OK so last night on my way home the disk in my mkIIa decided it was going to be 'problematic'. At first I got the dreaded "No disk found Contact support." No worries, I've seen this before just remove and re-insert the player. Got the boot image good, waiting, waiting, waiting. The player was frozen.

I repeated this 3 or 4 times. Suddenly the tell tale clicking of a drive arm that was having difficulties leaving the landing zone was clearly audible .

Through some persistence and a few more inserts the drive eventually came back for the ride home. I haven't tried to power it on yet today (saved by the spare player .)

I think it fairly obvious that I need a new drive. I was looking at this drive as quick replacement. Anyone have any issues with this one?

Been through the Drive Upgrade Guide a few times and I'm pretty comfortable with what's involved. Now given the volatility of the original drive I don't think I'll chance trying to copy the data off of it as I backup my player via rsync everytime I make major changes.

Now if I put the config.ini and the rsync binary back I assume that I can just rsync the fids back down after the disk is prepared and the software installed - right? Then just sync via emplode and I'm ready to rock?

Fair enough. In the past I have fixed the No Drive found error by opening the player and inspecting/reseating the IDE cable. This was the first time I've heard the "clicking" coming from the drive though.

I'll open it up and see what I can find. I'll probably use the far IDE connector just to make sure.

Thanks Tony

Make sure to check all the other things on that list, too.

I had exactly the same symtoms this morning, I could hear the hards drives spun up but got the No Hard Disc Found message, boot log gave errors for both drives, on opening the player, I found that the IDE connector into the primary disc was slightly off being seated correctly, slightly off by only approx 1mm at one end, fully seated at the other. Luckily that was all the problem was and everything works now.

Mark.

All seems well again! Basically the middle connector on the ribbon was pulling apart. Since I only have one drive I just switched to the second connector. No problems as of yet.

Guess I'll just order another cable from Stu.

Thanks

Good deal. Using the end connector for a single drive setup also reduces stress on the IDE header because the cable has more slack to it.