Replacing the harddrive

[Peter]

I want to replace the 20Gb drive from my Recorder to a 60Gb drive (Toshiba). Should i format the drive before i replace it? Do i need to format it? Is the factory-formating okay?
I read something about formating it with a kind of tool, wich can be found on the XP-install cd (because of the 40Gb limit of FAT32).
Is there a site where i can find info about this?

B.t.w.: i allready fixed some connection problems inside the Recorder (re-soldering etc), so i'm no newby in that regard.

Peter...

[FredMII]

I did the same thing, I replaced the factory 20GB with a 100GB Toshiba drive and yes you do have to format it and it must be in a FAT 32 partition.  If you have an old Windows Me book disk laying around use that. 

I used the Me disc to format the drive into one partition.  I took out all my HDDs in my tower and connected it to an IDE cable then ran the setup portion with fdisk.exe found on the floppy.  Let me tell you it takes a long time and it only says it's formatting 29,000 MB or so but it does the whole drive.  Then after you do that you can replace the drive in your mp3 player and you should be good to go.  I got an error message saying "Dir buffer is full!" so it wouldn't read anythign but this was solved by going into the options and changing the limits of the max files in a directory.  For some reason it was set at 0.

Also, to connect the 2.5in drive to your PC (I assume that's what you're going to do) you'll need a part the converts the notebook drive connector pins to those for a 3.5in drive.  I bought one off of TheNerds.net and it worked with no problems.  Only complaint was that shipping was $9.90 for a $5 part.  Not sure if there are any in stock but this is the part you need if you plan on doing it was described above.  Any other questions just let me know, I replaced mine about a week ago and haven't had any problems since.

Here is the link:

http://www.thenerds.net/productpage.asp?un=154052&s=1

Hope that helps,

Fred M

[Peter]

Thanks, that was the info i was looking for. About connecting the drive to the pc, i was planning on putting it in an USB-box (External housing)(where now also a 60Gb drive is in) an formatting it from there. I know the WinXP setup finds drives connected that way, and i can format to FAT32, but i don't know if the partion wil be readable by Arhos/Rockbox. I try anyway, noting lost if i doesn't.
A WinME bootdisk i can find at www.bootdisk.com.
With the same USB-box i whas planning to copy the mp3's to the new drive.

I'll keep you informed.

Peter...

[eriqjaffe]

I'm pretty sure that XP won't let you create a FAT32 partition larger than...um...32GB or so....which is why a boot disk was recommended.

[FredMII]

Peter,

I've never had any experiences with using a USB box to format a HD and I'm not sure if XP let's you create larger than 32GB like eriqjaffe said.  But I do know that if you do it the way I did, there will be no problems, guarenteed. 

To be honest, I wasn't aware you could even do it with a USB box....

Best of luck,

Fred M

[Peter]

Right you are: it can't be done with a USB-box. Partion Magic does it, at least for use as a USB-disk, even inside de Archos, but the Archos bios or firmware doesn't recognize the partion so it won't startup. So back to square one.
I think i follow your path: buying a IDE 2,5"to 35" adaptor. It looks like a good thing to do.
I let you know my findings.

By the way, i presume i don't have to put any data or software (loader) on the disk. I flashed my Archos with the excellent Rockbox 2.3.

Peter...

[amiconn]

It can be done for sure with an USB box, as well as in the archos itself, which is what I did when replacing the 20 GB drive in my recorder V1 for an 80 GB one. Just make sure that you create a primary partition, as logical drives within an extended partition are not recognized by rockbox (and archos ??).

Then format it with FAT32. If you disk is larger than 32 GB, you'll either need Win98/ME (with suitable USB drivers in case you are going the USB way), or a special tool like h2format, because WinXP won't let you format such a partition with FAT32.

If all that worked, it is recommended to do a full rockbox installation, although not required for booting. Rockbox will complain everytime about the missing .rockbox directory if you don't do it, and you'll certainly miss some nice functions/ features.

Jens

[Peter]

So it all worked out nicely! And indeed from within the Arhos.
The thing i did, and probebly did not do before (and perhaps the reason h2format didn't work) is after creating a partion from the diskmanagment-menu from WinXP, choosing not to format after creating the partion. The second step was formating using (cmd) h2format. Did it quick, though.
And yes, i imagened that i shout place the .rockbox directory on the disk right away, first thing.

Thank you all!

Peter...

[jason]

Hi all!

I now have a different problem after replacing my original IBM 6GB-HDD with a 40GB Samsung MP0402H:
I first plugged the Jukebox in via USB, partitoned and formatted it via PartitionMagic 8.0. now the following happenes:
- when turning it on with the "good old" 1.17i flash-Bios, I can play my MP3s.
- when turning on with the 1.27d-Bios installed, it says
File system error
No valid FAT16/32 file system found
please format drive
- when turning it on with Rockbox 2.3, it says
no Fat32 Partition
P0: S:3EC1
T:F 38193 MB

can anybody help me?
thnx a lot!

[amiconn]

Hi jason,

it looks like you created an extended partition (T:F tells this) with a logical FAT32 drive in it. This is unsupported by rockbox, and as it seems also by newer versions of the archos firmware. You need to create a primary FAT32 partiton.

Jens

[jason]

ouh yeah, my bad...
thanx for the hint; it worked 

Greets, Jason

[Tron]

Btw. -  I also replaced my Hitachi-20GB-Drive with a 40GB-Samsung one. Now the crashes I had are (almost) gone and I can enjoy music on my motorbike :-)

Cheers,
Tron

[klmax]

While we are on the subject, does any drive (2.5) work?  Are some less a drain on batteries?

Really aprecieate this forum and this way cool rockbox. I was ready to get an iPod before I found this...

[jcwillia]

so let me hear from those not on the mailing list (since I think I've talked to all of them about this...)

how do you go about replacing the hard drive on the V2 recorders?

From what I've heard so far it sounds way too easy/good to be true.

I also need some direction on where to shop for a hard drive and how to format it - I'm not following you guys on the whole bootdisk conversation.