I was getting a "no hard disk found" error frequently after upgrading to 2.0 beta 11. I didn't know if it was related to the new beta, but thought it could be a possibity since I never before got that problem. Then I thought perhaps it was a faulty hard drive cable, so I replaced it with one sent to me from the empeg guys, but still the problem persisted. By the way, I have dual Fujitsu 30 GB drives. Only one of the drives makes a clicking noise when trying to boot up and simply won't, even with the new cable inserted. It would boot fine every 1 in 5 or 6 tries. But then when I put the cover back on, etc, the problem would come back before long.

Frustrated, I decided to drop back to version 1.03 as a last ditch effort.

Amazingly, ever since I dropped back to 1.03 I have had no problems. I don't know why the new beta would affect boot up, but so far that is the only thing that makes sense.

If anyone has any information regarding this, I would love to know a possible reason for all this craziness!

accully ive messed with jumper settings and it seemed to work great ever since then.., i was at the point where both my drives woundlt boot.. but just switched them from master to slave and the worked fine since.. i dunno whats up with them, and i dont think it has anything to do with beta 11, becuase i got the same problem with 1.03, and when i was doing it i couldnt even upgrade the drives

so did you just move the jumper setting little plastic thingy from one to the other in the same position? Was there any other work involved? Because I tried doing that, but maybe there was a special setting with the jumpers I should have done.

Bumping this to the top because this morning again my empeg wouldn't start in my car. I left it in there all night, after it was working all yesterday, but my underground garage shouldn't be too cold for the empeg to make the drive not start up. The hard drive just clicks over and over and the unit freezes at the boot logo.

This is really frustrating, I don't know how one day it can be working, I leave it in the car, and then the next morning it doesn't work.

Sorry to inform you, but it is 99.9% likely that your Fujitsu drives will always act this way. It is not the Empeg software, drive cable, or drive master/slave configuration. I am not sure what Empeg is willing to do, but I will tell you what I did.

I bought 2 IBM Travelstar 30GB drives and replaced the Fujitsus with them. I then RMA'd the Fujitsus just to make sure I get drives that work like they're supposed to (I am not sure what damage letting the drive motors click for 10 minutes every couple days did). When I get back the Fujitsus, one will go toward upgrading my laptop and the other will be sold on eBay.

If you add new IBM Travelstar drives to the empeg, do you have to do any speical kind of configuring, formatting to them, or can you just throw them in the empeg, boot up, and add songs? Sorry for the lame question, I never have dealt with laptop drives before.

You load the Empeg Hard Drive Builder image onto the Empeg found here. You should read through Tony's hard drive upgrade guide before doing the swap. The whole process is outlined in great detail.

if you must add new drives you have to run the builder image. once you get the drive or drives in and run it on each drive

http://www.empeg.com/downloads/car2-builder-20011022.upgrade

darn it you beat me rob

Does anyone know if the fujitsu drives are exactly the same length as IBM drives or other brands?

One thing that I've noticed on my empeg is that the cable lifts at the motherboard connector resulting in the dreaded 'No hard disk' condition. It only unseats 1mm or so, but it is enough. I've also noticed that the tension on the IDE cable when replacing the HD carriage into the unit is enough to unseat the connector, and I suspect that the carriage bouncing on the anti-vibration mounts might also be enough to create this tension. The only possibility that I can think of that this could be fujitsu-related is if the fujitsu drives are a couple of mm longer than others, or if the IDE connector on the fujitsu drives are a couple of mm higher than other drives.

Your suggestion is interesting but the dimensions are nearly identical. Your drive cable may be unique since there is a good amount of slack on mine.

Fujitsu specs
IBM specs

Just got the replacement drives from Fujitsu. They are brand new. RMA took a about 2 weeks and drives were sent back via FedEx ground from Hillsboro, OR.

Since I sent my drives out UPS ground, and they came back FedEx ground I assume they didn't even test the old ones before sending me new ones.