Hi,,

My Vision 30G PMP was defect. I need to replace 30G HDD, but i can’t start the PMP due to no (OS / firmware inside). any one have the OS / firmware image ?

africamyall@yahoo.com
Many Thanks…. :)

I just returned from holiday and will start with the process of finding a replacement HDD for my Vision W. As I mentioned before, CDW has the 80Gb HDD and they were waiting to get the 100Gb drive in. If they don’t have the 100 by now I’ll go with the 80. I think the OS lives on the HDD. I replaced the drive in my Zen Xtra, was a 40 is now an 80. I had to download the latest version of the OS to get it running so I suspect the same will be true of the Vision W. Stay tuned for the latest as news breaks…

To Dan

hows the hard drive upgrade?

thx

I ordered the Toshiba 80Gb drive from CDW. It was around $195 or so. It hasn’t come in yet but should be here any day now. I’ll post more as soon as anything happens. tc, thanks for asking.

Dan

It has been almost a month now and I have used that microsoft upgrade to see if that would work i’ve tried all the usb ports i have i’ve taken out and put back in the battery -> and i am still having trouble getting my computer to reconize my creative vison W someone please help me this is very frustrating, i am running windows xp media edition and my computer gets new security upgrades almost weekly so if there is anything that i can do to fix this problem please tell me

Zeus, I had a similar problem with my Nomad Jukebox Xtra. It turned out that one of the XP updates made it so that XP won’t recognize the Zen Xtra and there was nothing I could do except run Win200. This may be a similar problem.

80Gb upgrade update……The drive is on backorder!

Dan

A few comments:

1 – Own the 60 gig model, really would recommend it over the 30, the price difference isnt considerable and it’s always nice to minimize the amount of juggling back and forth of files. Fair play to whoever posted the steps for opening/swapping drives but to be honest my experience to date with these sorts of things is that you can end up owning something less than…well…stable after the process.

2 – RE The case/stand that Creative Labs sell. Got it, a must if you’re travelling with the thing but rather poor build quality. It’s like the thing wasn’t exactly built for the W, have to almost squeeze the unit into it. Originally thought I might have messed up and got the ‘M’ model…but nope, just not great. Unless you need one, wouldn’t bother.

3 – RE DivX 6 movies not playing. Yeah, huge annoyance really, every divx file past the 5x standard needs to be converted to .wmv (supplied software does it) which is time consuming and results in unnecessary duplicates of your files. If you are converting your own then Divx converter lets you work with any of their codecs, simply install the 5x one and everything works perfectly. If you are downloading movies etc pre-encoded…then you’re out of luck. Problem is the Zen is not Divx certified so I dont know if they’ll be able to release a firmware upgrade that sorts it…but fingers crossed.

RP

RP,

Thanks for sharing those details!

John

Hey guys – I’ve got the creative zen 30gig and I’m gonna return it and buy the zen w 60 gig, but I was looking at the archos 160 gig – any advice / comparisons ?
also – a buddy of mine found out that the compact flash pinouts are identical to IDE and he’s built a solid state computer which boots from a compact flash card plugged into the standard IDE cable with an adapter. I think this would work in reverse as well which would allow a hard drive to be plugged into the cf port !!! ??? here’s the link to the adapter – (could be modified to work)….

http://www.acscontrol.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=ACS&Product_Code=ACS-CF-IDEToCFA-SFF&Category_Code=COMPACT_FLASH

I’m sorry for being rather pushy but is there any news on changing the HDD???
My brother is visiting from France soon and I need to know whether it works or not to see if I should tell him to get me a disk.

MusikMonk…no problem. I just got the drive last night. It should be installed in the next day or two, I’ll post progress when it’s in.

Dan

OK, the swap wasn’t too bad thanks to the Man! His instructions above are pretty good. I did have to trim the blue rubber shock mount case a bit because the case on the Toshiba is slightly different but that wasn’t too bad. There is also a “clamp” on the ZIF connector that clamps the ribbon cable down. Don’t forget to open the old one before you try to remove the cable and lock down the new one after you have it together and before you put the tape back on. Be careful of the VERY small screws, if you drop one you might as well tell it goodbye because you’ll never find it. I tried to fire it up and….yep, low battery! And no charger, doh! More later, stay tuned.

Dan

OK, I had to reload the firmware but it appears as if everything is working great and I now have a working Vision W again with more memory. I don’t expect quite the battery life as the old drive was 4200rpm and the new one is 5400rpm. I’ll just have to see how it goes.

I use mine mostly for video. I hate to use that nice display on music. For that I have a Zen Xtra with an 80Gb drive.

Good luck to anyone attempting the swap.

Dan

Dan,

Thanks so much for reporting back on the progress! I’m very glad to hear that the process went well.

