I read this somewhere, but I completely forget what the official answer was.

My reservation number is coming up and now I'm considering buying the unit.

If I buy, say, the 6Gb unit and later I decide I want more space, can I add a drive myself? I'm Linux savvy so I'm more concerned with things like warranty, support, and possibility.


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Shawn Poulson
spoulson@bigfoot.com

In a word: NO.

Empeg says that the unit is so tightly constructed that unless you are very experienced with the proper tools, the physical installation will be very difficult and the likelihood of damaging the unit quite high. Also, you open up the case, you lose your warranty.

I don't find empeg's policy in this matter to be unreasonable.... The trick is to figure out the absolute largest unit you think you could ever need or afford - and then buy the next size bigger.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

You don't need any special tools. You'll just void the warranty. It's just a 2.5 form factor laptop drive.

It's not *that* hard, but there are both liability and possible damage concerns with upgrading the hard drive yourself, which is why we don't allow it with the warranty intact.

You'll need to get a suitable 2.5" drive cable, and some countersunk M3 screws (as short as possible). Avoid the 60v PSU along the top of the display board though :)

Hugo

Would you need to install a small fan above the hard drives if you installed a second one? The holes look like someone thought about putting one there...
Another question: It was said that the 17mm Hard Drives (eg. IBM 25 GB) would be too high to fit in, but if I measure the space above the installed drive it looks like there are about 20mm left from the top of the drive to the top cover of the unit. I have not opened the unit yet, so there might be something else in between I cannot see...
Last question: one would probably need to partition the drive in another computer or with the help of the developer image to create and format the hdc4 partition? Are there any other steps to take for the capacity to be available for music?

Sorry for asking questions in such a direct manner, but I'm working for a computer company and we buy hard drives directly from the distributors :-)

Thanks,
Felix

17mm is too tall: it'll just fit, but there's no room for the drives to vibrate in the shock mountings.

Partitions: for a second drive and the maximum space, partition it as *all* hdc4 (well, 4th partition as the only partition) then mke2fs it from the developer image. A "genuine" drive has 32m, 32m, 16m, then "rest of disk" as the 4 partitions, all linux ext2fs type (0x83?) - you'll need this if you're replacing the primary disk: with this format, upgrade files will apply to the new disk cleanly, so you can apply developer then exit to shell and mke2fs the new hda4 partition.

When mke2fs'ing, use -m 0 to reserve 0% for the superuser, as this isn't really needed :)

Hugo

Might want to update http://www2.empeg.com/tech.html

It says:
HDD ports: 2 ATA 2.5" HDD standard 2MM headers on main board HDD bays accept 17mm,
12.7mm or 8mm standard laptop drives with corner mounting screws.