Accessing external DVRs' HDD & formatting for a larger drive

[videobruce]

This is probably going to be a tough one since it is involving unchartered territory.
There are 3rd party external HDTV recording devices that will work with certain HD TV's that have the HAVi interface and 1394 ports. The use a HDD to record NTSC/ATSC (OverTheAir) & QAM (Cable) material.

This is one device that has promise;
http://www.indigita.com/products/cus...ions/avhd.html

Problem is; price and size of HDD. What I want to know is how would one replace the included HDD with a larger one.

I received a e-mail from Indigita and the relevent portion is as follows;

The AVHD drives are specially formatted to maintain the 5C content protection and are not user installable or replaceable........The AVHD is designed specifically for today's new Digital Cable Ready HDTV's.......the AVHD incorporates 5C encryption and is able to record authorized copy protected programming from DCR TV's.

What I'm concerned about is the "specially formatted" and the "5c content protection" parts.

Someone else has one of these (a 40GB dealer demo unit) and tried to access the HDD via a USB port. The O/S saw the device but couldn't read it or even show a drive letter. I am going to ask him to put it on a IDE bus and see if that does anything.

How can one figure out exactly what type of "formatting" this uses?