seagate and wd. I do have one maxtor 250gb which is fine. I can't test it on the Polaroid since I have some movies etc that I don't want to risk. The Maxtor's are supposed be backwards compatible with ATA100 but certain Maxtors or at least with certain firmware were causing issues a few years ago.

No


Did you disconnect the power from the Polo to the burner (remove it completely from the Polo motherboard) and power with the external power and new ide?

Yes. It still was a no go.

Interesting. Now I can not get that burner to play on my laptop?? It just instructs me to insert a disc in the drive but does not recognize that I have done so? Did I "fry the burner". Bad joke I suppose.

Time for a new burner!?

Thanks for the help

Bummer. The drive did work when you set up the region iirc, yes? If so everything was snugly connected properly?

Went like this. Hooked the burner up to the laptop. Put in a DVD I had burned off the Polaroid (was this my mistake?). Prompted to choose region...America chosen. It then played the DVD on the laptop. Hooked it up to the Polaroid as I noted previously without success. Reconnected to the laptop and it would not play again????

For giggles try setting the region with a real dvd it might not have taken the region set because you used a polo derived dvd.

Were you running region free on the polo by chance? I don't know if that could cause it or not. If you boinked the Sony I'm not sure it would power up.

Okay. I think were getting somewhere. Lots of operator errors here. I was running region free on the Polaroid. I applied the hack when I 1st got the unit. I was embarrassed to mention the non-commercial DVD thing too.

The problem is that I thought of the non-commercial DVD thing and thats why I reconnected back to the laptop . But now I can't get the computer to recognize that I have a DVD in the drive. How do I reset the region on the burner with a real DVD?

I know..I know...How in the heck could I mess up one of the easier mods??

Hey if we didn't mess up we wouldn't be here helping each other right? We just have some more investigating to do. I'm hoping we can pull that drive of yours back onto the straight and narrow.

To get to the dvd region setting in XP you need to open Device Manager>>right click My Computer >>select the Hardware Tab>>click the Device Manager Button (it's the top one labeled Device Manager )>>Behold the list of devices... the fourth or fifth one down should be DVD/CD-ROM Drives click the + and the current list of attached drives should open>>double click the drive you are working on (or right and click select properties) the drive you selected will open to it's Properties screen>>click the DVD Region Tab and you are home.

I'm curious what it will show in the Current Region box? The info displayed will show regions you can select and give you a warning on how many drive region changes are available on the drive you are looking at. Max selections is 5 for a new drive so it may show you have 4 left? Let me know what you find out please.

I got the Tosh KX50 early it arrived today and the 2nd Polo arrived a day late so I'm getting ready to check out my if the NEC3500 which has modded firmware is going to work. First I've gotta check what is is showing myself for a region hehe. The a mess of wiring to cobble together after modding the Polaroid.

I'll check back for your reply a bit later. Good luck!

Warning The above info (I just realized) applies only to a drive directly to a pc via the an ide bus. I tried to view the region on my modded NEC using a usb/ide adapter and device manager shows a usb error code 10 device failure to start. DLSDO this is why your drive possibly won't come up under the DVD/CD-ROM devices and you will not be able to change the region attached through a usb/ide converter to the pc. Check if your Device Manager list shows an error (yellow exlamation) under USB controllers. Does it?

I'm going to hook up my Nec to one of my pc 's and check what region code it does show (and if it is changeable) but this is likely why you have the problem. The Polo set the device to non region and now it won't work with the pc. This doesn't necessarily mean it won't function at all. I'm still trying to figure out why it doesn't work on the Polaroid. Let me do some checking and I may try my NEC with the Polo and see what happens.

Scott

Ok I can see the nec when it is on the ide bus of one of my systems. The info in Device Manager says it has no region selected hehe and 2 changes left.

DLSDO you should be able to view similar info with your drive hooked up to a pc via an ide connection. If not your drive might be borked (highly technical term).

I'm going to crack the new Polaroid open now and try this region free drive out. For those interested it is a NEC 3500A modded with a 3500AG region-FREE firmware. I'll report back how it goes with the Polaroid.

The NEC is working fine with the Polo right now playing King Kong . I haven't tried burning yet though.

It now doesn't make sense now that the Sony drive you are trying to use doesn't work in the Polaroid at least due to any region change unless the act of changing it got messed up. Only if you can get on an ide bus in a pc will know if the drive is working (maybe) if it can be seen in device manager


Make very sure you have the ide connector for it keyed with the tab and make sure it is pressed completely (all the way) into the motherboard connector with the new cable.It is a snug fit next to the drive cover maybe it's not quite in all the way?.

DLSDO
Do you have NERO on one of your computers, If so connect your burner to that computer either usb or IDE no matter. Look in the NERO toolkit and pick nero infotool. Run that. It should show your burner as one of the drives, pick it and it should show all the info about it. When I bought my sony drive NERO was packaged with it. If you can't see it on a regular computer, you pobably have a lemon. I can't see where you may have done any major damage, unless you shorted something to the drive. Most power connections are made so you can't mess them up. I agree with z3scott,it's probably a cable issue, if the burner is good. My question is did you actually play the disc you put in after setting the region code while it was in the computer the first time? Might have given an early indication if the burner was a good one or not. I'm going to put mine in today and see how mine do.

