SD HDD replacement

[Bartek]

To all you guys who have replaced your 40Gb hard drives with bigger ones.

Any problems, how is the power consumption, what would be your recommendations as far as the different models available?

B

[Guest jimg]

Bartek,

I've replaced my drive twice, the first time for space considerations and the second time based on wear and tear. I fly with my recorder a lot.

The procedure is simple. The hardest part is realigning the case screws  and seating the covers the first time you open the recorder up. Sound Devices has good instructions here: http://forums.sounddevices.com/showthread.php?t=1465

I chose a Samsung Spinpoint drive, as that was in the recorder from the factory. Newegg has them in 80 to 160 GB from $56 to $75. I found a 120 GB when you consider shipping costs locally for about the same price in a small repair shop.

Power consumption seems about the same. Maybe I should say I haven't noticed it changing to any great extent since I haven't measured it. Not surprising since it's the same speed drive from the same maker.

Best regards,

Jim

[Jeff Wexler]

I recommend getting the biggest HDD you can afford now that firmware version 2.40 can support formatting the internal HDD up to 2TB.

Good advice here from Scott and good for Sound Devices supporting larger capacity hard drives. I might add that Scott also clears up some of the confusion about the use of faster rotational drives, 4200 vs. 5400, 7200, etc. One needs to look at the whole picture (and hopefully get some accurate tech specs on all the parts of the system) before assuming that faster is better (or even that faster will be FASTER...  it is often not the case or not even necessary).

Regards,  Jeff Wexler