Vision:M "Hard Disk Problem"

[Chensington]

Yesterday afternoon, all of a sudden, and for no apparent reason, my trusty old Creative Zen Vision:M (now my dirty-work/backup player) wouldn't boot up normally, and always wound up going to the Recovery Mode screen.

When I was finally able to get back to my computer at home, I tried to reload the firmware, and it got stuck on the last part of it. That didn't work.

I decided then to download the MP3 Player Recovery Tool from Creative's website (which had worked for my now long-dead Nano Plus in the past) to see if that could do the trick. All that tried to do is reload the firmware, and it got stuck on the last bar or so again. So, that didn't work either.

Well, let's get to the point: When I try to format the disk, I get a message that says "Hard Disk Problem", with an exclamation graphic and all. Granted, I don't necessarily want to format the disk here, even though there isn't data on there which is crucial...the player itself isn't even crucial at this point, at least as long as my now-16GB Sansa Fuze holds up. Nevertheless, if there's any way, then I'd really love to get this thing working again. It was a big investment for me, and on top of that I am currently rendered with quite a few useless accessories, which are, as of the moment, good for absolutely nothing.

So, is the hard drive toast, or what? Obviously, this would render the player a total brick...

[CrowdAds]

[BobbyRS]

Yeah it may be. You may want to open the ZVM up just to check and see if the hard drive conector isn't loose or just needs reseated. Hopefully that is all it is. It's worth a shot.

[Chensington]

Yes, I think I'll try that next. It sputtered back to life just now, but then got frozen when it docked to the computer the second time or so, so I reset it. It then froze on rebuilding, so I reset it again. Now it just freezes up on the ZEN screen...

I did speculate earlier that it could be a loose connector...a physical problem would make more sense here.

[BobbyRS]

Yeah it does sound like a drive failing. If the connector is loose, I would consider yourself very fortunate .

[ZenChick]

If it turns out to be the hard drive itself, there's no reason to write off the ZVM as dead. As long as you have the player apart anyways, changing out the hard drive is very easy. Just take a look at the type of connector you have on your existing hard drive, and go from there. There's a great video tutorial on hard drive replacement here, and a long thread full of information such as identifying compatible drives here.

[BobbyRS]

Absolutely; no reason at all. Replacing the drive is really easy, even for the non-techie. Here is also a tutorial on how to disassemble the ZVM.

[machinestate]

thanks for this! was out of commission for 6 weeks and when i came back my zen vm would only boot to recovery mode & unable to do anything. i took it apart, dusted out the hdd, reseated the zif ribbon and board connector, and now it fires right up. been rocking this player for over five years & now i know how to replace the battery and upgrade the hdd if either go bad