Please can someone advise me. I have a DMR-E95 DVD recorder with hard
disk. The hard disk is nearly full of archived home movies. The disk
is also starting to have problems with sound. I need to back up the
contents to a multi-media server on my home network. How can I do this
please? Backing up to hundreds of DVD-RAM disks is not an option - too
expensive and time consuming. Thank you. Chris B.

On Fri, 9 May 2008 03:03:26 -0700 (PDT), CJB
put finger to keyboard and composed:

Please can someone advise me. I have a DMR-E95 DVD recorder with hard
disk. The hard disk is nearly full of archived home movies. The disk
is also starting to have problems with sound. I need to back up the
contents to a multi-media server on my home network. How can I do this
please? Backing up to hundreds of DVD-RAM disks is not an option - too
expensive and time consuming. Thank you. Chris B.

I can't see any better way than to copy the movies to DVD-RAM and then
on to your home PC. As your HD's capacity is 160GB, I would think that
you would need to do this 40 times at most.

Alternatively, you could stick your HD in a USB enclosure and try to
image it. I suspect, however, that the file system may be proprietary.

FWIW I've tried to attach my Tevion DVD recorder's hard drive to a PC,
but it uses a foreign LSI Logic OS (CLsiPMABS ???) and file system
(TFS2 ???). In fact it doesn't even appear to have a partition table
or MBR, and the data appear to be stored from top down, ie starting
from the higher numbered LBAs, not from LBA 0.

This URL (Hacking the Salora HDD2510) is an analysis of the file
system of a cheap DVD recorder:
http://jeroent.com/salora/?cat=4

Maybe someone has done a similar analysis for Panasonic DVDRs ???

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

"CJB" wrote in message
...
Please can someone advise me. I have a DMR-E95 DVD recorder with hard
disk. The hard disk is nearly full of archived home movies. The disk
is also starting to have problems with sound. I need to back up the
contents to a multi-media server on my home network. How can I do this
please? Backing up to hundreds of DVD-RAM disks is not an option - too
expensive and time consuming. Thank you. Chris B.
I think the best you can hope for is to back up to an image or another HD.
G4U did it for my JVC hard drive. I can clone the hard drive or make an
image to a FTP server.

On Sun, 11 May 2008 13:36:47 +1000, Franc Zabkar
wrote:

On Fri, 9 May 2008 03:03:26 -0700 (PDT), CJB
put finger to keyboard and composed:

Ah, that's why I didn't see the OP ... gmail is such a spam house that
I just killfile all posts from there!

Please can someone advise me. I have a DMR-E95 DVD recorder with hard
disk. The hard disk is nearly full of archived home movies. The disk
is also starting to have problems with sound. I need to back up the
contents to a multi-media server on my home network. How can I do this
please? Backing up to hundreds of DVD-RAM disks is not an option - too
expensive and time consuming. Thank you. Chris B.

I've done quite a lot of work on this sort of thing for my DMR-E100H.
Take a look here ...
http://tinyurl.com/55fjq2
... standing in for ...
http://www.cemh.eclipse.co.uk/JavaJi...cDMRE100H.html

Note: If you want to keep a bookmark to this, suggest you have a
backup one to http://www.javajive.macfh.co.uk (a site redirection
link) as that will survive my changing ISPs, not that I'm planning to
right now.

I can't see any better way than to copy the movies to DVD-RAM and then
on to your home PC. As your HD's capacity is 160GB, I would think that
you would need to do this 40 times at most.

W-e-e-e-l-l-l-l-l-l ... As I've explained on my site, actually it can
be better to transfer individual programmes one by one than group them
into 4.7Gb batches filling each DVD-RAM. But you're right otherwise,
that's the OP's best option.

Alternatively, you could stick your HD in a USB enclosure and try to
image it. I suspect, however, that the file system may be proprietary.

If it's like mine, then it is. Imaging onto another drive is only
likely to work if you can find an identical disk, or at least one with
an identical number of logical sectors &/or physical CHS layout, not
sure whether one could get away with the former (most probably) or
would actually need the latter, and have software that can perform
whichever is required between a logical or physical sector-by-sector
copy.

Also USB and HDs are often a dodgy combination, the HD can get
corrupted. Better to mount it in a desktop PC to do the job.

FWIW I've tried to attach my Tevion DVD recorder's hard drive to a PC,
but it uses a foreign LSI Logic OS (CLsiPMABS ???) and file system
(TFS2 ???). In fact it doesn't even appear to have a partition table
or MBR, and the data appear to be stored from top down, ie starting
from the higher numbered LBAs, not from LBA 0.

This URL (Hacking the Salora HDD2510) is an analysis of the file
system of a cheap DVD recorder:
http://jeroent.com/salora/?cat=4

Maybe someone has done a similar analysis for Panasonic DVDRs ???

AFAIAA, I've wasted more time on this than anyone else, so my site is
fairly comprehensive! :-)

On Sun, 11 May 2008 13:36:47 +1000, Franc Zabkar
put finger to keyboard and composed:

FWIW I've tried to attach my Tevion DVD recorder's hard drive to a PC,
but it uses a foreign LSI Logic OS (CLsiPMABS ???) and file system
(TFS2 ???).

Hmm, on second thoughts there would be no reason for the HD to have an
OS or MBR, only a file system. The OS would be in the firmware on the
decoder PCB.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

On Sun, 11 May 2008 12:22:32 +0100, Java Jive put
finger to keyboard and composed:

On Sun, 11 May 2008 13:36:47 +1000, Franc Zabkar
wrote:

Alternatively, you could stick your HD in a USB enclosure and try to
image it. I suspect, however, that the file system may be proprietary.

If it's like mine, then it is. Imaging onto another drive is only
likely to work if you can find an identical disk, or at least one with
an identical number of logical sectors &/or physical CHS layout, not
sure whether one could get away with the former (most probably) or
would actually need the latter, and have software that can perform
whichever is required between a logical or physical sector-by-sector
copy.

You may be able to limit the capacity reported by the HD by creating a
Host Protected Area:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.