80 gig for 779, 100 gig for 850.00
The won't just sell the case, which is a drag, because I have several laptop drives

Focus were saying the Firepod will do HDV now at NAB but after all the dramas we had with the Firestore and given the price of the thing we're pretty reluctant to go down that road. What really irks me with ALL the HD recorders is they're still stuck in FAT32. Given that Macs and PCs can now read one anothers HFS and NTFS volumes I just don't see why we're all lumbered with this 4GB file limitation.

I picked up the Edirol R4 at NAB and it's got a 2 GB limit :(

Bob.

Yeah, FAT32 is what has prevented me from seriously considering this avenue yet. FAT32 was a seriously crappy file system to begin with. Too many limitations.

Interesting. Certainly is tiny enough. My only reservation is that it doesn't seem to have a display of any kind and, among other things, I wonder how you can tell how full the drive is? For that reason, I may be leaning toward the FireStore FS-4 with the HDV upgrade. Also, that one touch "Quick Erase" button makes me nervous.

Also, I noticed that VideoGuys is selling the last of their stock of FireStore FS-1 devices for $299. It does DV only but it acts as an interface between the camcorder and up to 8 external Firewire enclosures. It's not exactly tiny, but being able to just use standard, external FireWire enclosures is appealing. For $299, it might be a handy thing to have.

Focus Firestore FS-1

John

I wouldnt mind picking up a used Firestore-1. A little bulky but perfect for my use.

I hate raining on anyones parade but...
We have a FS-1 gathering dust, we've never been happy with it and I remember someone here some time ago having major dramas with one. They'd recorded a long concert and at every file break they'd lost more than a few frames worth of vision and audio. This is a big problem in my opinion, one of the big attractions of the unit should be recording sessions of over 60 minutes for those who can't record to DVCAM tapes but that's the one area where the thing falls over.
I mentioned this to them at NAB and they blame it on the type of disks people were using which is why the FS-4 comes with its own drive. Maybe that's fixed the issue.
I did point out to them that I could see no valid reason not to go to NTFS or HFS but they didn't want to alienate anyone using a Mac and System 9. Surely they could make the thing optional!
The only upside to FAT32 is it uses less disk space than NTFS or HFS but even 2.5" HDs are pretty big these days so I don't see that as much of a plus.
All that aside I've quite happily used VidCap on an old VAIO with an external 1394 drive to record many hours of glitch free video. Not as convenient but the price was right.
Bob.

Bob,

Thanks for the "heads-up" on the FS-1. I guess I'll save my money and continue recording on my laptop in the field.

John

Don't get the FS1....unless you're willing to fuss with it a bit. I had troubles, as Farss mentions. We did get it to work after a fashion, but I never quite trusted it. The FS3 is great. And, I'm interested in an FS4, but kinda pricey too. ADS is supposed to eventually have an HDV unit. For the moment, I'm really enjoying HDVRack, which releases soon.

HDVRack would be nice but man, the cost is still a bit much once you figure in DVRack, plugin, and laptop. Maybe Ill wint he lottery and this will all be a moot point. :)

Why not take an old computer, fill it full of hard drives and network it?
Michael