Has anyone installed a hard drive on their own. I am a PC tech so I have the background to do this. I have never had the FD-4 apart. Does it use a standard EIDE drive, ribbon cable, power connection?
Clally, I've done some research on this, and the hard drives that are used in the FD-4's are the drives you find in laptops (2.5"). From what I understand it's not easy to install the drive yourself. You need the parts from Fostex because you have to solder the connector onto the circuit board of the FD-4. The bad thing is that I've heard people say that they've had a Fostex dealer do it for them, and they've spent upwards of $150 just for labor. That's not even considering the cost of the hard drive, which could run you up to $200 for a decent size 2.5" drive.
So I'd say go with an external solution like the ORB unless you're made of money or you can find an FD-4 for sale with a hard drive already in it.
I have an FD-4 with an internal drive and after about 3-4 weeks, I went out and bought the Orb drive. It allows me to record a ton of track time on it in Master 1 mode and I can swap disk at will. The internal drive works OK but, when I fill it, I have to dump everything to my laptop or CD and delete for room........
PS. Jim M....if I had the money to burn, I'd send you some for pushing that Ord drive. It is the best.....
