[Q] A70iT 250GB HDD removal/replacement

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I searched through the forum and didn't find any guides on the 250GB HDD inside the A70iT.

Without taking apart my device, if someone has already done so, I'd like to know if the drive inside has a ZIF interface, or if it's SATA, or ATA-6/7, or whatever... I'm having trouble finding this information and I'd rather not void my warranty if someone has already opened theirs up.

What I want to do is replace the HDD with an SSD at higher capacity than the currently available models (max 64gb I think??). I love the 250GB capacity, but I hate that I don't have the option to keep the drive spinning. The stock media player is the only player that has no pause between music tracks, but it's interface is not what I like. I like Mixzing, and it is now working correctly without crashing, but it has a 2-3 second pause between tracks while the drive spins up to cache the next song. I have found no settings to help this problem, unfortunately...

Any information would be most helpful. If someone has already done this and can recommend a particular drive that will work, I'd appreciate the info. If nothing else, the interface that the current drive uses would be a great start.

p.s. I use this as my car stereo.

The drive inside is a slim 2.5" 7mm Seagate Momentus Thin SATA2 drive.

http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopi...0aa742#p335625

Thank you for the info! I'm thinking of getting a Crucial RealSSD C300, model# CTFDDAA256MAG-1G1 and putting it in my archos to see if it works, can anyone offer me any kind of precautions to doing this? The drive is physically smaller, so I'll have to try to secure it once I get the thing open... I guess what I'm looking for is if the OS portion of the A70 is on a separate partition on the HDD that is inside, or if it's in a different physical space, like a chunk of internal flash. Once I get the drive and all that, I'll post pics and stuff along the way, has anyone posted a disassembly video?

Originally Posted by p0wd3r

Thank you for the info! I'm thinking of getting a Crucial RealSSD C300, model# CTFDDAA256MAG-1G1 and putting it in my archos to see if it works, can anyone offer me any kind of precautions to doing this? The drive is physically smaller, so I'll have to try to secure it once I get the thing open... I guess what I'm looking for is if the OS portion of the A70 is on a separate partition on the HDD that is inside, or if it's in a different physical space, like a chunk of internal flash. Once I get the drive and all that, I'll post pics and stuff along the way, has anyone posted a disassembly video?

Your best bet is to use Linux to do a "dd" command of the entire drive. eg:

sudo dd bs=4M if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc

Replace sdb and sdc with the correct drives for your system. Use the Disk tools to make sure you're using the right drive names.

It will still have a different drive serial, etc., but data-wise it will have the exact same filesystem as the old drive.