Rockbox.org home
release
dev builds
extras
themes manual
wiki
device status forums
mailing lists
IRC bugs
patches
dev guide



Rockbox mail archive

Subject: Re: Hard drive error help!

Re: Hard drive error help!

From: Gerrit E.G. 'Insh_Allah' Hobbelt <Ger.Hobbelt_at_bermuda-holding.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 13:39:34 +0100

Hi,

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Mannon" <dsmannon_at_kcbx.net>
To: <rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se>
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 9:12 PM
Subject: Hard drive error help!

> I'm a newbie here, and have little programming knowledge.

I'm another newbie on this list ;-)

[...]
> It stopped during a playback, and ever since, I get 'Hard
> drive error Please check HD' on startup. It will only enter
[..]
> message. Also, looking at it in USB, there are two folders
> at the root level (prior to installing rockbox), _Restore
> and System Volume Information (which has two _restore
> folders in it, each with what looks like a bracketed hex
> number following it). Is that normal?

Well, this sounds a lot like my NEO35 Car Jukebox (I'm not using rockbox
firmware yet, though) which arrived in Europe fine. After using it for a single
day, the HD went DIW (Dead In The Water), exhibiting the same type of response
you're getting here. After another hour it went very quiet though :-[
You're 'lucky' in the sense that you can still access the disc from your
computer.

Those 'Volume Information', etc. folders in the root of your drive are a
courtesy of MS Windows (2K, XP) so I shouldn't worry about those too much. (I
assume you have 'show hidden and system folders' enabled in your MS Explorer as
these are 'hidden' system folders which aren't usually visible :-) )


After inserting another HD - which kept on working - I have had a couple of
errors in the past with my NEO (while messing around with different official SSI
firmware versions, btw), where this type of responses recurred. What helped back
then was to make sure the HD became a freshly FAT32 formatted partition again.
How did I do this (using Win2K):

go to

start -> settings -> control panel -> administrative tools -> computer
management

a explorer-like window will appear, where you select

storage: disk management

in the left pane. The right pane will split and show you all partitions
available on your machine. Below those, you'll have a 'grayish' area where your
*physical* harddisks are shown with the partitions allocated on them. The MP3
player (USB disk) should be one of them, showing (at least) one partition.

Be very careful here, because messing with the wrong drive/partition will make
all its data *permanently* lost.

What I did here was:

- select my NEO35 USB harddisk
- select any partitions on it and DELETE them. (Be warned: this will permanently
destroy your data, unless you use sophisticated restore software!)
- create a fresh partition on the now completely empty ('unallocated') harddisk
- format it as 'FAT32' format. (*not* NTFS!)

Now you should have a completely new, freshly formatted partition on your
USB/MP3 HD.

Continue from here as if you'd just purchased your device. It shouldn't give any
errors anymore. If it does, you might want to reinstall the official firmware
again (you know, the archos .ajz file; might want to download the
latest&greatest from their site right then) and rerun the sequence above once
more.

Still trouble then? ... Uh-oh...

(When you passed this Uh-Oh moment without any good fortune, you might consider
taking the HD from the player (a screwdriver is mandatory) and install it in
your (test-)PC to run some serious checks on it so see if it's got physical
damage ('bad/weak sectors'). Check if the troubles stay around when using a
different HD in your player.)


HTH


Best regards,

  Ger Hobbelt

PS: can't help you out with the SC1,SH1,etc. errorcodes, because I'm as dumb as
they come regarding the Rockbox firmware, but I'm sure they are other folks
around who can 'read' those codes.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://FlashExperiments.insh-allah.com/ http://www.insh-allah.com/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Senior Software Engineer." Uh-uh. Yep. One of them buggers who created this
bloody fine mess. "To boldly crash where no man has made a bug before."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The daily amount of incoming virusses/trojans/SPAM compels me to enforce the
rule: attachments have to be in ZIP,RAR,ARJ,JAR,BZ2,GZ,TXT or TAR.GZ format.
            Graphics accepted in GIF,PNG,JPEG and TIFF formats.
!!! >>> ANY OTHER ATTACHMENTS WILL BE SILENTLY DELETED. <<< !!!
Received on 2004-02-01

Page template was last modified "Tue Sep 7 00:00:02 2021" The Rockbox Crew -- Privacy Policy