Hi !
As my warranty gets closer to its end, i start thinking about opening my empeg ...
The task would be to replace the 4 GByte HD with a 12 GByte IBM 2.5" Drive.
I long for info, how to do this, and the only thing i found was a tutorial how to add a second drive ...
How would you exchange the HD with first copying ALL of the data of the original HD ?
Is there a faq or tutorial for it ?

Thank you: Nils

#123

I've never done this before, but I have a few things to offer up:

1) If you do this, don't use a program like "ghost" or "partition magic" to perform the transfer from one drive to another. One user did this, and the starting sectors of the partitions ended up in places that the Empeg software didn't expect them to be. It's better to use Empeg's tools or the linux software on the Empeg to get the job done.

2) Why would you want to ditch the 4gb drive? What would you do with it if you removed it? Do you have a laptop waiting for it or something? I'd keep the 4 and just add the 12 for a total of 16.

3) Part of the process of installing my second drive involved installing the first drive as if it were the only drive in the unit. I fully formatted it and installed a full copy of the 10a software onto it. It's a fully bootable drive right now, even though it's currently being used as the secondary drive. It was ridiculously easy, and I didn't even use the Linux command-line to do it. I'm guessing that you'd want to do the same thing, and then, using the developer image, copy the necessary song and database files from HDA to HDC. A relatively simple process, I'd bet, if you know what folders to copy (Mike will probably jump in here and fill you in).

So how did I get my second drive formatted without resorting to the Linux command-line? I've been meaning to report this on the BBS, but forgot. So I'll talk about it here.

Mike Crowe at Empeg has an image file that allows you to format a newly-installed disk. It's what they use internally at Empeg to format new drives. When I requested it, he sent me the file with some instructions. It worked perfectly, but it's not one of those things that he's ready to make publicly available because it has the capability of wiping out the existing drive if you don't remove it first.

Here's how it worked for me:

- I made sure that I had a working terminal program that could connect to the Empeg and communicate via the serial port. Part of the procedure involved watching messages scroll by in the terminal window, and I needed to be ready for it.

- Using the instructions at dmoore.com, I opened the player and removed the first disk drive (which was connected to the first IDE port). I unplugged it from the IDE port and set it in a safe place. This is the critical step that makes sure I won't format my original drive.

- I connected the second (new) drive to the first IDE connector that the first drive had been previously plugged into. At this point, only the new drive is plugged into the Empeg.

- I opened up the Empeg Upgrade Tool and fed it Mike's disk formatter upgrade file. This installs a special kernel that will immediately begin formatting the drive once it's done installing.

- After the Upgrade installed, the Empeg rebooted and began formatting its disk. I ran my terminal program to watch the text messages scroll by, reporting on the progress.

- When the formatting was done, the text messages indicated that it was running a hard disk stress-test in a continuous loop. I let that run for a while, and when I was satisified, I rebooted the Empeg.

- With the new disk drive still connected to the first IDE port, I installed the consumer 10a image. Now the disk drive is a fully bootable disk drive with the 10a image on it, but no songs yet.

- I moved the new drive to the second IDE connector, re-installed the first drive and re-assembled the unit, using the instructions at dmoore.com. Now there are two fully bootable disk drives in the unit, one of them full of my songs, and the other one with no songs. The Empeg boots and detects both drives, and Emplode shows the new capacity.

That's all I needed to do since I intended to keep using both drives. But to make the second drive the first drive, it would be the same procedure plus adding these steps at the end:

- Install the Developer 10a image to the Empeg.

- Connect to the Empeg with a terminal program.

- Q to get the shell prompt, RWM to mount the drives read-write.

- Copy the necessary song and database files to the new hard disk (Mike, fill in the details here, please?).

- Remove the first drive, and move the new drive to the first IDE connector. The unit might say "rebuilding music databases" or something for a while. After that, it's done.

I'm not certain that the playlists will transfer properly to the new drive. Mike, would that procedure also get the playlists properly transferred? Is this about the right procedure?

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

Ahh that sounds fine !!!

Now i would need 2 more things:

-1- that "init" image
-2- Instructions which files to copy to clone my music to the new HD

Thank you: Nils

You also need a second laptop-sized IDE cable so that you can have both drives connected to the Empeg at the same time. If you aren't going to keep two drives permanently installed, then it doesn't have to be one of the short ones (which I've heard other people say they've had trouble locating), it can be a long one.

For the image file, you can ask Mike (really nicely, though, he's reluctant to release it because it's the software equivalent of a loaded gun). For the files to copy, hang around and see if anyone replies to this thread. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?


Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

1) If you do this, don't use a program like "ghost" or "partition magic" to perform the transfer from one drive to another. One user did this, and the starting sectors of the partitions ended up in places that the Empeg software didn't expect them to be. It's better to use Empeg's tools or the linux software on the Empeg to get the job done.

---

(ahem) I guess that user would be me, but for the record, along with altman's help I was able to recover my music partition.. Here's how I would do it if I had to do it over:

Stick the new drive in by itself; run the above mentioned software, or (i thought emplode did this as well?) the emplode upgrade to setup the partitions.

Stick the old drive in as the second drive

RWM the drives; (you might have to manually read/write mount them using the mount command - for me the second drive didn't auto-mount using the rwm command - look at the instructions for adding second drive for how to do this in detail)

copy the music directory and file id's to the new drive using

cp -v /drive1/var /drive0/var

cp -v /drive1/fids /drive0/fids

Am I missing anything? Only problem is you still need a second drive cable to do it this way. Also, you don't actually need the -v parameter, but it's helpful to make sure the empeg is actually copying.
-mark

...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

copy the music directory and file id's to the new drive using
cp -v /drive1/var /drive0/var
cp -v /drive1/fids /drive0/fids

Ah, thanks. There you go, then. Those are the commands to copy the music files from one drive to another. Does this also get the playlists copied, or does everything end up in "Unattached Items" after this?

