FoggyLog

Sat Dec 23rd 2006 22:43:04: Harddrive Replacement in Creative Zen Micro

I was discussing with some guys at work my experience of fixing Ant's IPod Shuffle (the flash had got currupted and needed reseting with this) at work the other day. I was then asked if I'd have a go at fixing a Creative Zen Micro that had been dropped. The symptoms were that it was dead. It would make a wirr-ing noise, and that was about it.

Taking it apart was fairly easy with help from this and I decided to try replacing the Hard Drive with a CF card (the electrical interface is the same). This has brought the device back to life and I now get a recovery mode. Unfortunately it seems a CF card is not suitable however, as I get a "hard disk problem" error when I try and format the drive in the mp3 player.

After a bit of searching I found this forum. It seems not all CF cards can be put into "true ATA mode" like a hard drive can. Therefore at the moment I've not managed to fix this Zen Micro, despite trying all the CF cards I own. Seems I need to do some more research and find a CF card that does have ATA mode....

UPDATE 6/1/07: I've now tried some more CF cards and also a 2Gb Micro drive and I still can't get it to work. The Microdrive doesn't give any "Hard Drive Problem" errors, however it doesn't seem to want to reload the Firmware via USB - the process just hangs. I don't know why I can't anything to work - I can understand that the Zen wouldn't like a CF card, however I don't know why the hard drive didn't work. Anyway I've now given up trying to fix this one!

UPDATE 21/1/07: If you are interested in replacing the hard drive in a Creative Zen Xtra, then take a look at this posting

Comments (5) | Permanent Link

"Hi,good!

Comment by Ahmedi at 15:53 on Tue 26 December 2006

I HAVE ACESS TO THE FORMATTING MENU BUT IT DOESN´T FORMATT.DO YOU THINK THAT´S CHEAPER TO BY A NEW ONE INSTEAD OF SENDING IT TO CREATIVE ?

THANKS

RUI

Comment by rui nogueira at 19:03 on Sun 18 March 2007

Hi Rui,

I don't know how much Creative charge for repairs, so I can't say. If the hard drive is dead, then it's probably not cost effective to repair (that's what I found anyway).

Gary

Comment by Gary at 14:15 on Wed 21 March 2007

I'm pretty certain that I saw this on the Nomadness forum; they had the same problem but noted that some CF cards worked alright (Transcend rings a bell but check that site to confirm). I'm going to be trying this myself soon!

Comment by dd at 6:26 on Sat 22 November 2008

While I have a Zen Micro I want to attempt to do this on (as late as it is) I'm sure that similarly to my iPods only CF Cards that can be booted as an internal hard drive will work rather than typical Removable Drives.

Comment by Matt at 17:12 on Mon 14 January 2019

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