[Solved] Fail to install rockbox on iriver H120 ihp-120 with msata and M.2 SSD

[cayou2000]

I have an iriver H120 that works perfectly with the original HDD. It has rockbox updated and the last firmware 1.66 EU.

I purchased adapter to test bigger capacity so i get a CF to ZIF adapter, a ZIF to Msata adapter with 120go msata ssdrive  and a ZIF to M.2 sata adapter with 256gb m.2 sata ssd drive

I was only able to format the SSD's on macOS terminal when connected to the H120 (w11 is not working with FAT32format).

I the installed rockbox with the installer and avery things goes well till the last prompt of upgrading the firmware. When I restart on the origian firmware I get checking hdd connection and the check HDD and nothing happen when I click upgrade firmware on original firmware. if it try to format it it say's it can't
If I reboot on rockbox i have the no partition message.
The disk is still readable on windows and contain the rockbox files and the hex file for upgrade...
Any idea from where the error is?


[EDIT SOLUTION]
So finally it worked partially (rockbox OK original firmware KO)

My conf:
Iriver H120 ihp-120 with latest firmware 1.66e and rockbox installed v4.0 on v8 bootloader on originator 20gb toshiba HDD.
on this setup both rockbox and original firmware have access to HDD.

I bought:

CF to ZIF adapter (bothe side pins have to be cut to be inserted fully in the slot)
Aliexpress CF to ZIF adapter



A zif to msata adapter (you have to slightly bend the CF to ZIF adapter to install it correctly)
Aliexpress ZIF to mSata adapter



OR

A ZIF to M.2 sata 2241 adapter
Aliexpress ZIF to M.2 sata adapter



I already had:

msata ssd drive
Kingston msata 120gb SUV500MS/120G

and m.2 sata 2280 (for test only as 2242 format is required to close the player)
Samsung 256GB MZNLN256HCHP-000L7

The main issue is to correctly format the hard drive to be detected by rockbox and proceed to installation.

I did it part on linux and part on windows.

On linux I did the following with the player connect in usb mode in original firmware mode (or rockbox if it works)

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lsblk
to find the address of the player

mine was sdb1

then partition the ssd with

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sudo fdisk -c=dos /dev/sdb   
the -c=dos allow to format the partition starting at the 63th sector instead of the 2048th sector as per default.

first step is to delete the partition(s) with

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d
then create a new partition with

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n
then set primary partition with

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p
first sector to 63

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63
last sector to default for max size just press enter

then change the type of partition with

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t
and

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0C  (it's a zero)

the end the partitionning with

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w
here the complete code

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sudo fdisk -c=dos /dev/sdb                 


Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.40.4).                                                                                                                                                                                                       
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.                                                                                                                                                                         
Be careful before using the write command.

DOS-compatible mode is deprecated.

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 238.47 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Disk model: MZNLN256HCHP   
Geometry: 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 31130 cylinders
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xb335ca64

Device     Boot Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1          63 500118191 500118129 238.5G  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Command (m for help): d
Selected partition 1
Partition 1 has been deleted.

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
   p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
   e   extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
First sector (63-500118191, default 63): 63
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (63-500118191, default 500118191): 500118191

Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 238.5 GiB.

Command (m for help): t
Selected partition 1
Hex code or alias (type L to list all): 0c
Changed type of partition 'Linux' to 'W95 FAT32 (LBA)'.

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.


Then on windows you can clean the partition with DISKPART on CMD

to get your disk number

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list disk
to select your disk

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select disk X where X is your disk number

the clean the partition with

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clean
Normally you should be able to see the drive in computer management/storage and to give it a letter (D: for me) by right clicking your partition.

now with fat32format.exe you can finalize the partition with the command in CMD in the directory where you stored the exe extract from the file I downloaded here https://fat32-format.en.softonic.com/

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fat32format.exe D:
you should now be able to install rockbox with the utility and start the firmware with full capacity.
Original is still accessible but SSD is not so useless.

Hope it will help you revive your iriver.

Next step for me is new battery and find the bigger SSD m.2 sata i can to test the limit of rockbox and the player....

[EDIT] finally the original battery last 12h of continuous playback with the SSD. They had fantastic hardware back then. Miss that time.

[speachy]

If you had mentioned the _full_ text displayed on screen, some of these questions would not be necessary.

0) Does the error message include "insert usb cable and fix it" along with a version string?
1) What version of rockbox were you trying to install?
2) Was rockbox was previously installed on the device before you did the SSD swap?  If yes, when?  (The bootloader may be too old to handle flash storage; the version is displayed on screen briefly, or if you boot with the hold switch set it will enter the failsafe menu, which will also show the version)
3) Is the drive was partitioned with MBR instead of GPT?  What are the actual specifics?

EDIT:  You implied that it was working with rockbox prior to the update, but the bootloader version question is still important.  It's worth mentioning that none of the active developers have access to a H1xx/H3xx device, and AFAIK nobody has ever reported trying these devices with anything fancier than a CompactFlash card.  So we are in uncharted territory here.