(i thought emplode did this as well?) the emplode upgrade to setup the partitions.

Emplode won't upgrade or set up your partitions for you. That's a separate program. And the EmepgUpgrade program won't format your partitions, either, unless you feed it a special file. This special file is the one that you'd need to specifically request from Mike.

The other option is to follow the instructions at Dmoore.com and use the Linux command prompt to partition and format the second drive. I just found it easier to use Mike's special upgrade file because I didn't need to worry about typing the commands correctly.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

Ah, thanks. There you go, then. Those are the commands to copy the music files from one drive to another. Does this also get the playlists copied, or does everything end up in "Unattached Items" after this?

---

Yep - the playlists are actually stored as the odd numbered files (i.e. 1001) - and the music "rebuliding music database" apparantly sorts though these files on both drives and creates a master music database based on this.
-mark

...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

Yup, by now i figured that out ...
I asked mike how to get my hands on that image file via email, no response yet, i think he's busy :-)
I succesfully installed mulinux on two disks, attached the empeg HD to my PC and booted mulinux from disk.
After that i was able to mount my FAT32 Disk and the empeg partition containing the good stuff ...
So i was able to backup all files to my PC, used ID3Renamer ->
Voila a nice Folder with nice named, nice tagged mp3 files :)

Now i just have to wait for my 12 Gig drive ...

Nils

P.S. Thanks for all that help, only the image is missing now ...

So i was able to backup all files to my PC, used ID3Renamer -> Voila a nice Folder with nice named, nice tagged mp3 files :)

Cool. So you don't even need to hook the 4-gig and 12-gig drives into the same machine together any more. You can just run Mike's image file on the thing and have a fresh, blank 12-gig drive waiting to upload the songs via the USB cable.

You never said what you were planning on doing with the leftover 4-gig drive, though?

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

> Yep - the playlists are actually stored as the odd numbered files (i.e. 1001)

I thought playlists were in *0 files, just like tunes, and that it was only the info tags that were in the *1 files.

Richard.

To rjov :
Yes the odd numbered files only contain info, sorry for the misunderstanding ...

To tfabris:
Yes it is cool, because i HAD a cable to connect 2.5 HD -> 40 pin IDE, and now i do not need the 44 pin - 44 pin cable ...

The 4 Gig Drive is for my girlfriends' elderly Pentium 120 Notebook, that uses DriveSpace on a 850 MB HD right now, which is a pain in the b*tt ...

:-)

Nils

P.S. when talking about a backup on a FAT partition:
( If you have a SPARE HD, then of course format it to ext2, no problem, but i had a used partition of a 20gig HD that i used for backup )
The fliename-lenght of DOS ( 8.3 ) in no problem for the music files, the only things that give trouble are:

-1- the file "playlists" will be named "playlist", so after copying back you have to rename it, EASY

-2- you have to change backe the chmod of all files to rw-r--r-- , because Linux sees FAT32 Files as rwxrwxrwx ...
( I don't know if this is really neccesary ( but doubt that ), but to go safe you should do that ) EASY

Mike is working to some very demanding deadlines at the moment. Within empeg he doesn't have any obligations to customer support, and ordinarily I would take care of getting the builder image to you - but I'm at home with bronchitis at the moment so I can't.

If you don't get the file today then try emailing daniel@empeg.com and explain that you need the disk builder file. He should be able to sort it out for you.

Rob

'sok Rob, I went ahead and sent him the file with a copy of Mike's instructions. His 12-gig disk arrived today and he asked me for it via e-mail.

Rock on, Mike!

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

Hi !

Happy Happy Joy Joy !!

It worked exactly like i assumed before ...

-1- connecting the original drive to my PC, booting the mulinux floppy ( available from www.mulinux.com ), that gives you a mini-linux.

-2- Mounting the right partitions: PC-Partion with enough free space ( mount -n /dev/hda5 /mnt/pc in MY case), Linux empeg Partion ( mount -n /dev/hdc4 /mnt/empeg in MY case )

-3- Backup of original files : cp /mnt/empeg/* /mnt/pc

-4- disconnecting of the empeg drive from the PC, connecting fresh HD to the empeg unit.

-5- Using the empeg upgrader to upload the "disk builder" image to the empeg & run the empeg -> HD will be partioned & prepared so that it acts like a brand new empeg unit after all that ( thx to tfabris & daniel for sending me images !! )

-6- connecting the new drive to the PC, booting mulinux & copying the backup files to the new HD, do a chmod 644 ./* on all of the files in var & fids, renaming "playlist" to "playlists".

-7- finally putting the empeg unit together with the new HD as only unit.

YAHOOOOOOOO

without database rebuild or whatever the unit works exactly like the old HD, everythings like normal, only i got 8 GByte free space :-)

I used a IBM Travelstar ( DARA ) 12 GByte which costed me 505 DM w/o VAT ( 250 Euro )

Thats it !
Only Hardware to buy: An adapter for connecting 2.5 " drives to normal IDE cable, cost about 5-10 Euro in many shops unlike the strange 44 pin cable, i even borrowed mine from a friend, so additional costs = 0 !!!!


Nils

P.S. just be careful when doing things please, dont loose your head :-)