Sony DVD HDD recovery?

[The Vinyl Adventure]

I have a Sony RDR HXD 710
It doesnt seem to be working properly, i cant get it to display anything on the screen ...
In fact it does little more than hum and open and close the dvd drive

I am well aware of the potential cost of fixing something like this and know it really isnt worth the trouble...

the problem is, it has some of Hannahs holiday videos on it that we would like to retrieve ...

Do any of you clever folk know of a way this can be done ...
Im thinking about extracting the hdd but have read that it will be formatted in a proprietary format and as such cant be read by a pc or mac ...

does anyone know of a work around for this?

[Tim]

Hamish, you are right that the cost of repair is likely to be prohibitive, but it depends on what the problem is I guess? I don't have any knowledge of the player, so cannot comment.

It's possible the hard drive is formatted with a file system other than FAT or NTFS, i.e. one that a Windows PC will easily recognise. Panasonic do it with my HDD recording, so I suspect SONY may as well, that's certainly the case with a Playstation hard drive. There are file system viewers and add-ons that are workarounds, but you do need a level of knowledge to get then to work in my experience and there is no guarantee the SONY system will be supported. I would suggest the first step would be to remove the HDD and hook it up to a PC if you can and take a look?

[The Vinyl Adventure]

Thanks for your thoughts Tim,
I have made a bit more progress that might make this thread a little redundant ...
I've managed to get a picture on the tv screen ... My holiday vid (that I forgot was on there) from the Dominican republic is hilarious (to me at least)
Anyway ... There is def somthing awry, ther is nothing on the screen on the unit it's self, and it will only output through composite video?
Ive tried recording a DVD ... It doesn't work, so I'm going to look into a composite/svid - USB device and see if I can get the video off it that way before I take it to bits ... That way at least I'll have a low quality version before I risk getting no version ...

[Reid Malenfant]

It's sounding like a power supply problem Hamish, some bits working & others not working :scratch: