I've been around the ssi neo35 world for two years, and finally got five 60 gig empeg rio cars. I think the only advantage to the neo 35 is that it is a regular fat32 hard drive that can be seen in windows with a fast IDE interface to transfer files.

From reading the faq and other posts, it says that I have to use the emplode software utility to upload the files to the empeg. I understand that I have to only upload like 1 gig at a time just in case something happens. So say I finally get my 50 gigs of mp3s on my 60 gig empeg. Using a notebook 2.5" to 3.5" HD adapter, Is there any way I can just ghost the two hard drives to the other player's hard drives? Then I can save the pain of uploading via USB for 30 hours to 4 more empegs. Will this work? or say I were to buy two 40 or 48 gig laptop drives to upgrade the space, can I ghost my two 30gig drives without any problems? Just trying to save some time. I'm afraid that by the time I upload all my mp3s to the player, I'll be too old and gray to listen to my music.

Thanks for your replies,
Darwin

Sorry i'm not answering your question... but did you say FIVE 60 gigs? Mind if i ask why so many?!

Due to the way the empeg stores the MP3s, you're going to have to upload all the MP3s through emplode the first time.

However, once you get the MP3s setup on one empeg, you can use the clone tool that comes with empeg to ghost the other 4 60GB empegs.

thanks, that's what I wanted to know. I'll look into that imaging tool.

Yes, 5 units. 1 for me, 1 for my mom, 1 for my dad, and 2 for my friends. Sounds funny, huh? My parents are really into mp3s. They both have neo 35s in their cars, and my dad even has a neo 45 in his office at work. With the neo35's it was always easy to sych them up in windows explorer. We all have identical hard drives with the same file/directory structure.

I see some familiar faces that used to be on the funmp3players forum like hybrid8. i'm sure i'll be seeing more of you ex-neo35 users.

Hahah, that's awesome. I think it's more amazing that you'd all want the same music on the drive than it is that you have that many. Interesting!

There may be some problems with the clone tool ... if so, you could do the "copying" part of the "Drive Upgrade" procedure over at RioCar.org.... Just a thought if you run into a hickup.

That's true. I suppose if they're all 60GB empegs that he could just ghost them.

But, I bet the empeg guys get the clone tool fixed pretty soon, seeing as how so many people bought empegs recently.

Using utilites like Norton Ghost and Drive Image is not recommended with the empeg/Rio car player.

The player uses a careful scheme of partitions on the hard disk which, if you used something like Ghost, might not get duplicated exactly. The player might seem to work just fine until the day that you choose to install a software upgrade. At that point, the upgrader will attempt to overwrite the player software partition completely. And if Ghost didn't lay down those partitions exactly right, then the whole thing will go kablooey and require a complete bare-metal format using the Builder utility.

At least that's the way I remember it. If the Empeg guys have any comments on the above paragraph, I'd like to hear them.

I don't know if you realized this (did someone else mention it in the thread?), but there is a utility that comes with Emplode called EmpegClone that will clone one player to another with USB cables, perhaps you could use that? It's not the fastest thing in the world, but as long as you do it from lower serial numbers to higher serial numbers (and you use the 1.03 version), it should work fine.

If EmpegClone takes too long for you, there is another option. If you look at the Drive Upgrade Guide and get comfortable with what's going on in there, you can see the procedure to transfer all of the FID files from one disk drive to another. If you have a linux PC, you can do it by plugging the drives into the PC with adapter cables (but you need to know how to properly mount the drives under Linux). If you do not have a Linux PC, you can do it with the drives plugged into the player. I don't recommend this because to do five players it would be a hassle, and it's not super-fast either (although faster than USB cloning).

Hmm, or you could install Mark Lord's kernels onto the players and do a MirrorDir over ethernet, as he describes here.

Wow, if that works, that would be pretty slick.

One thing to keep in mind is that the empeg IDE bus sits on an ISA bus. Opening the units and breaking the warranty might not be worth it considering it will probably still take 10 hours to copy 50 gigs of files. (Based off the time it took for me to copy 25 gigs from one drive to the other a few days back)

Darwin can use clone tool as it is, by making sure that the 'master' empeg is the one with the lowest serial number (and probably sticking to 1.03 SW for the moment).

Oops, should read the complete threads before responding, otherwise I will keep repeating what Tony has already said

Yeah, what he said....

Opening the units and breaking the warranty might not be worth it

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Going about it with ghost software would implie removing the Hd's from your Riocars and using them in a PC, which would mean breaking all the warranty seals and thus voiding your warranty. Not worth it to obtain a speed gain of maybe double that over ethernet IMO.

Thanks for everyone's reply, I'll try to keep it safe and just use the clone tools over ethernet while I sleep at night. My normal job here at work is to deploy our desktops or to wipeout and reinstall all basic data when an employee leaves or fills their computer with a virus, so I'm really used to using imaging tools like ghost.

I noticed the post about cloning to a higher serial number, what's up with this? Is this a bug, hopefully fixed with the next version? Sounds a little strange to only work one way.

Thanks for your replies again, I'll let you know how it goes.

I'll try to keep it safe and just use the clone tools over ethernet while I sleep at night.

The EmpegClone utiilty is USB-only, but if you're running it overnight, then it's no big deal. The other option is to use Mark Lord's FTP kernel features to copy all the FIDs from one player to another, but that's more complicated.

Note that if you use the EmpegClone utility, the current Beta version doesn't work very well, so you should use version 1.03 final to do the cloning (meaning the players should be at 1.03 final as well).

I noticed the post about cloning to a higher serial number, what's up with this? Is this a bug, hopefully fixed with the next version?

It's not a bug, however it will be fixed in the next version anyway.

The clone tool was originally written for Mk1->Mk2 upgraders only. But if you're getting five units in a row, then you just make sure to load the music onto the lowest one first, and use it as the source for all the clones.

Note that you'll want to get the tags right on all of the files before starting this whole process and before sending any of the files to the first player. (See the FAQ for more details.)