Dealer manuals? Panasonic WJ-HD316A hdd error

[monk24 0]

Can anyone tell me why the 'manual' for this series of Panasonic DVRs has extremely limited technical detail and simple says to 'call the dealer' for various problems?

 

We have a handful of these DVRs at the place I work at, and one currently has a HDD error and won't record. I've gotten to the step in the manual that says 'call the dealer,' but I would much prefer to fix this myself. I don't know the HDD just isn't mounting properly, or if this is indicating a real hardware problem. The user manual from Panasonic is pretty useless and doesn't specify what can result in 'HDD error' being displayed on monitor 2; we had a power failure, and I would guess that the disk has some simple corruption. If that's the case, I could simply pull the disk out and clean it up with another computer. Before I go ahead and try some hands-on with the disk, maybe someone could offer insight.