Panasonic DMR BWT850 - Hard drive replacement

[MarkyT64]

Panasonic DMR BWT850EB - Hard drive replacement

Hi all,

I'm trying to replace a broken HD in my BWT850EB. There doesn't seem to be anything else wrong with the machine, power supplies fine etc.
The original HD failed during a thunder storm and refused to respond at all, so ended up in the bin. No chance to recover any start up data it would have contained, so I have to start with a new HD.

I've read all about using HxD on the various threads to insert Panasonic start up code on a new HD, but the code I've found is not for my BWT850, so I still can't format the new HD in my machine. I get to the Format screen showing 0% complete, but nothing further.

My question is, has anyone managed to replace a hard drive in a BWT850?

 

[MarkyT64]

I can get from the HDD error screen to the format screen, but after an hour it hasn't made any further progress with the formatting.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to get it to format?
I'm happy to give any ideas a go and report back on what happens!

 

[Fred John Dough]

I have the same problem on a 735 I replaced the hdd formatted in fat 32 first but not recognised then tried ntfs still no joy then tried the NTFS drive in USB and it registered OK still not in hdd but I found a zip file here for a 850 and am about to put it on the drive BTW what did you format your drive in.

 

[MarkyT64]

Thanks for your reply, intersting stuff.
I've got two 1tb Toshiba drives to play with. One is from an old PVR and happens to be exactly the same as the original (dead) drive, Type DT01ABA100V. The other is new, but the type is DT01ACA100V. Not sure if the 'C' makes a difference, so I've been trying both. Always the same result.
I haven't formatted either myself as I thought that was for the '850 to do ? So have just used as-is. I thought from reading other threads it was best to not let Windows do anything ! I may well be wrong...
Could you post the '850 zip file? I would be really interested to compare with similar files (for different models) I've already tried.

Good luck with loading onto your drive! Fingers crossed

 

[Fred John Dough]

Thanks for your reply, intersting stuff.
I've got two 1tb Toshiba drives to play with. One is from an old PVR and happens to be exactly the same as the original (dead) drive, Type DT01ABA100V. The other is new, but the type is DT01ACA100V. Not sure if the 'C' makes a difference, so I've been trying both. Always the same result.
I haven't formatted either myself as I thought that was for the '850 to do ? So have just used as-is. I thought from reading other threads it was best to not let Windows do anything ! I may well be wrong...
Could you post the '850 zip file? I would be really interested to compare with similar files (for different models) I've already tried.

Good luck with loading onto your drive! Fingers crossed

OK here you go

 

[MarkyT64]

Thank you, I'll give that a try tomorrow. I see it's a BS850 file rather than BTW850, so not sure what (if any) difference that makes.

 

[k-spin]

The DMR-BS850 is an old FreeSat compatible Panasonic Blu-ray recorder from 2009.

 

[ccarmock]

My understanding is that to replace a drive on a Panasonic recorder you need a small amount of Panasonic data recorded onto the drive first. I believe it isn't model dependent. @Fred John Dough is the file you posted above that data? What application was used to create it?

 

[MarkyT64]

Thanks for all your comments. I've tried 4 different files posted on this forum today, including the zip file above loaded onto both my available hard drives using HxD.

OK here you go

No joy yet. All the files are truncated at 170200. I'm wondering if this is actually too much data?
I'm really not sure what the BWT850 expects to see on initial start-up.

 

[MarkyT64]

Decided to have another think about how to get my 850 to accept a new hard drive.
Found this website Panasonic Global Site -- OSS Source Code Distribution Service (Blu-ray Disc™/DVD Recorder) --
Under DMR BWT850EB, I get these .taz files.

I'm sure I'm not the first to go here, but I don't know what these files are for?

Just wondering if one of these files will get my 850 to recognize a new hard drive.

Way out of my depth here, but not giving up!

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