Greetings!

Well, I have finished uploading my CDs to the empeg, and I have almost filled it. I now have about 9GB to spare.

Some random thoughts on the drives:

1) The IBM 48GBs seem louder. Noticably so. But it is not loud enough to be of any problem in a listening environment.

2) The drives seem to run at about the same temperature, or maybe a little hotter. I have not noticed any significant problems from that. As a comparison, 2 IBM 20s gave me a temperature of around 26-30C. The 2 48s are about 33C. Your milage may vary, and the temperatures are based on the displayserver readings as running in my cube at work.

3) I had only one sync problem in total. This was a stage 10 error, and I attribute it to load on my computer as opposed to the empeg. I did another sync and everything was fine. No other sync problems at all.

4) Database load time is noticable at startup. I guess that is to be expected... :)

5) I hope this becomes an option at Rio / empeg as the high end disk configuration soon. Sourcing may still be an issue, but the drives are becoming more common.

6) Physically, the drives are a little higher (12.5mm) than the 20s that were originally installed (9.5mm), but well within the range of the player.

7) I have not noticed any problems with the spindle requiring washers.

If I notice any problems, I will post them here. Thanks!

Paul G.
SN# 090000587 (96GB Smoke)