Largest empeg.

Posted by: jbauer

Largest empeg. - 08/06/2006 21:38

So now that the perpendiculous hard drives are rolling, has anyone given them a shot?

http://www.betanews.com/article/Seagate_Mobile_Hard_Drive_Hits_160GB/1118244284

I'm still at 120GB with two 60s, but I'm out of space and constantly struggling to find something that I can part with so that I can keep current in my music! I need MORE.

Who has the biggest? Wait... um... that doesn't sound right.

- Jon
-----
I know I don't have the biggest, I'm Jewish. (this is a joke, don't get upset)
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Largest empeg. - 08/06/2006 21:44

Brainfart. Paul G, 2x100. At last report he passed on the 2x120GB drive upgrade.

It's too bad Seagate's moved to SATA for the really cool new ones, like

Seagate has launched three new families of notebook hard drive under the Momentus monicker. The most radical drive is the hybrid Momentus 5400 PSD (Power-Saving Drive) which adds 256MB of Flash memory to a 5,400rpm SATA300 2.5 inch hard drive.
Posted by: eliceo

Re: Largest empeg. - 08/06/2006 21:59

I have 2 80s in my main empeg . 160gb is still plenty for me.
Posted by: pgrzelak

Re: Largest empeg. - 08/06/2006 22:08

I am still cruising along at 200GB. I keep getting tempted by the 160s, but I still have space and cannot justify the cost of upgrading my players.

There is also a 200GB laptop drive announced from Toshiba - SATA...
Posted by: Robotic

Re: Largest empeg. - 08/06/2006 22:17

I haven't finished filling up the 110GB that my two 60s have given me.
It's gonna be a while before I need anything bigger.
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 08/06/2006 22:27

Hm. Looks like 100s can be bought for about 120 each... Anyone wanna buy 2 60s? I'm pretty sure they are IBM Travelstars, but I'd have to double check that...

- Jon
Posted by: matthew_k

Re: Largest empeg. - 08/06/2006 22:29

I'd be interested in theory. But I'm not willing to pay much, as the 120's sound a lot more attractive.

Matthew
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 08/06/2006 22:35

Quote:
I'd be interested in theory. But I'm not willing to pay much, as the 120's sound a lot more attractive.

Matthew


What do you recon is a fair price? I found this: http://tinyurl.com/nnh9m

Maybe it's not worth buying these. Might as well get the 100s...

- Jon
Posted by: TankheaD

Re: Largest empeg. - 09/06/2006 18:50

Finally put a single 120 giger in, hitachi 4200 rpm which is already mostly full. Cost me about $150 plus shipping.
Posted by: hybrid8

Re: Largest empeg. - 11/06/2006 01:41

I've got a Seagate Momentus 100GB and a 30GB drive (which I can't remember the brand of - I recall I had an incompatibility with one of the two 30GB drives I had and can't remember which I kept).

I have a lot of free space though I have a bunch of music sitting on an external drive somewhere that I haven't sent up to the empeg - 100% due to lack of time to futz with tags, syncing and organizing. I don't know if I'll upgrade the empeg again - it all depends on how full it gets and how soon that happens. I don't plan to get rid of my current empeg nor my spare, but I don't know if I'd (be able to) install either in a new car in a couple of years.

I'm planning to get a large capacity NAS box, so I may just flash one of the empegs with the receiver software as well as pick up a newer Squeezebox (though I'd love something with an optional TV-Out display).

Bruno
Posted by: ithoughti

Re: Largest empeg. - 14/06/2006 21:47

Quote:
Hm. Looks like 100s can be bought for about 120 each... Anyone wanna buy 2 60s? I'm pretty sure they are IBM Travelstars, but I'd have to double check that...

- Jon


I'm interested in both. How much do you want for them?
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 15/06/2006 01:14

Quote:
I'm interested in both. How much do you want for them?


Not sure. I put em on Craigslist and had an offer of $100. Do you think they are worth $120?

- Jon
Posted by: ithoughti

Re: Largest empeg. - 15/06/2006 14:54

Quote:
Quote:
I'm interested in both. How much do you want for them?


Not sure. I put em on Craigslist and had an offer of $100. Do you think they are worth $120?

- Jon


I dunno, probably. $100 is probably my limit right now though. thanks anyway.
Posted by: Robotic

Re: Largest empeg. - 23/06/2006 18:45

Quote:
Quote:
I'm interested in both. How much do you want for them?


Not sure. I put em on Craigslist and had an offer of $100. Do you think they are worth $120?

