Firestore FS-100 250GB Hard Drive Upgrade
For those of you who are video editors and are unfamiliar with Focus Enhancements products you should really look into them. They can change your entire work flow and save you tons of time when it comes to ingesting video into your non-linear editing software. At NCC we use two Firestore FS-100 drives with our Panasonic AGHVX-200 cameras for all of our field work and we love the drives.
We put a lot of wear and tear on them and they seem to hold up pretty well. Although recently one of the hard drives started to make a dreaded clicking/ticking type of noise and would not record more than 5 min of footage. So I immedately thought of replacing the internal Hard Drive. I can’t take credit for this hack but I stumbled across a forum that had a post on how to upgrade your FS-100 from 100GB to 250GB. I tried it and it works like a champ. Here is the rundown.
1 - Get the 4.0.1.xxxxx BIOS update (for free) from focus enhancements as it supports 250GB drives. otherwise your fs-100 will support only two partitions with 125GB each. flash your fs-100 with the new BIOS.
- link to fs-100 bios 4.0.1: ftp://ftp.focusinfo.com/FS100v4.0.1….eAndReadme.zi
2 - Open the little screws of the firestore case. look which model (IDE or SATA) you have. I have the IDE model. If you have SATA, you can´t use a IDE drive. close the case again until you got the new hdd drive
3 – If you have IDE, buy the WD Scorpio 250GB (WD2500BEVE) with PATA (IDE) interface. it´s around 67 euros or $72 in the us.
technical specs of the WD scorpio (IDE): http://www.westerndigital.com/en/pro…sp?DriveID=346
4 - If you have a SATA firestore and a SATA HDD: it isn´t very complicated to mount a SATA drive into a SATA firestore. just plug and play one/two cables.
5 – Once you have your new drive, open the firestore case.
6 – You have to stick tapes to the same places on the new harddisk where the original yellow ones are sitting. but beware of covering the little air hole with the tape!!! otherwise you may damage your harddisk! i made also a little hole in the tape, i used a fine knife for that.
7 - Disconnect the flat cable of the old hdd. then open the little screws of the silver plate below the harddrive. open the 4 screws which fasten the hdd to the silver plate. put the old hdd away. maybe you can get an external case later to use the old 100GB hdd with your computer.
8 - There is a a square of metal (shielding) affixed to the underside of the old drive exactly where the fan lined up with the drive. take that off the old drive and fix it on the new drive on the same place. otherwise you could get problems with the fan.
9 - connect the new hdd with the flat cable. pay attention to the direction the cable is connected to the drive. if you reverse it you will probably kill your hdd and or the fs-100. fix the screws in reverse order so that the new harddisk is fixed in the case.
10 - close the case with the outside screws.
11 - connect your firestore to the power supply. for best security, connect also an accu to the case.
12 - start the engine 
(press the “ON” button on the fs-100)
13 – maybe your firestore will ask you to partition the new drive. in this case press “NO” (otherwise the fs-100 will make two partitions with 125GB each).
14 - Once the boot screen comes up, use the arrow keys to navigate to the “DD DRIVE” option. Enable the computer connection.
15 - If your on Windows use this program http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/index.html to partition and format a whole 250GB partition with FAT32 (Windows XP or Vista can´t format partitions larger than 32GB with FAT32). If you are on a Mac you can just use the disk utility to format the drive with FAT32.
16 - reboot the device. you should see “278 minutes free” (in DVCPro HD/1080i) or something similar.
congratulations, you have just upgraded your fs-100 to 250 GB!
One key thing to remember is that you don’t want to use the format utility on the drive EVER! If you do it will partition the drive off and you will max out at 125GB. When you want to format just use Disk Utility or another app to format the drive using FAT32. ENJOY!
For the record, you won’t kill anything if you inadvertently reverse the drive/cabling. I speak from experience.
Thanks for posting these.
It’s worth mentioning that the Western Digital Scorpio 320 BEVE3200 works perfectly well in this drive, at least the ATA/EIDE version.
Great! Thanks, a brand new one with lot of storage space for 70 €. thanks a lot. Franck Villano
Hi since I replaced my drive the fan doesn’t seem to work and we have had occasions where it has shut dowm due to overheating.
Did yours still work.
I have seen a few posts with similar experiences but don’t know why.
The drive doesn’t seem to take more current than the 100 gig, maybe less.
Brian.
hi
my fs-100 will not recognise the drive – i took the drive and placed it in a usb enclosure and it works fine.
The fs100 just says no hdd detected.
Any help appreciated
Hey James, I had to plug my drive in with a external usb and format it first before the firestore would find it and get past the opening welcome screen.
I installed the Western Digital PATA 320gig drive. It works great when I format from my mac in DD Drive mode to Fat32. In P2 mode it says I have 356 minutes. But unfortunately when I format through the firestore menu it wipes out the volume entire, can’t find the drive and I need to plug it back into my mac and initialize the drive again. I’d be happier if it partitioned and gave me less of the drive, than no drive at all. Hopefully, with 356 minutes, I’ll never be stuck in the field with a full drive I forgot to format.
SOLID STATE? Any one out there upgraded to Solid State Drive? For power and durability we want to upgrade our FS100 to a solid state drive…. any one any one? Beullar?
Wow! I would love to see that! Let me know if you try it.
I cant seem to find where it tells you if its a IDE or SATA. I open it up but see nothing that says that, where should I be looking?
Hi, thanks for the post! Just wondering what I am missing as I cant find anywhere where it says either IDE or SATA. Where specifically should I be looking?
Trevor,
It is more of a physical examination thing. IDE has a 44 pin (2 rows of 22 pins) ribbon cable connection to the main board. The SATA will have a much smaller, L-shaped connection and plug.