Olive Musica/Symphony/Opus Hacks

dzar · Site Admin Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 9

If you ever need to replace the internal hard disk (due to failure or you wish to increase the size of the internal disk) here is what you need to know.

These instructions assume you are using an original unit that has 3.5" drives. Some newer models have 2.5" drives and I do not know if this same, general, procedure holds. I would assume so, but since I've never tested it, I cannot vouch for it.

As with everything in the Hacks section, use this at your own risk!

1) You will need an IDE (ATA, ATA/100, PATA) drive (not SATA or serial ATA). I've seen everything from 40 GB to 500 GB drives work. You can choose a larger or smaller (but why?) drive.

2) If you wish to save your current data (music) from your existing drive, you should make a backup before any further steps. While you can do this to an external USB drive (see Olive's website and manual about this) it's not recommended by me. The main reason is that what you are doing in this method is exporting the music to a single directory so you have a very likely case for file-name collision and when you do, only the last fle written is actually saved. This is a disaster for most of us and would require editing all tracks (the filename is based on track name) so that no two are the same. What you really want to do is copy the entire music directory to your PC's hard disk, external hard disk , network disk, etc. See the section on making a backup for more information on this.

3) While you might think that simply replacing the drive and running your recovery CD would set you up, again, you'd be wrong. This is one of the most nerve-racking issues for me. If your hard disk should crash (and it will given long enough) you could not even get your box running again without sending it into Olive for repair. The reason for this is that the manufacturer decided to store a sort of serial number of the disk drive in it's nonvolatile memory and check this when the machine boots. If they don't match, it simply stops and does nothing. Since I don't like being told what I can and cannot do once I buy a product, this needed to be fixed. The solution is to simply remove the serial number from memory as when that's the case, the box assumes a new install and will write the serial number from the hard disk to the memory and all is well. While there are sevaral ways you might do this, the easiest is to download the http://zandrtech.com/Hacks/hdreset.zip file, unzip it and burn a CD with the hdreset.iso file (with Nero, CD-Creator, etc.). Also be sure to have your recovery CD handy!

4) With your data stored away on another disk (or your acceptance that you will lose it all during this process) turn off your box by pressing the power button until the closing curtains tell you it's powering off.

5) Once off, unplug the cables from the back (including power) and take off the cover by removing the four screws on the sides. You will probably notice these are Torx screws and you will need a special driver to get them off.

6) With the cover off, you will see the drive is mounted to a bracket that is also mounted to the motherboard and left side of the case. Again, special screws (and different sizes). Remove them (all three) and you should be able to wiggle the drive bracket lose so you can remove the power and IDE cables.

7) Unmount the drive from the bracket (regular Phillips screws... I gues they figer if you got this far you know what you're doing and made it easier for you).

8) Install your new drive into the bracket. Be sure you have its jumpers set (or removed) so that it is set to be a master and/or single drive.

9) Screw the drive back in and the cover back on.

10) Reconnect your cables.

11) Hold the play button and press the power button. Release the power button but continue to hold the play button until you see three disks on the LCD display. This is your signal to insert your hdreset disk. This will load, reset the memory and shut down your machine.

12) After it owers down, hold down the eject button and turn the power back on, again. Keep holding eject until the CD ejects.

13) Power down, again, buy holding the power button until it turns off.

14) Hold the play button, again, while pressing the power button to boot back to the three disk screen. Now insert your recovery CD. When it asks you for your language pick one that you understand. Then when presented with what type of restore to do, select delete. This will reformat your drive and initialize everything to the state when you first got it. After the boot images and operating system files are placed on the drive (about 10 GB of fixed space) the rest of the disk is partitioned for your music. Hence, if you put in a larger drive, all the extra space will be available for your music files. This process could take a long time (up to an hour) depending on th size of your new drive.

15) Once this is complete, restart the box and you will be ready to set it up as a new machine. Hence, you will have to reset all your network settings and such. Update your software to a newer version if you wish and then...

16) Restore your music that you saved in step 2 (assuming you saved your music).

This process worked for me and this image shows my 500 GB disk (490 GB free) just before I started my restore.

firedog · Joined: 12 Jun 2007 Posts: 6

They claim larger disks cause heat problems.

Olive claims the same for any disk over 250 GB.

The Opus (which is a modified Musica) is reported to have serious heat build up issues.

