Replacing HD on H10 20GB...

[heretic11]

I accidentally reformatted my iRiver and am being told there is no way to get the system files recovered. So I found this HD on eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=190379509990.

I need to know if when I get this HD it will already have the system files on it. I also wanted to know how you get the HD off? I see 4 star screws on the iRiver so I'm assuming that is how it comes off? Does anyone know? Thanks

[CrowdAds]

[heretic11]

Also will that HD work with my iRiver?

[aarons510]

If all you did is reformat the drive, you probably just need to re-install the firmware. (It's really an operating system, but it's conventionally called "firmware", so I'll stick with that and save my stubbornness for more important matters.)

You can check out whether your drive is good by trying to start it up in forced UMS mode. The following instructions are from the Rockbox manual for this player:

1. Ensure the player is fully powered on by using a pin to push the small reset button inside the hole between the Hold switch and remote control connector. [FYI, You can do the same on the 5G/6G models by sliding the battery out a bit and back in. -- Aaron]
2. Connect your H10 to the computer using the data cable.
3. Hold Select and push Power to turn the player on.
4. Continue holding Select until the USB Connected screen appears.
5. The player will now appear as a regular disk on your computer.

The entire manual can be found at:
http://download.rockbox.org/release/3.5/rockbox-iriverh10-3.5.pdf

Whether or not the player shows up as a mounted drive, look for it with your system's equivalent of the Mac's Disk Utility. If it's not formatted with FAT32 and with the Master Boot Record partition map, reformat it that way.

Here's iriver's page for H10 MTP firmware, v. 2.51:
http://www.iriverinc.com/lounge/loungeView.asp?sno=739
This is for MTP players only, but I don't think iriver ever made a UMS/MSC version of the 20GB H10 or, if they did, it was probably not sold in the U.S. or Europe.

Unfortunately, the installer requires a Windoze machine, so, if like me, you don't have easy access to one, you may be able to get a copy of the installed System folder from someone and copy it to your hard disk when it's connected in UMS mode.

You should also check out the Rockbox firmware for the H10. It's usual to install it "on top of" the original iriver firmware (OF), but it may work without it, as long as you create a top-level "System" folder for the H10.mi4 file. But you won't be able to start up in the iriver firmware (by holding down the left arrow button when powering on).