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what are the best/easiest hard drives upgrades for iRiver H120 and H140?

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polluxx2006:
Hello there,
I just digged out this thread because right now I'm trying to choose the "right" 12xGB-SSD to pimp my iHP-120.
First idea was: Kingspec 128GB IDE - reasonable cheap, plus, I have one already working in my H-140... with a few flaws, I have to say...
Second look was on the Mach Xtreme Technology MX-NANO 50 120GB.
The flaws I have with the Kingspec:
- going into stand-by turns the hdd led ON, not off (minor flaw)
- it takes much longer than with the former HDD to wake up from stand-by (frozen WPS or Browser for 2-3 sec)
- seems that the USB data rate is slower than before (guess this can be fixed with the UDMA-Hack)

Can anyone say something about the points above regarding the Mach Xtreme?
Mach Xtreme users: what exprerience did you have with it?

Julian67:
I have the Kingspec 128GB SSD in my H140 and have none of those issues.  Disk activity LED works normally, the player boots and can be playing in under 3 seconds and it resumes from pause instantly without freezes.  Data transfer is fine although it's hard to describe USB 2.0 as fast.  Comparing write speeds of about 4GB of data to Kingspec SSD in H140 and Toshiba HDD in H340 by executing
--- Code: ---# dd if=/dev/zero of=my_device/output.img bs=8k count=512k
--- End code ---
gives me near enough identical results.  In the real world, where normal data transfers to my players are multiple files of MB size and not single files of GBs, the SSD is a lot better than a hard disk, and when in use the player is hugely more responsive.  The big limiting factor for data transfer is the USB connection, not hard disk or SSD write speed.  You could install in the iRiver the world's fastest SSD with the biggest cache and data transfer over USB 2.0 would not be any different.

I would hesitate to conclude that the Kingspec SSDs are a poor choice.  The LED being activated incorrectly could be down to a faulty disk or connection or board.  It does seem to be something specific to your player.  My inclination would be to open the player, remove the SSD and reinstall it while taking the opportunity to make sure there are no problems in the player such as bent pins, foreign objects, pinched cable insulation, signs of moisture damage and so on.

If you suspect the SSD is faulty then you can check this at minimal expense by swapping it with a CF card in a CF to 50 pin IDE adapter.  This could save you lots of money if the SSD is actually OK, whereas installing a Mach Xtreme and having the same symptoms would be a horribly expensive way to find out the Kingspec was fine all along...

polluxx2006:
Hi,

as no one could really give me a good advise, I recently ordered the "Mach Xtreme" SSD for my iHP-120.
Installation was as easy as it should be: Copied the stuff from the 20GB HDD to my Computer,
put in the 120GB SSD, started in "Bootloader Mode", copied the HDD-contents back to the SSD and voila -  it directly booted up :)

Differences to the Kingspec 64GB (fitted in my H-140):
- going into stand-by leaves the HDD LED OFF (not important, just nice)
- USB data transfer is now "normal", just like the HDD (12-13MB/s) :)
- waking up from stand-by now even seems to take a bit longer :(

AND: I've had several freezes during my tests: "error accessing playlist control" when trying to start playback
or hangs when resuming... any idea how to solve this?

UPDATE: Finally I returned the "Mach Xtreme" and ordered a "Kingspec". Main reason: wake up time was way too long. With the "Kingspec" (64GB in my H140),
it feels like the moment to wake up from standby was approx. as long as for a Disk to spin up.
With the "Mach Xtreme", it took like twice the time - plus, I had lots of freezes.

Will now report on the Kingspec 128GB:

- same flawless installation as with the Mach Xtreme
- stand-by now leaves the LED dark ;)
- the quickest wake up time of all ma tested SSDs!
- Approx. same USB transfer speed as with the HDD

TOP!

Conclusion: The Kingspec isn't only the cheaper but (in combo with the iriver H1xx) seems also to be the better of the two tested SSDs with 128GB capacity.
And if it's not a matter of my H140 hardware (hopefully not), I'd recommend the Kingspec 128GB over the 64GB, too.

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