I have a Panasonic DMR EX95 DVD Recorder. This has Freeview, VHS, DVD player and 250gb hard drive.

I recently replaced a faulty capacitor on the unit but in doing so, managed to damage the long white flat ribbon cable that is plugged in at the motherboard and which extends over the DVD player to plug into the hard drive unit. The message 'HDD ERR' appeared on the front window panel with a few strange noises.

The ribbon cable is an AWM E41447-HCJ 105c 60v 20861 VW1. It has 40 pins and is 40cm in length. I've been unable to source this specific ribbon cable. I would really prefer to find a way of repairing this machine. If not, I would at least like to find a way of retrieving the programmes and film footage from the hard drive if possible. Any ideas or suggestions very much appreciated.

I would imagine the recorded video is encrypted and/or propriety to the unit.

Is it not just a 40-pin IDE cable?

Does the cable have plastic connectors at each end with two rows of 20 pins that look like the connectors in this image?

http://img.claimthis.com/18atidedrca4___0-66264.jpeg

Ignore the colours it is the style of plug that is important. If the cable does look like that then it is just a bog standard IDE drive cable so should be very easy to replace.

Not sure? It is around 2 cm in width, very thin with thin flat blue plastic pieces on each end to secure it in the socket near the hard drive. There are no plastic plugs on the end, just the 40 piano key type grey contacts visible.

It is very similar to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexib...Flex-Cable.jpg

So not a bog standard IDE lead then. That might make it more difficult to track down a spare.

It may be the sort of thing a specialist repairer has in stock or could order up for you. Or someone selling a similar but totally dead machine for spares.

You could try Panasonic support. But they will very likely point you at an approved repairer rather than sell you the required part.

Yes, it's proving very difficult to source this part. Looked on ebay - the EX 95 recorder seems to still be going strong in terms of sales which will make it difficult to find one for spares.

I just wish I'd taken more care when unplugging and inserting the ribbon cable back into the sockets. I'll either keep looking or may find someone locally to repair it if possible. They may have better access to the part than I have or be able to find some way around the problem.

If there was some way to take out the hard drive and transfer the content that would be useful. Thanks anyway for your advice.

There probably is. I very much doubt Panasonic went to the trouble of building their own hard drives with some sort of propriety interface so chances are it is just a standard IDE drive just with a non standard cable to the main board.

If it is a standard drive you can get IDE to USB adapters to convert the drive into what is in effect a computer external drive.

Whether any computer you plug it into will be able to read the drive is another matter. It is not uncommon for manufacturers to use some flavour of a Linux type file system that a Windows PC can't read without some assistance. And even if you can read the drive the content may be unusable.

Certainly with TVs that use USB drives to record TV programmes the content is encrypted and locked to the specific TV that recorded them. Not even an identical make and model can read them. Some PVRs also encrypt the disk files so there is a fighting chance that the raw content of the drive is unusable outside of the machine.

Thanks for that - certainly food for thought there! I'll keep on trying to find an answer to it though before looking at taking the hard drive out. Under normal circumstances I would probably just not bother about it, but the hard drive contains many films and TV programmes that I've recorded and want a chance to watch. There is also quite a bit of holiday footage recorded on the HD I would like to keep. It's all the more annoying because it was my own carelessness that lead to the problem in the first place.

Anyway, all the best and many thanks for taking the time to offer advice.