- Jon

I hate to be a spoil-sport (or maybe I love it) but there are Seagate 60GB drives on sale at Fry's for $100
About a year ago I bought two 60GB drives from two different people on Craigslist and paid only $60 for each (used).
Memory isn't a good investment, it seems!
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 23/06/2006 18:59

So two for $120 is a pretty good deal...

- Jon
Posted by: Robotic

Re: Largest empeg. - 23/06/2006 19:10

LOL! Sorry Jon- I was thinking of a 'per unit' price.
Dummy me.

I give your price a 'two thumbs up' review!
Posted by: Daria

Re: Largest empeg. - 24/06/2006 03:49

Quote:
I am still cruising along at 200GB. I keep getting tempted by the 160s, but I still have space and cannot justify the cost of upgrading my players.


Mine's at 200 now (for several months, actually), so it's good to know I caught up to Paul, finally
Posted by: pgrzelak

Re: Largest empeg. - 24/06/2006 15:31

You rang???

The 160s are just soooo tempting... 200s are planned from Toshiba, but they are SATA...
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 26/06/2006 04:48

Quote:
You rang???

The 160s are just soooo tempting... 200s are planned from Toshiba, but they are SATA...


Which one are you looking at? I want to get 2, but not sure which ones to get...

Can I use 2 160s in a stock empeg Mark II?

- Thanx
- Jon
Posted by: pgrzelak

Re: Largest empeg. - 26/06/2006 08:05

I was personally looking at the Seagate Momentus class 160GB drives (ST9160821A) because they were the first ones out there, but there are competitors out there now. Just be careful to get Parallel-ATA if you want it to work in the empeg with no additional interfaces / adapters. Froogle is showing them averaging between $220 -> $250 each. (newegg has them for $225 each...)

You should be able to run two in an empeg with no additional tampering. Although you will likely have to build them manually and probably need to run hijack as well.

They have come down a lot in price, but I cannot justify the upgrade right now... (Four players x two drivers per player...)
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 26/06/2006 14:41

I think the 160 demands a premium that I'm not willing to pay right now. Am thinking of ordering 2 of these: Western Digital Scorpio Seems like the best deal (cheapest price) for 120gb drives... Although, I'm having trouble searching for compatible drives on Pricewatch... What do y'all use for a search term? I'm trying "120gb ata-6"...

Anyone have experience with these or any other comments before I order?

- Thanx
- Jon
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 26/06/2006 19:13

Please help! I wanna order em!

- Jon
Posted by: pgrzelak

Re: Largest empeg. - 26/06/2006 19:23

Uh. Sorry. I saw the post, but I have never used those drives in the past. They should work - they are P-ATA, they have all the right characteristics. I have not seen much better of a price, even with a quick Froogle search. Usually, I would find specific part numbers / model numbers that I know would work and throw that into Froogle. I have not really used pricewatch much for this kind of thing.

I would say give it a shot.
Posted by: matthew_k

Re: Largest empeg. - 26/06/2006 19:27

Looks fine to me, except that it's out of stock. The Samsung is five bucks more, shouldn't break the bank. You'll have to build them by hand, but that's the case for all the large drives. Hard drives are pretty much commodity items, especially for the empeg where speed doesn't make a difference.

Matthew
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 26/06/2006 19:38

Don't you have to go through this with all new hard drives and the empeg? http://www.riocar.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Drive_Upgrade&file=index

- Jon
Posted by: matthew_k

Re: Largest empeg. - 26/06/2006 20:00

Those are the instructions using the disk builder image. You'll need to do most of what the disk builder image does by hand. There are instructions for doing it, I'm not sure where.

Matthew
Posted by: pgrzelak

Re: Largest empeg. - 26/06/2006 20:31

The instructions for partitioning and formatting a new drive are linked.
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 26/06/2006 20:37

Thanks for posting those. I went through the disk builder thing last time and I didn't know that I could just do those procedures...

- Thanx
- Jon
Posted by: spider

Re: Largest empeg. - 26/06/2006 22:16

I was going to buy a 160, you see them going on ebay for $200 usd new. i was just worried about a 137 limit or is that a windows thing. How long ago did these 160 come out, i find it odd that no one here has one already.
Posted by: mlord

Re: Largest empeg. - 26/06/2006 23:19

Quote:
I was going to buy a 160, you see them going on ebay for $200 usd new. i was just worried about a 137 limit or is that a windows thing. How long ago did these 160 come out, i find it odd that no one here has one already.


The Hijack kernels should cope with the 137GB "limit" just fine, but the stock player kernels (including the builder image) may not work so well..
Posted by: Garrett

Re: Largest empeg. - 28/06/2006 01:52

Yea - I have a new 160 drive and it's crippled to 137.

