Iriver 120 can't see it's hard drive

[Zutroy]

Hello,

My rockboxed iriver 120 crashed recently with a *panic* error and started showing corrupted file and folder names. I ran a disc check on it and found that the .rockbox folder was corrupted. After reformatting the drive (fat32) and putting a fresh new install of the rockbox files on there it hangs on boot with the rockbox firmware (after reporting the battery level). By booting into the iriver firmware it boots OK but it thinks the hd is 0MB and empty, or has 1 corrupt file on it sometimes.

The drive has been tested and is OK (random read/write all sectors), I've tried another drive from an ipod in it and exactly the same thing happens. Both drives work fine in other players. When connected to the PC via usb the hard drive can be read by the PC just fine. If i use the iriver firmware option to format the hd however, it leaves it in a raw state and doesn't create a partition.

quite stumped as what to do, i can rule out the hd itself as being faulty and don't know what's causing the error.

any ideas on this would be appreciated, as i love my iriver

[Multiplex]

This sounds a bit like a known issue with the bootloader and a strange partition type http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=16110.0 the strange thing is that you've tried formating with the original firmware and it still wasn't OK.

Another thread here http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=19545.msg140584#msg140584 with a very similar sounding issue.

Good Luck

[Zutroy]

Symptoms sound the same, but the drive has only one primary partition, in another player it boots rockbox just fine, i don't think the problem is related to the hd but it may have initially been caused by it.

[ej0rge]

So the drive works in the h120 in usb mode?

Maybe you should back it up, wipe the partition table, and start over with partitioning and formatting.

[Multiplex]

If the drive is OK in another player, and especially if it is OK with USB access it may be the infamous daughter board problem... the connector for the HDD and the USB and its bridge chip are mounted on a small daughter board off the main board. The daughter board is secured by some short pillars which are soldered to the two boards, if this fails the multi-way connectors between the boards become lose and poor connection is the result, and you state that you've been swapping drives over - maybe the mechanical movement has caused poor connection. Usually there is an ATA Error but I don't know if that is always true.

Here's a thread that I commented to a while back http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=13118.0, I have no personal experience of this issue, I just keep praying that my player doesn't suffer...

[Zutroy]

Multiplex, seems like you got it spot on. the daughterbord was slightly warped, ipressed down hard on it and it seems fine now. Thanks

Edit, and it;s stopped again. bugger

[Multiplex]

Ah, that's bad :-(

If you are lucky maybe you can just re-solder the mounting pins, if not the pins on the inter-board connectors may need soldering - that's pretty specialist.

[Zutroy]

Might have a go at re-soldering the pins. How do i make it a tighter fit?

[Multiplex]

Sorry - I don't know as I've not had to do this myself.

However - if I were planning to have a go at my player I'd start by studying these pictures http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IriverInfo#H1x0_Nude and the next row down where you can see the daughter board. you can see the two connectors that provide the electrical connections and the four brass pins that hold the boards together by being soldered.

If you are very lucky what has happened is that the soldering to the brass pins has failed and 'all' you need to do is squeeze the two boards together and re-solder them.

If you are unlucky the movement of the boards has broken the soldering on those multi-way connector and re-soldering them is a specialist job.

[Zutroy]

ok, so i took it apart got the daughter board off and found one of the connector pads had come off the mainboard and was stuck to the daughter board. Damn.


I guess it's pretty much fubar'd now as i can barely see the pins to the connector and de-soldering the posts was the only soldering experience I've had in my life.

So i thought; sod it i don't know what I'm doing so it doesn't really matter that I can't see it, so i cleaned the soldering iron stuck the connector on the board where it looked right and heated it up with the iron. It seamed to stick so i put it back together...

It worked.

I was amazed.

No way, it actually works fine now. I'm still in shock. Thanks for all your help wouldn't have known what to try other wise. Hopefully get another 4 years out of it yet.

[Multiplex]

You had some luck behind you!
go buy a lottery ticket while you're living this charmed existence ;-)

Good to hear it's working

I tried a similar repair on a Toshiba laptop with a proper hot-air solder station, magnifiers and a tame hardware engineer offering advice over my shoulder, and didn't manage to fix it - maybe I'll get it out again and use the old fashioned iron on the kitchen table - Like you say nothing to lose!