The X5 HD Replacement Thread

[Sokudo Ningyou]

Ah ha. Haaa. Nevermind the original post, if anyone even saw it.

Anyway! Old thread and all, but since some of us are still chugging along on our player, and may want to keep it going, I figured I'd put up my experience in updating the drive.

My player: a 60gb XL. Replaced the battery with a Nintendo GBA battery from Radio Shack. (Model no: GBASP-2LI, Part no: NTR-001, 003 if interested.) I thought the harddrive had finally gone, considering I accidentally drained the battery entirely one day and I couldn't get it to even charge up or connect to Windows. (Note that the subpack being possibly crap is apparently why it didn't boot up, since after playing around with the new harddrive, not getting it to work, reusing the old drive, then trying to connect again, and finally getting it up meant I apparently hadn't wriggled the subpack the right way. tl;dr, I hate that thing. )

I bought the Samsung HS12YHA 120 GB harddrive off eBay (seller: storagedriveoutlet), and the ZIF HD, SSD to 1.8 inch adapter from seller libmart. (The price has apparently also gone up: $44 with shipping. ) Trial and error: I kept inserting the adapter wrong, apparently. I thought the harddrive was supposed to face label up, but after playing with it, getting errors, and basically not getting it to work, I figured out that the label side needs to be down, as so:



Close up of the plugged in adapter and drive:



So, after I finally plugged it all in correctly, Windows recognized it as a harddrive, but did not give it a letter or pop it up in My Computer. So, if that happens, right click on My Computer on the desktop, and go to Manage. Computer Management will pop up; go to Storage, then Disk Management. (It may take a step to search for drives.) Hopefully your pretty new awesome Samsung will then be visible as Disk 1, no letter. Now you can format it, at least at first to a recognizable partition drive in NTFS. Which, in my case, took forever. Seriously. We're talking like a half hour to partition and format a 120 GB drive. When finished, it should be assigned a letter, and be Healthy and partitioned.

SO. Following these instructions, I then formatted the drive to FAT32. This also took a while. (If the link is broken, what I did was: go to Run, type cmd, then entered "format /FS:FAT32 X:", replacing the X with my drive letter, and without the parentheses. I'm on XP, if that makes any difference.) Also, my text is now weird and I can't get it to change. Anyway, the drive also gets really damn hot after all of this, so be careful when handling it if you haven't put the back cover on yet. You should also sleep before doing anything as particularly stupid as trying to format a drive twice, because aarrggh I am so tired it's 3 in the morniiiing.

Ages later (also known as: when the drive is done formatting and the glaciers have passed), you should be able to spin up Rockbox utility, install the bootloader, and you're ready to go!

...or not, as mine told me it's too big for FAT32. In that case, say hell with it, download Swiss Knife or FAT32 Format, and go to town.

(FAT32format instructions from the reviews:

1. Download the program from this site.
2. Use the allready created "temp" folder og create one on C: drive.
3. Move the program file to the temp folder
4. Go to the "Start"-button and make a search for "run"
5. Type in cmd and press enter. A DOS-window will open
6. Make sure it only says "C:\" to do this type "cd.." untill it says so.
7. Type in "cd temp" and press enter
8. Type in "fat32format X" x is the name off your drive, mine where for instance G.
9. Then answer "y")

FAT32format is also HELLA FASTER.

This drive is also quite slim indeed, as others have commented. I was even able to reuse the old rubber cushion I had to discard after I installed the new battery. Seriously, the original drive is like twice the thickness of the Samsung.

Rejoice.

[rskiredj]

Hi there,
Thank you for your generous infos
I need to replace my 20gb old drive on my iaudio X5 (slim version)

can you please tell me:
Will I have any problem with Samsung HS12YHA 120 GB harddrive and the and the ZIF HD, SSD to 1.8 inch adapter ?

How is you iaudio now running after all this time ?

Is the Samsung HS12YHA 120 GB harddrive faster than the old drive ?

Also do you think Toshiba 120 GB,Internal,4200 RPM,1.8" (MK1231GAL) Hard Drive will work also ?

Do you know if anybody else is selling the adapter (cheaper) ?

Thank you so much

[rskiredj]

Hi there,
Can you please give me your advice if you got this think right on your iaudio drive upgrade?

I need to replace my 20gb old drive on my iaudio X5 (slim version)

My questions are :
Will I have any problem with Samsung HS12YHA 120 GB harddrive and the and the ZIF HD, SSD to 1.8 inch adapter ?

How is you iaudio now running after all this time ?

Is the Samsung HS12YHA 120 GB harddrive faster than the old drive ?

Also do you think Toshiba 120 GB,Internal,4200 RPM,1.8" (MK1231GAL) Hard Drive will work also ?

Do you know if anybody else is selling the adapter (cheaper) ?

Thank you so much

[rskiredj]

oh , also did learn afterward by any chance if there are bigger size drives >120gb that will work as well ?

Thank you

[Sokudo Ningyou]

Sorry I didn't get back to you, rskiredj. All I can tell you is that the harddrive and the specific adapter I linked to will fit. If you don't have an XL model or a 60 GB, I don't know how well it will fit; you should have some padding around the drive to keep it from moving, and in my 60 GB case, I could only fit some very thin craft foam. Anything smaller might not be possible. I'm also going to guess that nothing bigger harddrive-wise would fit either; you may have to figure out how to fit in a smaller memory card drive as some others on the forum have done. I do have some strange problems with some files completely freezing the player, as well as other issues; starting up, getting to the main screen, and then shutting off (usually when charged) and not charging while playing (even though the icon shows it doing so). However, since I need a player that's big enough to carry all my music, my only other alternative is an iPod, which I don't want to do, or an X7.

[badettmann]

Wouldn't this do the same thing without needing the adapter and gaining a non-moving parts HD (SSD)? Granted, it is a little bit more money....

1.8" 50 Pin IDE SSD - 128 GB

[badettmann]

Originally Posted by badettmann

Wouldn't this do the same thing without needing the adapter and gaining a non-moving parts HD (SSD)? Granted, it is a little bit more money....

1.8" 50 Pin IDE SSD - 128 GB

Or this???? Both have the same Read speed (45 MB/SEC) but the CF is cheaper. Will the 50 PIN plug right into the X5L 30?