Anyone know of a workaround (ext3 maybe?) and a dynamic partitioning app available that can bump the discbuilder partition up to the full 160?
Posted by: pgrzelak

Re: Largest empeg. - 28/06/2006 08:15

Are you running hijack and did you build the drive manually?
Posted by: mlord

Re: Largest empeg. - 28/06/2006 09:55

Yeah, the trick is to do the disk-install steps manually, under a Hijack kernel, rather than using the limited builder image.

Someday.. someday..
Posted by: pgrzelak

Re: Largest empeg. - 28/06/2006 11:41

To be honest, I like the manual way as opposed to the builder. I like being able to set up either extra partitions or larger swap areas. Plus the instructions from Roger are more optimized than the original builder's method.
Posted by: Garrett

Re: Largest empeg. - 29/06/2006 03:51

Yea - I tried the discbuilder, it failed as expected and I built the disc via roger's steps. I'm guessing I missed something?

Is there any way to resize the partitions?
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Largest empeg. - 29/06/2006 04:18

Quote:
I built the disc via roger's steps. I'm guessing I missed something?

Hm. I don't think that anywhere in the hard disk upgrade guide, nor in Roger's instructions, does it get super-specific and tell you that you must be running a recent Hijack kernel for large disk support to work properly.

I'm not certain that it's necessary, I'm fuzzy on whether the fully bugfixed version of the large disk support code made it into 2.0 final or not. I remember Mark submitting it to them close to the end of 2.0 beta, but I also remember mark needing to make an update to that code and I don't know if the update made it into the final 2.0.

In any case, the one thing I could imagine going wrong is if you were using a standard kernel instead of the Hijack kernel when you tried to partition and format the disk.

I'm going to update the Disk Upgrade Guide with this information now, I think.
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 30/06/2006 15:19

Hi All,

Got my 2 new drives today. Got the WD1200VEs. Installed and am using http://www.differentpla.net/node/199 and have completed it.

What about the 2nd drive? This procedure and this one: http://www.differentpla.net/node/200 seem to set up one drive. I have two...

How do I setup the 2nd new drive?

- Thanx
- Jon
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 30/06/2006 15:27

Actually, I'm getting lots of errors when doing this http://www.differentpla.net/node/200

After issuing the "mount -n /dev/hdc4 /drive1" command, I'm getting lots of these errors:

end_request: I/O error, dev 03:44 (hdb), sector 62128128
EXT2-fs error (device ide0(3,68)): read_block_bitmap: Cannot read block bitmap -
block_group = 237, block_bitmap = 7766016
hdb: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error }
hdb: read_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=63385549, sector=6317
6704
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:44 (hdb), sector 63176704
EXT2-fs error (device ide0(3,68)): read_block_bitmap: Cannot read block bitmap -
block_group = 241, block_bitmap = 7897088

Are those just bad sectors?

- Thanx
- Jon
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Largest empeg. - 30/06/2006 16:52

Quote:
How do I setup the 2nd new drive?

The procedure looks like it assumes you've got a working drive0 (primary) and the one you're formatting is drive1 (secondary).

So just plug the second new drive in the same spot and do the procedure a second time.
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Largest empeg. - 30/06/2006 16:59

They are not just bad sectors. Those would be invisibly remapped by the drive, as I understand it. Those are errors that are getting back to the empeg. I'd check your cables and header. If it's not one of those, it's almost definitely the drive. You could check to see if you get similar errors with the other drive you said you have to set up.
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 30/06/2006 17:48

On one of the drives, I am getting this at the end of the partition procedure:

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hdc: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 5 40131 5 Extended
/dev/hdc2 6 10 40162+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc3 11 13 24097+ 10 OPUS
/dev/hdc4 14 14593 117113850 83 Linux
/dev/hdc5 1 3 24034+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc6 4 5 16033+ 82 Linux swap

Command (m for help): w
hdb: read_intr: status=0x59
hdb: read_intr: error=0x01
hdb: read_intr: status=0x59
hdb: read_intr: error=0x01
hdb: read_intr: status=0x59
hdb: read_intr: error=0x01
hdb: read_intr: status=0x59
hdb: read_intr: error=0x01
ide0: reset: success
hdb: read_intr: status=0x59
hdb: read_intr: error=0x01
hdb: read_intr: status=0x59
hdb: read_intr: error=0x01
hdb: read_intr: status=0x59
hdb: read_intr: error=0x01
hdb: read_intr: status=0x59
hdb: read_intr: error=0x01
ide0: reset: success
hdb: read_intr: status=0x59
hdb: read_intr: error=0x01
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:40 (hdb), sector 48194

Unable to write /dev/hdc
empeg:/empeg/bin#

The other drive worked fine. Does this smell like a defective drive? Is there a way to be sure and wipe out the drive before starting the procedure so that I can be sure it's clean?

