It is very easy to change hard drives on that unit. You remove the small hard-drive panel in the middle of the back of the unit by removing 4 screws, unplug the IDE and power cables to the drive, unscrew the 4 screws holding the drive to the back panel, and then reverse the whole process installing the new drive. Turn on the unit and it will ask if you want to format the drive. Click yes and after a few minutes of formatting you are done and ready to go. No software upgrades or chip swaps. Just make sure the jumper settings on your new drive are the same as the jumper settings on the drive already in the unit. Just to let you know how quick it can be, I swapped and formatted six drives in my 8VL recently over the course of a couple of hours in the evening.
I have been told the largest IDE drive recognized by the DMT-8VL is 8.2 gigs, so any drive bigger than that will just format as an 8.2 gig drive. If you have a different experience, let the rest of us 8VL owners know.