Just one question… After you did the physical swap of the drive, can you elaborate a bit on what you saw when you tried to power the device back on and how you re-installed the firmware?

Thanks,

John

John,
No problem. I hope this helps the next person with a bad drive. Before I started I kept getting an error message “Disk Drive Problem” and there was nothing I could do to get it back, not even a reformat.

Keep in mind you need some version of the firmware on your computer. I downloaded the latest version from the Creative site.

Connect the Vision W with the USB cable to your computer and turn it on.

After the swap the screen said “Firmware Problem” for about one second and then went directly into the diagnostic screen. The menu there has several options, Reload, Reboot, Format, etc… I just scrolled down to Relaod Firmware and hit OK (the center of the scroll button). It takes a few seconds to sync, etc and then it askes to start the firmware upgrade. I just double click on the firmware download on my computer and it autostarts. After that it’s just a matter of waiting until it’s loaded. Of course the date and time needs to be reset and all my settings were lost but that’s because this was a new drive, my old one crashed so I lost everything on it.

I hope this is waht you were looking for.

Dan

That was exactly what we were all looking for! Thanks for being the guinea pig, and I’m glad that my initial theory held up in practice. :-) Man, would I have felt bad if it had failed…

John

That’s awesome!!! Thanks for keeping us posted!
One last question. Does the hard-disk failure a common problem with Hitachi’s drives?? I don’t want to pay much so I was planning to get another Hitachi instead of a Toshiba but it occurred to me now that I don’t want to risk having this problem again..

John, I really didn’t have much choice since the old drive was dead. If it didn’t work I would have had a very nice little external drive. And Creative wanted $25 just to tell me what I already knew, it didn’t work.

MusikMonk, It’s my impression that the Hitachi is very popular with small MP3 players/game machines/etc… I suppose you have to expect some failures with that many out there. In looking for a replacement I came across people that didn’t like the Travelstar drive because they do seem to fail. So I decided to go with the Toshiba, it looks like a very rugged drive from what I found on the web. I don’t know if going with another Travelstar would have been bad but I decided to just go for it. And I don’t have a wife to tell me NO! Good luck either way.

Dan

First, this is a great blog, many thanks to The Man.

Second, I received a 30GB W from my wife and kids as a Father’s Day/college graduation present. The threat of drive failure has me concerned. For those of you who have experienced a failed drive, how long did the original drive last? Should I consider getting the extended warranty?

Thanks

Eknigmah,

Although we have heard stories of drive failure, the VAST majority of us have not had problems. So, I wouldn’t be overly concerned with this issue.

As long as you maintain copies of the content on your main computer then even if there is a drive failure you’ll be covered. And luckily, thanks to Dan, we now know exactly how to replace the drive if you ever need to!

John

I’m happy to report that after a few days of loading movies and playing them I have no problems. I even have the cordless remote and it works great.

Eknigmah, i wouldn’t get the extended warranty either. They are rarely worth it.

Dan

Hi,
First: let me say this blog is a great resource.

Second: I want to buy a Zen vision W, but I’m not sure to buy the 30 or 60 GB version. But after hearing that Dan was able to successfully install replace his defective 30 GB HD with a 80 GB, I think I’ll get the 30 GB and just upgrade it to 80/100 GB. I thought I can save some money buying a new 30 GB Zen Vision W, or slightly used model. Any thoughts/opinions?

Third: On June 18, Abe Froman wrote they’re might be a possibility of connecting an IDE HD to the Zen vision W’s CF slot via converter/adapter. Is that a real possibility? Has anyone tried OR is there anyone willing to try? Because that would make upgrading the HD unnecessary.

Thanks in advance
-Octelnet

Octelnet,

Thanks for the compliment. :-)

Since Dan has proven the theory correct I see no reason not to do the same thing… in fact, I’ve just had a potential offer of a drive from a reader who may be sending me a drive to test and document the process fully. If that happens I’ll update everyone here and put up a new post.

As far as connecting an external drive via the CF slot, I don’t think anyone has tried it, but I see two problems with that. First, it’s too big and bulky. Second, it’s going to go through battery life like crazy!

Take care,

John

Dan – Can you tell us what impact this had (if any) on battery life?

Thanks!
Rich

John P,
You’re right about the external drive to the CF slot. The bulky & battery life issue would be “deal breakers”. I never thought of it that way.

The only potential PRO I can see is not having to connect the device to a PC in order to transfer files, but having a big enough HD lessens the need to that.

I will wait to see if the price on the vision w 30 GB to drop a little before buying it.

Does any one think the release of the IPHONE will have an affect on the price/availability of the Zen vision w?

I’m speculating that owners of Zen vision-w’s will sell their devices to buy the IPHONE; OR CREATIVE might lower the price of their devices to compete. (Sorry if I’m going a little off topic)

Thanks in advance
Octelnet