- Thanx
- Jon
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Largest empeg. - 30/06/2006 18:25

It sounds defective to me, but I'll let people more expert at IDE stuff confirm.
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 30/06/2006 18:27

Quote:
It sounds defective to me, but I'll let people more expert at IDE stuff confirm.


Yeah, since one works flawlessly and the other doesn't, I'm doing an RMA. Thanks!

- Jon
Posted by: Roger

Re: Largest empeg. - 01/07/2006 08:57

Quote:
Hm. I don't think that ... in Roger's instructions, does it get super-specific and tell you that you must be running a recent Hijack kernel for large disk support to work properly.


Does now.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Largest empeg. - 01/07/2006 18:15

Quote:
Does now.

Excellent!!!!

A couple additional things you might want to make more clear in your instructions. This is just a suggestion, but there were a couple things that tripped up Jon when he tried it.

1. Clarify what you mean by "I'm going to assume that you've got the empeg's disk available as /dev/hdc.". Jon and I weren't entirely certain what you meant by that, since "hdc" doesn't necessarily mean anything to non-linux people. It was further confused by the fact that Hijack reported errors on HDB, due to the Mk1/Mk2 hdb/hdc compatibility trickery the kernel is performing.

I think what you were trying to say, there, was something more like: "This procedure assumes that you already have a working primary disk drive (hda) with the empeg software installed on it, and that the new drive you want to partition and format is in the secondary drive spot (hdc) with the slave jumper installed. This procedure partitions and formats whatever is plugged in as the secondary drive."

2. Clarify at the end where you say "The steps so far have prepared the disk only for holding music. If you're planning on using the disk as the primary disk in your empeg, you'll need to install a player image once you've fitted it."

Perhaps it might be worth it to say that installing a player image on the drive requires that the drive be swapped into the primary spot by changing the jumpers. And that installing a player image will erase Hijack, which will need to be reinstalled again for the large disk support.
Posted by: Roger

Re: Largest empeg. - 01/07/2006 18:22

Quote:
A couple additional things


OK. I'll look at those when I've sobered up (just watched England fail to win the World Cup again). If I don't remember, PM me.
Posted by: mlord

Re: Largest empeg. - 02/07/2006 00:47

Okay, I am putting together an updated builder image now. So far, I've replaced the kernel with Hijack, and turned on swap during the upgrade. What else needs to be different?

I suppose I can read through Roger's detailed guide and try to find out, but..

Once the final (tested?) version is complete, I'll likely provide the binary on (email) request, and otherwise publish a script to patch an original (copyrighted) builder image.

Cheers
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Largest empeg. - 02/07/2006 18:17

Quote:
Okay, I am putting together an updated builder image now

Awesome.

Question: How much code is there actually in the builder image? Or perhaps more specifically: How much code would have to be added to a standard Hijack kernel to make disk partitioning formatting a built-in feature available from its knob menu? Just wondering. Is partitioning and formatting something that requires a lot of large non-kernel functions?
Posted by: Roger

Re: Largest empeg. - 02/07/2006 20:56

Quote:
make disk partitioning formatting a built-in feature available from its knob menu?


Whoa. Bad idea. Imagine attempting to select Breakout, and hitting the button just as you drive over a bump.

I humbly submit that the builder image is a special one-off, and should be kept somewhere safe.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Largest empeg. - 02/07/2006 21:24

I'm sure he could make it really really difficult to select accidentally.

Anyway, it'd be nice if there were a way to make an updated builder image as easily available as the current builder image: No emailing, no scripts to merge builders, etc.

Is there anything in the current builder that's so copyrighted that it can't be redistributed by Mark? What if you just took Mark's builder and put it on the Empeg.com site?
Posted by: mlord

Re: Largest empeg. - 03/07/2006 01:09

Disk partitioning would be a near-trivial add-on for Hijack. But the "formatting" part is much much bigger -- I'd have to include the mkfs.ext3 binary (executable) inside the kernel, and it wouldn't fit in the available flash memory space (unfortunately).

Best left as a separate image (heartily agreeing with Roger).

Anyway, I have an image with Hijack+swap, just wonder what else needed tweaking. How about the mkfs.ext3 options?

Cheers
Posted by: spider

Re: Largest empeg. - 06/07/2006 16:28

think I'll hold out for the 1.46 TB 2.5 inch drive.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/arti...urce=rss_news50
Posted by: jbauer

Re: Largest empeg. - 06/07/2006 22:52

240GB installed. Thanks to Tony for the upgrade coaching, Roger for the guides, and Matt for buying my old drives...

- Jon