I’ve got a great little (is it little any more - guess not!) Creative Zen Ipod Competitor and recently I managed to drop it just one more time. This time I dropped it on a nice hard tile floor.
I got bad sectors on the disk and the audio kept skipping and stopping. Sometimes the player will just lock up and die.
Being the natural born curious (and overly bold) hacker that I am, I removed the hard drive and connected it via an adapter to my computer.
I used Spinrite from Gibson Research to fully test it and mark off the bad sectors. All righty then bad sectors marked off and the rest of the drive checks out perfect.
I re-assembled my Zen and went through their re-initialization process (from the Creative Labs support website).
How long will this work? Probably until it gets it’s next big shock or drop.
I know one thing for sure that I will NOT buy another portable player that is hard drive/disk based. This is a major factor and should be considered by parents when selecting an IPOD or other portable MP3 device for their children. Even big kids like me should probably think twice about fast moving rotating delicate mechanical stuff inside something that probably will get dropped.
Zen X-FI? Arcos? Ipod? We will see and I’ll tell you all about it.
Popularity: 16% [?]
Welcome back! You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. I am happy to research all technical questions - Just contact me. Thanks for visiting!
Related posts:
- How I get 2000+ New MP3 Songs / Music Downloaded Into iTunes Every Day For Free The answer is LAST.FM , LASTRIPPER and STATIONRIPPER. Free MP3...
November 25th, 2008 at 12:48 am
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Kaylee
December 18th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Where did you get the adaptor for the hard drive? I recently broke my Zen just after backing up a whole load of stuff to it but it’s not a standard 2.5″ HD connection, it’s a mini one and I’m desperate to find an adaptor to get the stuff back off it!!
Thanks
Chris
December 18th, 2008 at 8:42 am
I got it at a huge electronics and computer supply place last time I was in Bangkok. It’s 5 floors of computer nirvana.
They had two kinds. The one I bought connected it to USB. It was surplus and cost me about $10.
It looks like you are in Amsterdam so I am not sure where to tell you to go. In the USA, you could get something like this at a Fryes Electronics or somewhere similar.