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Yup, pray and hope for the best... Neither WD nor Seagate can make any major claims about how great their products are... They both have similar problems with the failure rates, warranty problems regardless how long their respective warranties may be. For a month now, we have twenty drives being evaluated by Seagate to determine why their recent batch of drives turned out to have serious out of box failures... No response as of yet nor anyone is talking. We received replacements for such drives (reconditioned of course), but the warranty was not effected by it... Just keep records for the future... There is no one company, including Hitachi, that can substantiate their less than 1% failure rate being "industry standard". In the recent quarter, the failure rates jumped as high as 22% regardless if such drives were from WD or from Seagate. No explanations yet, but something tells me that both companies probably are buying similar components from others that could have had defects, which directly effects both manufacturers. In is not unusual this to occur - recently Nvidia was hit with lawsuits because they supplied bad chipsets to many computer manufacturers and all the notebooks that contained such components were failing and not performing.. I will not be surprised if similar problem exists with both WD and with Seagate, as they have to buy various but yet similar components from other components manufacturers... This is what makes sense, since we have not seen this type of failure rate in the longest time (do you remember Maxtor and what happened to them?)

Here are some choices: From CBC America (Computar) - http://computarganz.com/product_category.cfm?category_id=14 Tokina - http://www.thkphoto.com/products/tokina/index.html and few others... I like the lenses from Computar... works very well and built to last...

Cool off everyone... this could be you in some different topic in the future for a product that you really must have answers urgently... I know that I did have such a request before and in few days Rory responded... as it was a very specific product question that most members were not familiar with... (Rory, always thanks for your assistance man...) volatileacid, patients is a virtue bud.. most members here do not have that much time to visit this forum and answer every single question. Being polite does help, but sometimes frustration on finding an answer can get you in this loop... I do not think his behavior should constitute anything negative... rather someone who needs the info, may be because of urgency of a project... Don't tell me that this did not happen to other members... volatileacid, did you have your question answered? If not, what do you really need? Members here share their experiences with these and as well as other products and it is not unusual to have disagreements and everything is based on respective member's knowledge and experience with such products. It is this forum's moderators decision if someone stays or gets banned... and I respect that. However, just because someone needs info urgently should not be construed as a bad thing... The worst happens is that the question never gets answered and the member never comes back to this forum... and I do not think that the moderators or the admin really want this... At least my two cents of the day...

Well, you can not say that they are not trying to go out with a style Few days ago I was checking on some network hardware... Yesterday the pricing was marked up 30% and there was a 30% "discount" signs in the same department... and what really does not make any sense is if they are liquidating, they are still selling the same product at the same price as before and majority of the people do not see it... I saw lines waiting to pay for something they could have bought day before or even month before at the same price... and people thought that they were getting hell of bargain... If they can do this and get away with it, then the public is at fault not being educated on pricing.. We can not blame Circuit City being a corporate failure or the liquidators being court appointed snakes, I blame the general public in luck of knowledge on what they buy. Just because they have "going out of business" sale, it does not constitute a sale, rather form of advertising skim that lures people to believe that they are getting bargains... I was reading some articles about Best Buy, Fyies and others that they stand a chance to survive and take Circuit City customers... Well, they may do that, but as long as the general public does not understand pricing, which most of the time is fixed anyway, then these companies may survive these tough times... OR... may be it is time for the same people to start comparing pricing and find the same products cheaper on the NET....

This Bosch solution will work well with your specs.. It defenately pushes your proc to its limits, but your quad core will manage it just fine. Make sure that you have at least 4GB of RAM (for XP anything higher does not really matter anyway and do not go cheap on the RAM stick - get the best RAM you can find for the money). Dependent how you will stream you video and what FPS setting, you can have some excellent video.. Just make sure you are not processing and storing video at its full 30FPS.. you will observe serious bottleneck with your network, unless you install fiber channel based network infrastructure. Also, dependent what you need for number of days of recording, Bosch provides well documented calculator allowing you to spec enough storage to cover number of days of your needed recording. It is easy to install and comes with many features that are very powerful and yet easy to implement. My favorites are the instant playback and the zoom capabilities... and depending the resolution on how you setup your recording, you can have some unbelievable zoom on video with minimal pixelazation... Exporting the content to different media and playing on different video players is yet another strong features that we like. All in all, it is a great platform... just make sure your hardware is expandable as your needs for performance and storage will increase over time...