Others (at the Yahoo Olive discussion group) claim that the power supply will be overloaded with a HD over 250GB.

Don't know if it is true, just passing on the info.

Danny

NZ_Friend · Joined: 12 Aug 2007 Posts: 2

Thanks for your post.

I have an Olive Musica 250GB that a friend gave me. The hard disk vibrates when the unit is on and causes a loud hum from the surface it is set on so I want to try to change the disk out.

The dive in the unit that is making all the noise is a Samsung SP2514N 250GB/7200rpm/8M/PATA drive. I purchased a new Western digital WD2500JB 250GB/8M/EIDE ATA drive as a replacement.

I note that the unit is at software version 2.3.14pro. Olive sent me recovery CD 2.1.8 and I downloaded and prepared an update disk with 2.3.8 from their website.

I set the western digital EIDE -ATA 250Gig drive to master and I installed it. I note significantly less vibration and no perceptible hum with the new drive when powered up. So far so good.

I burned the hdreset.iso image from http://zandrtech.com/Hacks/hdreset.zip to CD without troubles.

I followed the procedure “Hold the play button and press the power button. Release the power button but continue to hold the play button until you see three disks on the LCD display. This is your signal to insert your hdreset disk. “ I get the three-disk display and I inserted the image of hdreset.iso cd. However, I do not see the machine shut down after the disk load. The CD disk spins up for several minutes and then goes quite and there is no change in the display or power down from the unit. I am not sure if it has done its thing? I waited about 15min and finally powered the unit off.

Restarting and now going through the recovery procedure I see the recovery disk menu, selected delete, and receive the delete completed menu. So I believe that I am able to format the new dive. I am also able to update the software to 2.3.8 (With german menus). However, when I get to the final power up, step 15 in the instructions, all I get is the Olive live better screen there is no other response from the unit. It does not want to boot off the new disk. So my guess is that the HD reset is not running. Any suggestions?
Thanks, Jim

firedog · Joined: 12 Jun 2007 Posts: 6

Hi-

I had the same thing happen. It means the olive isn't recognizing the hdreset CD and loading it.

(Later update to original post: the hdreset.iso file linked to elsewhere in this thread doesn't work on every unit: try http://www.bergius.ch/HF/hdreset.iso.zip for an image file which is considered more compatible - it works on my Olive and the other hdreset file didn't).

If you can't get either hdreset CD to work there is a telnet hack, as outlined below:

There is a workaround using telnet - you can hack the software on your olive to load hd reset to the original drive. Reinstall your original drive in the Olive. Once you've done this hack, just load your new drive and follow the directions from there.

See instructions below that I found at the German forum after a search for "hdreset":

Tool to reset the "harddisk lock" can be downloaded here:
http://www.8ung.at/ascherrer/hdreset.tar.gz (Note: this is not the same file as the hd reset CD image, it is just the bare bones code of the hdreset. It is all you need since you are using telnet to install the file on the HD, as opposed to using CD based operating system replacement.)

The hd reset files you've downloaded from the address above can be can be extracted using WinRar for example:
www.rarlab.com

Copy the extracted file hdreset to the import folder of the Hifidelio

Select Windows START menu,
then select RUN to start an application

enter CMD to open a command prompt window

enter telnet hifidelio or telnet hifideliopro or any other name you may have given your toy. (you may need to call it by the IP it has on your network)

You're now being asked for a username & password; use root for both, this should log you into the Hifidelio

use ls (kind of DIR command) to look at files etc. , cd to change directory (folder)

ls /audio/import should show (among all files there) the file hdreset

chmod 755 /audio/import/hdreset

ls /audio/import should show (among all files there) the file hdreset, colour should have changed now

/audio/import/hdreset to run the tool, it's output should tell you everything went well.

power off hifidelio

replace harddisk

install new system using your rescue disc

update to latest firmware, and import your music, that's it.

I successfully installed a 500GB drive this way. (Western Digital 500GB 3.5 7200RPM 16MB Buffer IDE WD5000AAKB). The trick is finding a drive that makes similar power demands (especially on spin up) and gives off no more heat than the original drive.

Danny

NZ_Friend · Joined: 12 Aug 2007 Posts: 2

Firedog - Many Thanks!

