JBR20 V1 250Gb & Vista problem...please heeeelllpp....UPDATE

[jc]

i have a JBR20 V1 with the rockbox big disk firmware available from this site & 250gb hd.
the drive was formated & partitioned with swissnife.

it's always worked fine with XP but on vista, if i try to open it i get told to format it. also, it only sees one of the partitions. if i look at the drives properties vista says it is zero Gb.

i also have a standard JBR20 V1 with it's original  20 hd & flashed with rockbox - this is fine on vista.

any ideas? any help would be very gratefully received.

jc
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update:

i've been experimenting have found that if i use the swissknife program (find it with google) to format both partitions with the drive in an external drive case (1st one <128GiB) instead of doing the first partiton in the archos housing as in the instructions, then i can still access both partitions via USB on a PC as well as through the archos unit itself. this was very unexpected. a nice surprise.

now, i've done this with a 160gb hd (samsung) & it works fine with XP & Vista.

i've also done this with a 250gb hd (western digital) this works on XP but not on Vista
on vista it comes up as a single local disk that can't be opened-i get told to format it as said before.
if i put the drive in an external case it's seen as 2 hard drives on vista.
i've opened device manager & both drives show up as mass storage devices & are using the same drivers.....so i can't see why one drive works in vita & one doesn't - any ideas anyone.

i have vista home premium if that matters.

jc

[Chronon]

The USB to ATA bridge chip only does LBA28, we can't change that, no way to reach the upper part over USB.

So, what you're seeing is expected.  Just populate the second partition while you have it in the enclosure.  Then you'll be able to access them once you boot into Rockbox.

[jc]

hi,
thanks for your reply.
could you tell me what you mean by populate? both partitions are formatted.

what was unexpected was the fact that with the 160Gb hd, by creating both partitions in an external hd case, i can see both partitions with the archos is plugged into the PC (on XP & Vista) so that they're both accesable.
before when i created the 1st partition in the archos itself, i only had access to the 2nd partition if i removed the drive & put it an external hd enclosure - as stated in the bigdisk instructions.

i've used the 250 Gb hd for many months in the archos with XP (set up as per the instructions:)so i'm confident it was set up correctly. it just doesn't work with vista.

jc.

[AlexP]

could you tell me what you mean by populate?

Put music on it.

[Chronon]

It sounds like you're saying that you can access the full disk via USB now.  That is indeed unexpected.  I don't know how to explain that.

By populate I meant to transfer files to it.

[jc]

yes, i've put files on it & while i have full USB access with both drives on XP, only the 160Gb hd works on vista.


very strange.