Both specs look very similar... and both are great companies... however, what sets them apart is their support and I strongly will recommend the Sanyo model. It is not that it is better performer than Samsong (we worked with both). Rather, when and not if any problems occur with this equipment, Sanyo shines much brighter... But then again, since Panasonic bought Sanyo in the recent months, all that can change, as Panasonic is not known for their support. They also make great product lineup, but from the past experience, they provide substandard service on their warranty and non-warranty repairs. The best in the market from service and support stand point are Bosch and Mitsubishi. In case of Bosch, once they determine what the problem is, you will have the replacement at your door step within 48 hours and they have exceptional technical support. As for Mitsubishi, it is the same with a twist - they provide the best warranty in the market - five year on all their DVR recorders. So, which is better? It is hard to tell.. but I know this - you always get what you pay for!

Even if the system was purchased used, it should still be under warranty! The only reason I am stressing this fact is because this product was introduced in this market less than three years ago... and if anything else fails besides the drives, then you are hosed... There is a motherboard and few other special components in this system that you will not be able to purchase from anywhere nor GE will sell you these parts. I personally will not take the chance with it even though it may be just only the drive failure... As for anything special - you need to find a utility in GE website (very easy to do - just create an account, log in and it is there), that will be required to "add" certain files in a section of the hard drive allowing to communicate with it over their browser... Another option - if the drive is working semi-ok... just do a complete hard drive copy by matching exact drive size and you can use a drive copy utility to perform this task - Western Digital has an excellent utility that allows to copy any system drive... This way you do not need to use this special utility... Just take a higher capacity drive, partition exact same size of the system drive in this system and then perform complete drive copy and that is all... As you already confirmed, the hard drive is under warranty... That means your entire system is still under warranty. Good luck and let us know the outcome...

Marquette, first things first.. if you just bought it and there is a failure, do not compromise the warranty... This unit comes with three years exchange warranty. Have the unit replaced with another new system. By changing the hard drives is not the solution. Even though this unit is an embedded system (one of the best embedded systems in the market, if not the best), you do not know why the hard drive failed. What if the problem is also caused by faulty power supply or some other part within the system? This system takes four hard drives, you can have it higher capacity than its original hard drive configuration. We had this system operating with 3TB configuration per customer request. I know it will work operate at 4TB (using four 1TB drives) or even 6TB (using four 1.5TB drives). You may have to update the BIOS (dependent when it was manufactured or if it has the lastest BIOS setting). It may not be the easiest system to program, but once you get a handle on it, you will get some exceptional picture video quality at D1 resolution.

Lou, MPLT is one of AD's older products and I will not compare it with Digimux... However, if there is a problem (which we have seen before), then if the power supply is not the cause, then have it repaired under warranty. Did you check if it is or not? If it is not under warranty, the cost for the repair is not that bad... Contact me via pm or otherwise and I will help you. That also can apply with any other AD, Bosch, Panasonic, GE, Sanyo and few other manufacturer products that you may be using.

Then it is the communication board... Were you able to find out if this dome is in warranty or not? Something tells me it is... regardless where you bought it or who sold it, American Dynamics keeps track of all their sold hardware and if it is under warranty, they will fix it...

Going from Intellex 3.x to 4.x includes the upgrade of the Win2000 to WinXP and all the necessary drives, tricks and registry changes to make the transition flawless. The main concern by many is that they already paid license for Win2000 and why should they pat for WinXP... but welcome to corporate America's way of doing business... You can not just upgrade the OS and expect the Intellex to perform. In little more detail format - Intellex 3.x complies with Intellex 3.x API, which is different than Intellex 4.x API... thus there will be many drives and software conflict and it will not work. The upgrade kit, as expensive as it may seem, does deliver the complete software upgrade and it does work. When such upgrade is complete, then there is yet another step necessary to render Intellex functional - you will need yet another license key for the Intellex available on American Dynamic's website. All it requires is the MAC address of your older system the serial number and then it will provide another software key for Intellex operating as version 4.x.. Here is the url where all their upgrades are: http://americandynamics.net/support/support_softreg_redirect.aspx

