What file system is used on Vixia HF S21 HDD?

[55ad]

Hi,

  I have a Vixia HF S21with the controls shorted out from damage from humidity.  I would like to recover the last clips from the hard disk drive.  Services to do this seem to start at around $100 and go up from there.  It seems like all I need is a cradle for a 1.8" HDD which runs about $11 and the ability to read from whatever file system is on disk (yes and pull apart an AVCHD blob into individual clips and paste the long ones together -- but I believe I have the software to do that).

  Can someone tell me the file system used on the Vixia HF S21 HDD.  Also, is there any known problem to pulling the HDD from the camera?

  If it is a proprietary file system or if the drive is hard to pull, I'll go with the cheapest service estimate, otherwise I'll do the job myself.

Thanks.

[rs-eos]

Does that cam really have an internal hard drive? I would have though it has an internal memory card.  Or, the memory is soldered directly onto the mother board and is thus really non-removable.  At least that is what I gather from the user manual.

I did see one reference to exFAT, so I'd assume that's the format of the memory cards.

See: VIXIA HF S21 User Manual for details.

[55ad · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the heads up.  I had lost the manual and didn't know where to find a manual online.  The manual that you pointed me to refers to "built in memory" so it is likely not a disk.  There is no particular reason for Canon to use a removable chip rather than wired memory internally, so I think that the problem of retrieving the files is beyond my ability.

  I searched the house and cannot find "ImageMixer 3 SE" disks and looked online to find that the program is no longer sold or supported.  So even if I am to disconnect the shorted circuits in the flip out panel so that the camera will remain powered on, I have no way of transferring from internal memory.  i believe that ImageMixer 3 SE requires a licence number from the vendor to work and since there is no longer a way to get a license number.  I will look on the hard drive from my previous desktop to see if I had installed a copy of ImageMixer3 SE on it but I don't recall ever registering it (of course it has been almost 10 years)  It seems like without help from Caon tech support I am hosed and the page online for support for the HF S21 says that the camcorder is no longer supported and refers you to an upgrade program.

  Does anyone have a suggestion for a repair shop that can deal with getting date off the internal memory of a HF S21?

  Thanks.