Upgrading Gigabeat S (and/or F/X) HDD?

[JasonOT]

I've read a little bit about upgrading the iPod and Zune hard drives. There are a whole slew of places offering replacement and upgraded HDDs that will work in either device. Given the Zune is heavily based on the S-series, I'm thinking it should be similarly easy to upgrade the HDD in my Gigabeat.

I saw a thread on upgrading the battery in the F series, and read some suggestions at mygigabeat.com that the same upgrade may be possible for my S60, but I haven't seen anything about an HDD upgrade.

I've seen 100GB and 120GB 1.8" drives for sale for around $200-$250. I figure rather than waiting around for a Zune 160 or paying  $350 for a 160GB Classic with an interface I can't stand, I can upgrade my own Gigabeat, and hope the Rockbox port for the S-series continues to come along.

So is it possible to just swap out the HDD like with the iPod and Zune, or is there some reason a replacement 1.8" drive won't work with the Gigabeat S?

[Mad Cow]

This has nothing to do with rockbox, the gigabeat s isn't even supported. You should ask in the anythingbutipod forums.

[JasonOT]

This has nothing to do with rockbox, the gigabeat s isn't even supported. You should ask in the anythingbutipod forums.

OK. From the Gigabeat battery thread, I was under the impression this was a general hardware forum for devices supported by Rockbox.

edit: There also isn't much of anything for information at ABI, and I'd like to know if it's possible with the Gigabeat F as well.

[rosco_pc]

Have a look at this wiki page: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/HarddiskInfo

[2007-10-27] Actually this was the page I was looking for (the wiki can be confusing sometimes):
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/HardDriveReplacement

In general it is possible, you just have to find a HDD with the same connector AND same or smaller height as what is currently used in the Gigabeat.

[AlexP]

I swapped the 40 Gb drive in my F40 for a 60 Gb drive, so it is certainly possible.

As rosco_pc said you just need to find the correct type of drive, not all 1.8" drives are made equal.  For instance I'm pretty sure the F and S series use different drive connectors (check the wiki hardware pages to make sure).

The type of drive that goes in the F is no longer made (I'm pretty sure), and whilst you can probably find 60 Gb fairly easily; 80 is much harder and whilst I think they announced a 100 that is as rare as something else really rare.

[scharkalvin]

Many of the ipod hard disks are the same type as used in the Gigabeat.  If you can wire up a 40 pin to 50 pin adapter, the drives used in the newest ipods should work.  Aside from the connector differences, they are still ATA interface disk drives.

Assuming your current drive is still good make a copy of the MBR using the unix/linux
dd command.  To do this attach the player and see where it showed up
(usually something like /dev/sdx where 'x' can be a, b, c etc...)  
I think the dd syntax would be dd if=/dev/sdx of=mbr.dat bs=446
Then save your boot sector from the primary partition
dd if=/dev/sdx1 of=boot.dat bs=512
Make sure you back up all of the system files and folders.


After replacing the drive with a new one you restore the MBR and boot sectors.
First do the mbr  dd of=/dev/sdx if=mbr.dat bs=446
then use fdisk to partition the drive as one big partition, type is vfat (fat32).
then format /dev/sdx1 as a vfat file system. (mkfsvfat /dev/sdx1)
Then restore the boot record  dd if=boot.dat of=/dev/sdx1 bs=512
Finally you need to copy all the required files back to the new drive.

Free free to correct any mistakes I might have in these instructions.

Windoze users are on their own here ... use gigabeat room?

[AlexP]

You don't need to do any of this.  When I replaced my drive I just formatted it as FAT32, copied the GBSYSTEM and .rockbox folders on to it from my old drive, put it into my gigabeat and away you go.

[scharkalvin]

You don't need to do any of this.  When I replaced my drive I just formatted it as FAT32, copied the GBSYSTEM and .rockbox folders on to it from my old drive, put it into my gigabeat and away you go.

I guess your new drive was already partitioned.  I'm surprised you did not have to put a MBR on the new drives' first sector, and maybe a boot loader in the primary (only) partition's first sector.  Guess that depends on what the Gigabeat's flash has in it's bootstrap.

[AlexP]

Yes, sorry I forgot partitioning it.  But no dd bootsectors or any of that required.

[Nate!]

Since I may have a harddrive issue in my F60, I was wondering if I had to jump through hoops to put in a replacement.

BigBambi, I've seen a few MK6006GAH drives for about $120US.  I just want to be clear.  All you did was install the drive in the GB, Create the 1 partition and format it, and do an install of Rockbox.  (With bootloader and dummy GBSystem files)

Is it that simple?  Thanks.

[linuxstb]

Nate!

You asked me in a PM what 80GB drive I used in my Gigabeat F, and where I bought it from.  I'll answer here as the info may be of interest to others.

The drive is the Toshiba MK8007GAH, and I bought it from an ebay store based in the US.  This was around 6 months ago, and they sold out shortly after I bought mine.  I think I paid around $200 USD.  They now seem extremely hard to find.

All I did when I received my drive was plug it in, create a single FAT32 partition, format it, and copy back the GBSYSTEM folder I had backed up from the previous drive.

[Nate!]

linuxstb

Thanks for the info.  I thought about posting it here after the fact.

This may be off topic, but it looks as though MK8009GAH may have similar specs.  Do you think this one would work?  (Actually seems to be shorter, but all other size and tech specs seem the same.)

Again, thanks.

[Febs]

I believe that the MK8009GAH has a ZIF connector, while the MK8007GAH has a 50 pin connector.

[scharkalvin]

All I did when I received my drive was plug it in, create a single FAT32 partition, format it, and copy back the GBSYSTEM folder I had backed up from the previous drive.

In this case it sounds like the bootstrap in flash memory doesn't make use of a disk based bootloader in either the disk's MBR or the boot sector on the disk fat partition.  THAT would imply that the flash based bootloader has the fat filesystem driver in it because it would need to do a directory lookup to find the GBSYSTEM folder and the file to load by name.  (Which does point to the USB storage driver code ALSO being in flash).

It also means that my suggestion for repairing a corrupt disk by reloading the MBR and bootloader sectors would do nothing, because these disk sectors wouldn't have anything that gets used on them.

Rockbox Gigabeat developers care to chime in on this?
(is the Gigabeat boot loader flow documented in a wiki somewhere, or just in the source?)