Here is what you should do... First off, determine the exact size of your "c" drive size, which I am sure is partitioned different than others... if it is the older version 80GB, then you have to make sure to partition your new drive to contain 80GB and the rest allocated for storage. Another thing must be done is when you are slicing the drive for 80G or system required size, make sure to mark it "active"... When you are trying to restore the system, it is looking for the original 80GB or less of partition (newer version operate different). We converted quite of few of these type of hard drives for similar systems in the past and the trick always is to make sure that you provide exact system drive size for the restore CD to recognize and make sure that such slice of the drive is active! Bosch tech support is excellent across the board and I can even claim that they are the best in the industry (not including Bosch three years warranty on most of their hardware and with 24 hours turn around for the defective part). However, they are not instructed to help reconfiguration or reload of the systems... and there are no paperwork that they can provide showing how to do it. Hope it helps.

Few more ideas... Do not use any filters on the front of the unit (some cases come with disposable or washable filters). These filters actually harm the systems more than they help. They accumulate dust and dirt in a short period of time and then slow down the air flow.. thus increases the heat within the system. Besides adding or changing fans within the systems, I strongly recommend DVR lockbox with built in fans... Several advantages going with them... one of which is to secure the DVR and the second, increase the air flow... These lockboxes are not that expensive, however worth the investment...

If you are using regular regular off the shelf drives, they will not last. Both Seagate and Western Digital are producing what they call it "Surveillance Grade" drives, which are little more expensive, but do last much longer. They are designed to work 24/7 and perform very well. In case of Seagate, they are offering five years warranty on their drives for now. There was an announcement recently that they are thinking to drop this warranty to three years... Moth manufacturers make great drives and as long as you intend to use their products in a DVR, go with the surveillance grade version and you will do well... Word of caution - regardless how great the drives are, they get damaged and the main cause is heat... therefore, make sure that your DVR is well ventilated by adding or replacing system fans... In most cases, DVRs do not come complete with all the necessary fans, so find out if your case can take or can add additional fan... and also replace the fans at least once per year... life expectancy of most fans are a year, so replacing them will prolong your system's life...

General or specific comments... good, bad, ugly, easy, difficult, etc... we should be done 100% by end of the week... so, any info that you can share on what you see or otherwise, please advise...

I want to invite all the security gurus to provide me with any criticism or opinions on this new type of platform of security related website that we published today... http://www.intellex.us/ It is not important to me if we are selling this product line or any other, rather, I want to see some feedback with your blessing on what you think the behavior of this new platform website. If this works in the long run, we intend to have similar websites for Panasonic, Sanyo, Bosch, GE and few others and specialize only on their DVR solutions... Again, thank you in advance and please give me some response regardless if it is good or bad... I always valued the opinions of all the members in this forum, therefore I want your professional opinions on what you think of it and if this is a sample security website that end users may consider. Thanks much!

Or and if your system allows it, you can install SATA controller... pricing of which has come down very low $20 range...

Yes, you need the upgrade software with this part number: RDVUPG40... It should cost less than $500.00... very easy to install...

Yup, Maxtor made great drives... until volume of business effected the quality... They were supplying drives to most manufacturers... and all these manufacturers had problems few years back... Lets knock on the wood... but remember, the hard drives are not if they will fail, it is always when they will fail

Agreed, except ..... Both Seagate and WD stopped producing anything less than 750GB PATA drives over four months ago, so whatever you find in the market is what is left from previous production runs. According to both manufacturers, starting beginning of the next year, they are leaning not to produce any PATA drives period! SATA version drives are what is and will be available commonly. Try to keep away from the Seagate SV35 series... rather go with their DV35 series drives... they operate much cooler and last longer... pricing is basically the same... There are known heat built up issues with SV35 series drives that are being addressed by Seagate... but DV35 series drives work great!