Winzip extracted the binary and nice to see the original C-code there as well. I was not able to import the hdreset binary to the hard disk from CD as suggested, however, I was able to telenet in and copy the hdreset from the cd that way. I was able to reset the disk checksum! I also noted that it is critical to power off prior to exiting the telnet interface. If you don’t, it seems to grab the old HD checksum again into EEPROM.

The hdreset software reports;

Hard Disk Vendor: Samsung SP2514N
Vendor checksum : fb
EEPROM checksum: fb
Hard Disk checksum match!

Hard disk checksum resetted successfully

Interesting to note that the Samsung SP2514N drive looks like a very good choice from the Hifidelio engineering side of things. It should be very quite per the specifications, however, the one I have vibrates a lot more than the Western Digital WD2500JB. I also see WD make a AVJB model.

Thanks Again

stevemar · Joined: 12 Oct 2007 Posts: 2 Location: New York, NY

FWIW, about 6 months ago I replaced my HDD in my Musica with a 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 model (the first time I ordered I got the SATA version (of course) and had to send back for the ATA). From what I read on the german hifidelio site, it is clear that some models work and some do not - the 7200.10 fired right up. I used the hd reset image at http://zandrtech.com/Hacks/hdreset.zip and had no problems. Loaded all my 800+ CDs and I am good to go...

The one additional piece I thought I would share is on temp as this is a concern when changing out HDDs. When I was replacing the drive, I also added a small 2 probe temp guage to monitor temp inside the cabinet. While it gets warm (40s) it is never "hot" at the level that would be a problem for a HDD (at least according to the manufacturers spec). This includes when it is running at full tilt processing my FLAC files.

firedog · Joined: 12 Jun 2007 Posts: 6

Hi-

Follow up: I did have some heat issues. Solved them by removing the cover.
Anthony at Maui Mods informs me that:

"Punch some holes underneath the chassis preferable towards the front.

There is enough gap on the top cover in the rear to flow the hot air out.

This is called convection cooling.

Cool air sucks underneath, with hot air rising escaping from the top rear.
"
Haven't tried it yet.

delbert · Joined: 11 Jan 2009 Posts: 3

Tip.

The cover uses hex screws. I stripped one by using a TORX driver. Sears sells a set of assorted tamper proof driver bits that will remove the cover and fit the other specialty fasteners in the Musica.
_________________
Olive Musica

delbert · Joined: 11 Jan 2009 Posts: 3

Firedog,

You said you had heat issues with the Western Digital drive. Did drilling holes in the bottom of the Musica resolve the heat issue? Have you had long term success with this drive?

firedog · Joined: 12 Jun 2007 Posts: 6

I solved the heat issues by leaving the cover slightly open.

I later had some problems with the power supply, I don't know if they were related to the HD or not.

The European Hifidelio (which is a Musica) is now available in a 500GB model. I'd try and find out what drive is in it, and get that one. In any case I'd use the HD with the lowest power usage I can find (both spin up and read/write).

Danny

delbert · Joined: 11 Jan 2009 Posts: 3

Unfortunately, it did not work out well. I installed the WD drive identical to yours with the jumper set at master. I burned a cd with hdreset.iso file. The Musica successfully reset and reloaded the recovery software. I made my settings and transferred 3 cd's. The Musica played well for about 5 or 10 minutes and then began repeating a song segment. When I tried to stop it, the Musica froze.

I tore things apart and tried again with the WD jumper off - which is the setting for a single drive and consistent with the original drive jumper being removed. Repeated the process and played the Musica for about 15 minutes before it froze again.

I replaced my original drive. It's playing now. We'll see if it continues. I may search for a 260 GB drive. Keep up the useful posts. I went to the Hifedelio site and found nothing bigger than a 160 GB model.
_________________
Olive Musica

firedog · Joined: 12 Jun 2007 Posts: 6

http://www.ciao.de/Hermstedt_Hifidelio_Pro__2113866

http://www.qualityhifi.nl/Februari_2009/HiFidelio_Pro_500_.html

http://www.roe-hifi.de/product_info.php/info/p2690_Hifidelio-Pro-500-Musikserver-Schwarz.html

http://www.preisroboter.de/ergebnis709062.html

http://www.hifidelio.nl/product.php?xProd=29

If you can find out what HD this one uses, it would probably be the best way to go. The company told me the rest of the unit is identical to the 160 GB units