iRiver H340 HDD replacement

[RockBoxNewB]

Hi everyone!

I am looking for a description on how to replace the 40GB Hard disk drive of my iRiver H340. There is no defect in the old HDD whatsoever, I am simply looking forward to increase the available space. With the help of the Rockbox pages and some internet research, I found out that this HDD should work with my player:
TOSHIBA MK8007GAH HDD 80GB 1.8" PATA 4,2K TOS:MK8007GAH
My question is now: is there anything else I have to buy in order to getting this HDD to work?
I had opened up my H340 once already, because I had to replace the battery. Will it be similarly easy to replace the HDD? Open up the device, take out the old one and insert the new Toshiba?
And more importantly: How do I get Rockbox onto this new drive? Will the player be recognised by my Laptop, if I simply replace the HDD and then connect it via USB?
I know there's quite a heap of questions, but I would be really grateful if someone could help me here!

All the best,
RBNB

[Julian67]

It's really easy - a straight swap and everything will work.  There is nothing fiddly like when you had to disconnect the old battery, you just pull out the old drive and push in the new one.  Pay attention that the pins are aligned, push the drive home, replace screws etc, close the case, done.

Before you start you can can connect the H340 to your PC and copy the contents of the 40GB drive, and then after you install the new drive you just copy the contents from PC to the iRiver.

I suppose it's possible that the new drive will be formatted to NTFS in which case you will need to format it to FAT32 before copying the old files back to it.  I can't think of any other issue which might arise.

[RockBoxNewB]

Hi Julian67!

You managed to explain pretty much every single question I had - thanks a ton for this!
This helps a lot :-)

RBNB

[RockBoxNewB]

Hi everyone!

Finally, I managed to get the HDD upgrade done (at least it SEEMS to be working properly now).
Unfortunately, it turned out to be a lot more difficult than expected. In general, if someone of you tries to do the same thing as me, don't hesitate to send me a message, I'll be glad to help.

I cannot remember ALL the necessary steps to get the 80GB HDD working, so I'll simply post some important remarks here:

1) First of all, Rockbox had to be COMPLETELY UNINSTALLED to make it work. The original iRiver firmware has to be loaded to the device's flash before anything can work here. I would recommend, just like Julian67 has pointed out, to copy ALL the contents of your rockboxed iRiver to your PC/Laptop, INCLUDING all Rockbox-related files (i.e. the complete ".rockbox" folder and all the other files in its root folder). This will make the reconfiguration of your upgraded iRiver a lot easier, because you don't have to change all the settings again afterwards.
This is necessary, because otherwise the iRiver will try to boot Rockbox every time - but as the necessary files for a boot-up were stored on the old HDD (and are not on the new HDD yet), it simply gets stuck and won't do anything before you press the "reset" button. Maybe this is not necessary with some replacement HDDs - but with my "TOSHIBA MK8007GAH" 80GB HDD, there was no other way.

2) With the old firmware, my computer/laptop managed to recognise the new HDD (the green symbol was shown in the taskbar), but no external storage device was shown anywhere.  It took me a long time to figure it out, and I don't remember 100% of what had to be done next. What I know for sure is that the new HDD had to be "initialized" first. I think opening the "device manager" or "(storage) disk management" of my laptop did the trick (what you have to click on might vary depending on your Windows version). There, you should find the new drive. Without "initializing" it, your computer will show a connected device - but it doesn't know how to HANDLE it. Anyway, you should be able to find more information relating to how HDDs can be initialized in your Windows version on the Internet. When this was done, my computer showed the new HDD with its correct memory size and allowed me to copy files onto it.

3) While initialising the drive, you will probably notice that Windows (at least nowadays) only allows to format new HDDs as "NTFS". Rockbox, however, needs it to be formatted as "FAT32". I think in Windows XP, I could also format it as "exFat", but that was no solution whatsoever. The original iRiver firmware also needs it to be FAT32, as far as I remember. In order to get the HDD formatted to FAT32, you will need third-party software, inevitably. I chose "FAT32Formatter" which is freeware, and it worked like a charm. I first tried a "normal formatting", which took HOURS just to crash in the end, because at some point, the H340's battery had run empty. My recommendation: simply do a "QUICK formatting", that should be completely sufficient.
Then, I simply copied the ".rockbox" folder I backupped before back to the drive and - tadaaa - Rockbox booted successfully, and it even kept ALL the settings I had made.

As a general remark on how to replace the original HDD: as Julian67 mentioned, it was not too fiddly in itself. I knew how to open the H340 because I had already upgraded its old battery some weeks prior. If you treat the internal bits of the H34 carefully, you should be able to get it done easily. You simply have to pull the old HDD out of its connector, and put the new one in the same way.

Well, I hope this small "guide" might help someone out there! At least it should save you some time, because it took me DAYS to find out what the problems were in the first place ;-) I didn't find a full guide on the internet anymore (at some point, the website "mysticriver" seems to have had a guide on HDD replacement, but it is down now), so I put together this information for everyone interested in an HDD upgrade.

All the best,
RBNB

[Julian67]

There shouldn't be a need to reinstall original iRiver firmware.  The original firmware and the bootloader reside in ROM, not the hard disk, so are unaffected.

The hard disk of course needs to be partitioned and formatted to FAT32 in order to be recognised by the original firmware or to be usable in Rockbox.  If you can do this and then copy over the old contents before installing the new disk this is the simplest way, but many people will not have a suitable 50 pin IDE to USB adapter so will need to install the new disk and then attach the player via USB and format it and then copy the old contents.

With iRiver H340 and H140 players I've swapped various hard disks and SSD, also IDE to Compact Flash adapter+CF card and even IDE to CF adapter+CF to SD adapter+SD to microSD adapter+microSD card(!) and it can be done just by copying data and without reinstalling anything (though the original firmware doesn't work with flash drives or adapters, only hard disks).

Suitable hard disks have become very cheap but SSDs are still expensive.  I think if buying an SSD it's worthwhile also spending just a few more pennies on a 50 pin IDE to USB adapter so you can use your PC to prepare the new disk before physical installation.  With a cheap hard disk or if on a really tight budget you might as well do it the slow way.

[RockBoxNewB]

Thanks for adding this information, Julian67.
That would be kind of my own conclusion in a nutshell as well. When I started this thread, I asked whether any additional hardware was necessary - what I meant was things like adapters and stuff - that 50-pin-to-USB thing for example. In the first place, I thought the HDD upgrade might be IMPOSSIBLE without first connecting the HDD to a PC/laptop. You were right, it isn't - but certainly, such an adapter would have made everything a lot easier. When I put together that small "guide", I was attempting to provide some help to those who DON'T have any additional hardware at their disposal, and who do not plan to purchase any ;-)

By the way, Julian67... what is the biggest memory storage device you got working in an iRiver H340? Is there any way to get more than 80GB of storage WITHOUT buying an expensive SSD?

BEst,
RBNB

[Julian67]

128GB SSD is the biggest I've used.  For hard disks you can find Toshiba 240GB or 120GB disks with ZIF connector and attach with a ZIF to 50 pin adapter but I haven't looked into it in any detail as I'm only really interested in switching to solid state storage.  It's best to check the Rockbox wiki for more info.  You can buy 256GB Compact Flash and it should work with suitable adapter, but it is phenomenally expensive.