Magic

I didn't have Nero to check on the pc I hooked the NEC to via usb adapter but I don't think it would have mattered. The drive did not show up in My Computer and Device Manager showed no drive under DVD/CD-ROM. It did have an exlcamation under Universal Serial Bus controllers which was tied to the usb/nec drive reading a code 10 (failure to start). If the comp won't see/access it I don't think Nero will.

The system was able to recognize it and had no errors when it was attached via ide. Must be an anomaly of the USB interface and "region free" drives?

Okay. Lot of good suggestions. I will dive into it tomorrow and let you know how it goes. I really appreciate the help!

DLSDO
First the good news. Both of my burners worked. Samsung SH-S182 and Sony AW-Q170A. Now the process. I connected both drives to my laptop and checked the region codes via NERO with external power and the ide to usb cable included with them. Played a commerical DVD on both using intervideo software. Now the fun began. The Samsung didn't play at first on my polaroid. So i tried to change the region code on the polaroid from "0" to "1". No joy could not change it, but did notice a little disk show in the corner. I then I pressed the play button on the remote and low and behold it started playing the DVD. OK I then tested it for burning a title I had prerecorded to the HDD. No problem. So the Samsung worked. Up next the Sony. It worked the first time out, played back a commercial DVD no problem. I did have issues with the burn on a Verbatium RW disk. Seems it is really finicky about used media. Both wrote pretty fast to the media. I'll post more later as I throw more at them. I'm going to use them as external drives. Those USB to IDE adapters are pretty handy. I'm on my 4th 250 gig HD with enclosures. Love the 120 hours at SP per drive. Looks like I can archive all my store bought DVD's and VHS's.

Magic

Okay. So I fried the Sony!

Had a "MadDog T-SH652" burner. Connected IDE-USB to the laptop with a "real DVD" - Madagascar. Dialed in America. I have Nero on the laptop. Moved the burner over to the Polaroid. Used my external power supply. I am hesitant to use my 4 pin to molex internal hack as I think this might have done in the Sony. I did not get the scrolling static with the external power supply like I did with the Sony so really no need for the internal power.

Turned on the Polaroid and it played the DVD just fine. Burned off a 30 minute segment from the HDD fast. But playback paused and stuttered. Tried different media--its the burner. I am not really surprised as the burner is cheap but its still a bummer.

Time for burner #3. Will keep you posted

I really need to test record in SP. What size screen are you viewing with? I record everything @ HQ because I assumed I would not be happy with PQ @ any other mode. Can you see a discernable difference?

I will give it a try with these 4 eyes and let you know what I think. What is everyone else out there archiving with as far as recording mode is concerned?

[quote=z3scott]

Did it burn and playback without problems?


Either I fried the burner or it was bad from the get go.


This will make you laugh. I got the 2nd burner up and playing fine. Got called away and powered off the Polaroid. Came back and powered it up and I could not get passed the "Polaroid" screen. I was tempted to throw it out the window but thought about your post. I checked my connections. Everything to the burner was perfect. Looked @ the HDD and I will be darned if the IDE wasn't just alittle unseated from the HDD enclosure!! Viola--problem solved

Thanks

BTW....Hows the Toshiba? I have not taken the plunge yet.

SP works great. I run HQ on all my 1 hour stuff but don't hesitate to use SP for anything longer and once I get done setting the second system up will do some more thorough testing. SP+ is where I start to see a more substantial drop in PQ. I'm using a 37" 720p Sharp LCD with the first Polaroid. 56" JVC 1080P with the PolaTosh RD-2100KX50 rig.

It seems to be a solid unit. I haven't had enough time with it yet to really comment intelligently and won't have any time today to finish hooking everything up. One cool thing about the set up is my D* boxes pass a 480i signal concurrently (over s-vid) while using HDMI. Thus I can pass stuff from the Polo when I set the output on the D* to 480i, have a direct s-vid from the D* to the Tosh and because the Tosh has a third s-vid connection feed the Polo's s-vid the output of a JVC SVHS and pass it to the Tosh if I want.The refurb was well packed custom foamed in the box unlike the Polaroid. Spent part of the day modding the cabinet (120mm fan, additional holes for wiring, vacuuming up the mess) burned one disk fine off the Polariod and moved a program over to the hdd on the Tosh is all so far. Been reading some threads and pushing buttons on the Tosh. I've got lots to learn. Had it all set up temporarily to test out things in another room. Only have the Tosh hooked up via HDMI to the JVC set once I was satisfied both units were functioning. Played part of a couple dvd's in it. I need to find the output settings for upscaling but I won't really use it for playback since I have a Tosh XA1 which is a killer SD upconverter as well as HDDVD player. Forgot the Tosh doesn't read + media and stumbled trying the first Polo dvd in it! I need some more s-vid cables and have some DVD-RAM coming too.

See if that Sony is really dead or not.

Polatosh- sounds like a soft toilet paper

Toshiroid- sounds like a Toshiba on steroids

Poshiba- sounds like a fancy Toshiba

I vote for the souped up model....Toshiroid!!