GE Kalatel Firewire Drives???

[MikeND 0]

Has anyone actually plugged in an external hard drive to the firewire port of the Kalatel DVMRe Triplex 16 CT units? They refer to approved firewire drives but I can't seem to find a list or is it pretty much any external hard drive that meets the broader IE 1394 specificationa?

[SeanMort 0]

I've used the Maxtor 250GB Firewire drives on the GE units. They work well BUT there are some things to consider;

 

1. The Firewire drives cannot be played back with Wavereader/Browser via the GE unit and a network connection. You can only playback via the units front panel and then, and I stand to be corrected, you have stop the unit from recording to do so, or else it won't let you select the Firewire drive in the search filter. You do have the option of copying the Firewire drives contents onto the units internal drives for viewing across the network, but what happens to the footage already recorded internally (I didn't have the nerve to find out !!)

 

2. You can't view the drive by connecting it to a PC.

 

I only have one customer that uses these drives and he is a credit card distribution company whose insurance company requires him to take every months recorded footage off-site for storage. He has to do this for a years total footage.

 

3. You have to make sure that you have enough Firewire drives for the amount of footage you need to archive, and this will take a day or two, or more, to archive.

 

The most frustrating thing about using Firewire drives with GE units is that almost none of the above is documented in the user manuals, or readily available from GE. I would be keen if anyone else could shed some light on my experiences, and perhaps correct me on my findings. Anyone from GE care to reply ??