Better question is if there are a differences between consumer, commercial or surveillance grade hard drives ? and the answer is YES. In the past, most manufacturers used the cheapest hard drives they could to keep their margins high.. However... Maxtor has done a great job in selling more hard drives than anyone else when they were a separate corporation... The main problem was that their hard drives were not performing well and they did not inform the manufacturers of DVR... This effected everyone that needed such drives for DVR system.. Later they were bought out by Seagate and they shaped the Maxtor's image by having it target only for consumer markets. Both Seagate and Western Digital introduced what they called it "surveillance" grade hard drives that actually performed better than commercial version... and they kept the price points in an acceptable levels, which allowed manufacturers to adhere to these new drives. I can tell you that there are big differences when going from consumer grade to commercial and then surveillance grade. You will not find these surveillance grade drives from your local Office Depot or even an Fryies Electronics... I know that few e-tailers, such as NewEgg and few others do carry them, so you can price compare and get the best value you can find. The only difference between Seagate and Western Digital drives that we see is that Seagate offers five years warranty on these drives vs. three years from Western Digital... this is the main reason why Seagate drives will cost slightly more... but not much more... Our failure rate comparison chart shows that we went from over 18% failure using Maxtor drives to less than 2% failure rate with both Seagate and with WD... Overall performance also was increased due to higher cache level and in some cases up to 32MB... Even though both companies have 1TB drives and even Seagate recently started shipping 1.5TB drives, none of them will survive in the DVR application... these size drives are mainly produced for consumer markets use, which means no more than 8 hours per day usage..... One other notation... Both companies announced few months ago that they will stop producing ATA drives (sometimes are referred as PATA drives)... At the moment you may find them in the market, but starting next year, both companies will stop producing... Which means that the only option available for hard drives is SATA connectivity. So, plan ahead as this technology changes... I am sure other member will jump in and give you these part numbers and I will add more later if needed.

Do not touch the system drive - it contains not only the OS, but also the Intellex software... Most likely it is taking only 14GB of the space of the 250GB drive... as the rest is used for storage... I can tell you that you can take this system up to 4.0TB internal storage. If your motherboard has at least 4 SATA connectors (which it should) and a single PATA connection, then you can have up to 5 hard drives with various sizes... However... It is not as straight forward as adding the hard drive and that is all... Remember that hard drive generate a lot of heat and Intellex LT is now well equipped to handle this much heat... Therefore, make sure you have two fans in the back (they may already be there), plus add another fan on the front left corner (behind the capture card) and also make sure that your power supply comes with 120mm internal fan facing towards the processor and the hard drives. Get rid of the flat ribbon cable and replace it with rounded ATA cable and keep it away from the motherboard as much as possible... How much internal storage do you really need? Dependent on the answer, you may have to rearrange where the hard drives must reside to evenly distribute the heat inside of the unit... Let us know... and good luck.

Looks to me that you may have a bad RG-59 cable or one of the BNC connectors is bad... I have seen this problem before and all we did was to replace the patch RG-59 cables with bnc connectors.

What is the hard drive configuration at the moment or do you know how much hard drive space you had with this system? Most common problem with what you experienced is that the hard drive or multiple hard drives failed. No specific reasons why except, with hard drive, it is always when they fail rather if they fail. Dependent on your existing firmware, you can only install certain size ATA or sometimes referred as PATA drives. Most common they used in the past were 250GB and Maxtor drives that were known to fail more often than usual... or Western Digital that actually worked great. Depending if you can upgrade your firmware (has everything to do with type of motherboard you have and how old it really is), then you can add more hard drive space than initially installed. It is not uncommon to have these systems upgraded to 2.0TB internal storage. If you can achieve upgrading the firmware, the it will be a breeze.. Once you are successful to replace the drives, another recommendation is to replace the external power supply to their latest version with 7.5A capability. This way you will not be shorted on power requirement for additional hard drives. While at it, clean the interior completely from dust and dirt and replace the system fans... they are easy to find and available in the market. Lastly, once you change the drives, you have to run yet another utility allowing it to install FAT32 application that is required for external communication with this type of systems and also for "burn" video content on CDs. This utility is commonly available from GE's website... I hope this helps and let us know

Simplest and the most cost effective six channel recorder that I know is from Sanyo... DSR-3506H80 model... it is little older than their current offering, but still available in the market and sells for under $600 with 80GB storage. Very easy to upgrade to 1TB internal storage and simple to program. The video export could be transferred to CompactFlash for plug 'N' play removable media or via local or remote Internet connection. It is embedded, so no need to any updates necessary nor easy to hack... It is not a Microsoft or Linux based system, rather machine language based.. thus nobody can change it nor be able to modify. If interested more, please PM..