Thanks for the reply.
The unit has a hdd enclosure on the side of the dvr which has a key to open, once open you have the normal ide cable and power cable to fit the hard drive. when you turn on the machine all you get is a blue screen and a hdd error, like it cant find the drive. Just like when you fit a hdd to a pc and it cant see it in the bios. I have set the drive to master, but it just comes up with a hdd error. - i know the unit works as i had a friend test it with there hard drive and it worked perfectly.. i tried to connect their drive to a pc - but windows doesnt reconise its there, - hence my thinking its in the format/setup of the drive....which wont allow me to put a new unformatted drive in the machine.........without some software....... i may be wrong...
any more ideas.... please