cctv newbie

hi, i glad things are sort of working at least you know the unit works, as to size of drives some people on here are using 500g ide drives, and others are using sata drives (sata to ide ata converter) 1tb and above. but some dm units can only take 8mb buffer max on the hdd so becareful what you but, i have bought 2 sata to ide ata connectors and are buying 2 sata 1tb drives shortly. the drives are seagate ST31000322CS 1TB 8MB BUFFER SATA DRIVES Manufacturer's Description Seagate ST3100322CS Pipeline HD hard drives deliver the reliability, capacity and performance needed by the next generation of high-definition DVRs and media centers.Seagate Pipeline HD drives deliver unprecedented levels of acoustic, power and vibration performance for high-definition DVRs. With the ability to support up to 12 simultaneous streams and operate at drive case temperatures of up to 75C, they provide reliable storage that enables consumers to take full advantage of premium services like video on demand. Seagate Pipeline HD drives are the gold standard for high-definition performance and capacity. hopefully they will work i have a couple of smaller spare sata drive i will experiment on first and hope software loads ok.

problem solved, after numerous reset, camera changes i have managed to get the system to reconise Pal, turns out to be a rogue camera with was transmitting Pal but the Dvr was detecting NTSC for some reason, arfter connecting various pal cameras it changed its video standard to Pal, and when i reconnected rougue camera it now is detected as Pal and showing colour.

Hi Please can someone help, i recently accuired a Digital sprite 2 DVTU model from my work place, all cmeras are Pal and output to monitors are Pal, when i got home plugged in my cameras which are Pal and out to monitor was Pal all in colour all working ok. 1 week passed and plug in unit and when it went through its boot loader i noticed it said video system standard NTSC, i plugged in my cameras and they are b/W ie Pal camera not being reconised, and using NTSC to transmit the pictures, if i plug in Mon A pics are B/W plug in Mon B Spot pics are colour. is there a way of resetting system, ie reset back to Pal, i have tried factory reset in menu option but know luck, is there any way of resetting chip that switches from Pal to NTSC. Steve

hi, i know other people on here say use the fat32formatter as microsoft fat 32 formatter does not work so could be the same as western digital software, so might be worth a try using fat formatter, and again alot of people on here use xp machine, instead or vista windows 7, so give it a try on xp. i have tried quiet a few ide pata drives all drifferent sizes and some with more that 8mb buffers and all have worked so far, try just using 1 drive first, set as master, sometimes it can be the slave causing problems, once master has installed you can then try adding the slave.

hi, i have just got a DS2 dvtu like yours and reading other peoples posts i managed to swap various drive now in the machine, the easiest way i found was NOT to use the FTP method, you will need a 3.5 drive enclosure so you can connect the drive to you pc/laptop. then follow these steps. 1, Connect the hard drive to a PC using the usb enclosure 2, In Windows Disk Management, create a new primary partition on the drive, using all available space. Do not limit partition size use all available space. assign the drive a letter, F if F is not already being used, When asked select "Do not format partition" 3, Use Fat32Formatter to format the disk (Windows format does not work). You can download programme from here: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/ Now download a copy of fat32format. Extract the zip file EXE file to C:\. when you have done this, click start(xp) or the microsoft symbol (Vista,Windows7) then click run and type cmd, this will bring up command prompt When the command prompt opens, type this CD /D C:\ (is the place you extracted the exe file to), press enter and then type this. fat32format F: You MAY need to replace f if you assigned the drive with another letter You should see this displayed Warning ALL data on drive 'f' will be lost irretrievably, are you sure (y/n) type y. drive will now format. after the drive has formatted in the command line type exit. programme will exit. now you need to down load correct software for your drive go to http://www.dedicatedmicros.com/software_release/index_firmware.php to check correct version you need it should be on the bottom side of the digital sprite. when you have downloaded the software it will be in a zip file you need to put the file on to the disk you have formatted, i found if you unzip file to the disk you just formatted then you dont lose anyfiles. when you have done this disconect drive from pc/laptop, if you have a 2nd drive ie Slave disk all you need to do is format the disk to fat 32 as explained above, DONT PUT ANY FILES ON IT. now put all drives back in making sure you have put correct jumpers on the master/slave drives and then power up unit. Power up the DVR at which point it will check automatically rebuild the drive. --- (1) Displays "Initializing bootloader" (about 1 minute) --- (2) Displays "Initializing boot signature" --- (3) Displays "Ram tests" --- (4) Displays Hard Drive Info: ------- Drv. Model No. Size Format Status ------- C: Maxtor 6L100PQ 099 GB Fat 32 OK --- (5) Loading application from disk (goes through loading software and creating storage areas) 11) After a short wait it should boot into the normal menu. If this does not work check jumper settings again. It should now work if you have a slave drive it will do a image or video file build on that disk to. any questions just ask, yes it seems abit complicated but it isnt, i have just tried to explaine every step in full,