iRiver H140 HDD upgrade - ATA error -11

[hotmog]

Hi

I should be grateful for your advice.

I had Rockbox installed on my iRiver H140, and all was working perfectly with no issues whatsoever. However needing extra capacity I decided to upgrade the HDD, and bought a Toshiba MK8007GAH 80GB. It arrived yesterday. I'd already copied all the folders, etc, from the original HDD to my PC, and yesterday I removed the old HDD from the H140 and replaced it with the 80GB one. All seemed to go very straightforwardly.

The new HDD arrived pre-formatted for NTFS. My PC is running Windows 7, and the only format options available are NTFS or exFAT (which is not the same as FAT32). I therefore followed the instructions in this link to reformat it as FAT32: http://www.head-fi.org/t/434921/iriver-h120-with-80gb-hdd-guide: Download fat32format, #8 in list of things you need. Extract file into C drive. Click Start>Run, type in these things:

cmd
CD /D c:\
fat32format e:

I then copied everything back over from the backup I had taken of the original 40GB HDD, disconnected the USB link to my PC and rebooted the iRiver. On starting up, it went straight into Rockbox mode, with the all the menu and display options apparently as they should be. However, the database doesn't update, and if click on the Files option, the only one that appears is the H120(eu)_V166 folder that contains the ihp_120.hex file. The problem then is that when I power it down and switch it back on again, it starts off showing Rockbox Boot loader, then displays

ATA error -11
Insert USB cable and press a button

(Nothing happens even if I do that)

The only option then is to hit the Master reset switch, and it comes up with the default iRiver firmware screen:

iRiver H-100 series

Check HDD connection

Check HDD

followed by the screen

0001  0000 Folders
          0000 Songs

I tried going into the Main Menu/General/Firmware upgrade/Y, but this does nothing.

I am sure it's something to do with the way the drive is formatted. TBH I'm a little confused why fat32format.exe appears to work at all, given that FAT32 doesn't support partitions greater than 32GB. I don't really understand, also, why the software needs to be on a FAT32 file system at all, rather than NTFS - and if so, how that is supposed to work with 80GB or higher capacity HDDs.

Other people seem to have followed the same procedure as I when upgrading the HDD with no issues. Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong, and how I can resolve it?

[monoid]

Check if your bootloader supports bigger disks. I am not sure what is the disk limit for common h1xx bootloader.

I did SSD mod using 120 GB SSD disc and I had to flash h1xx with special bootloader. I am not sure, if it was needed only because of SSD thing, or also because disk size.

Before flashing more advanced bootloader, I got ATA errors. Possibly -11, do not remember...

The bootloader I use is 7pre4 (I think).

Beware, I read on this forum, that something went wrong with the bootloader and several last development versions may brick the iRiver.

[hotmog]

OK, the problem has now been identified, and resolved (after a fashion).

A member of another audio-related forum, who has successfully upgraded the HDD on a couple of iRiver H-140s, very kindly offered to try and sort mine out. It turns out that he lives not too far from me, so I took it over to him this morning.

After unsuccessfully attempting various things to get it to work, he concluded that that the issue appears to be with the particular version of the Toshiba MK8007GAH HDD I'd sourced to replace the original 40GB one. It appeared, for some unknown reason, to be incompatible with the H-140's firmware. The version I bought is marked ZK01, made in Japan, whereas the ones he has used successfully are marked ZL02, made in The Phillipines. Both versions look physically identical, but when he replaced the ZK01 in my H-140 with a ZL02, it booted up fine. There is nothing faulty about the ZK01 that prevents it functioning as a normal drive when connected to a PC; it is just not compatible with the iRiver/Rockbox firmware.

I came away with my H-140 fitted with a 60GB ZL02 HDD and now fully functional, courtesy of my kind friend.

In all the discussions and advice relating to upgrading iRiver H-1x0 series HDDs, this particular issue appears neither to have been previously reported nor documented. Maybe all the others who have done this upgrade have just been lucky in getting a compatible version when sourcing a replacement HDD.

So this is just a heads up, for anyone else who may be thinking of doing this in the future, to make sure you get the correct HDD version type (which is shown on the line below the model no).