[cayou2000]

the message on rockbox just state "no partition found"
bootloader is v8
rockbox version on HDD is 3.15 [update to 4.0 not changing the issue]
on ssd it should be the latest cause i use the automatic installer
after installation en reboot
SSD is not detected by windows  on rockbox usb mode
SSD is recognized by windows on iriver usb mode

Partition is formated in FAT 32 with the following command and also the result of chkdsk

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C:\format>fat32format.exe d: /Q /C 65536
Warning ALL data on drive 'd' will be lost irretrievably, are you sure
(y/n) :y
FSCTL_ALLOW_EXTENDED_DASD_IO OK
IOCTL_DISK_GET_PARTITION_INFO failed, trying IOCTL_DISK_GET_PARTITION_INFO_EX
IOCTL_DISK_GET_PARTITION_INFO_EX ok, GPTMode=1
Size : 256GB 500115456 sectors
512 Bytes Per Sector, Cluster size 32768 bytes
Volume ID is 100a:1a25
32 Reserved Sectors, 61035 Sectors per FAT, 2 fats
7812396 Total clusters
7812395 Free Clusters
Formatting drive d:...
Clearing out 122166 sectors for Reserved sectors, fats and root cluster...
Wrote 62548992 bytes in 5.13 seconds, 11.63 Megabytes/sec
Initialising reserved sectors and FATs...
Done
C:\format>chkdsk D:
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data.

Volume Serial Number is 100A-1A25
Windows is verifying files and folders...
File and folder verification is complete.

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.
  249,996,672 KB total disk space.
           32 KB in 1 hidden files.
           32 KB in 1 files.
  249,996,576 KB are available.

       32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.
    7,812,396 total allocation units on disk.
    7,812,393 allocation units available on disk.

C:\format>fsutil fsinfo volumeinfo D:
Volume Name :
Volume Serial Number : 0x100a1a25
Max Component Length : 255
File System Name : FAT32
Is ReadWrite
Not Thinly-Provisioned
Preserves Case of filenames
Supports Unicode in filenames
Returns Handle Close Result Information
Supports Encrypted File System

C:\format>fsutil fsinfo sectorinfo D:
LogicalBytesPerSector :                                 512
PhysicalBytesPerSectorForAtomicity :                    512
PhysicalBytesPerSectorForPerformance :                  512
FileSystemEffectivePhysicalBytesPerSectorForAtomicity : 512
Device Alignment :                                      Unknown
Partition alignment on device :                         Unknown
Performs Normal Seeks
Trim Not Supported
Not DAX capable
Not Thinly-Provisioned
drive are kingston msata 120gb SUV500MS/120G and m.2 sata 2280 samsung 256GB MZNLN256HCHP-000L7

i found that post that state that it chould work but hardware is not exactly the same.
https://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,42704.msg228813.html#msg228813

[speachy]

the message on rockbox just state "no partition found"

So this is coming from the bootloader, and not the main rockbox firmware -- because the latter would show a version string too.

SSD is not detected by windows  on rockbox usb mode
SSD is recognized by windows on iriver usb mode

Is no drive detected at all?  Or just that no usable volume is present?
I'm curious to see a dump of the partition table, fdisk will do this under Linux but I don't know how to extract that under Windows.

That said, on these iRiver devices, USB storage is provided by dedicated USB<>ATA hardware; Rockbox itself has no active role.  So offhand I have no idea why USB mode works under the iRiver firmware but not Rockbox.

[cayou2000]

I think I understood from where the issue is coming. When creating the partition on the ssd, it starts at sector 2048. on the HDD it is at sector 63. I tried force the partition to start at 63 without success. Here the details
original disk

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└─$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb                                   
Disk /dev/sdb: 18.63 GiB, 20000268288 bytes, 39063024 sectors
Disk model: MK2004GAL       
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x2b982a6b

Device     Boot Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1          63 39054014 39053952 18.6G  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)






SSD

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└─$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb     
Disk /dev/sdb: 111.79 GiB, 120034123776 bytes, 234441648 sectors
Disk model:  SUV500MS120   
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x32aecb34

Device     Boot Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1        2048 234441647 234439600 111.8G  b W95 FAT32



 [EDIT]

I succeed formatting the partition with the -c=dos command. I also modified the partition ID to c instead of b

here the fdisk

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└─$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb                   
Disk /dev/sdb: 111.79 GiB, 120034123776 bytes, 234441648 sectors
Disk model:  SUV500MS120   
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x32aecb34

Device     Boot Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1          63 234441647 234441585 111.8G  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

First win Rockbox works now but not the official firmware (still check disk)

Copying 50gb+ of mp3 to check if it works.

Seems to work on rockbox. I can confirm iRiver firmware don't detect the disk. I will try a small partition.

[cayou2000]

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