«
»

How to replace an broken harddrive in an gen6 unit with original firmware

Apr 21st, 2010 at 13:09

I’ve seen several cases where people report in to Archos related forums with an broken hard-drive. In most cases the firmware is Archos original, so it won’t accept a new hard-drive. You can install the firmware but it will refuse to boot…
Archos will replace the hard-drive on most of their units for a fee. There are some constraints though. As far as I know they will only replace it with identical capacity drives and it takes time to send the device in.

Today Archosfans user peterq finally confirmed unwittingly what I was suspecting all along:
If your original hard-drive failed you can swap the hard-drive yourself and get an working unit also with AVOS by then installing the SDE and subsequently flashing our Boot-Menu!
This comes also with some drawback: if your device is still covered by an Archos granted warranty then this is void. There is no way to hack the boot-loader to enable full write to flash – but besides for an custom boot logo, what would you need that for?

Also you will need to create the hidden partition yourself and populate it with the contents of an Archos firmware upgrade file. But that sure should still beat not having your Archos for a month, right?

To sum up. Good news for all Archos5 and Archos7 owners if their hard-drive ever dies!

If you have some time on your hands to play around: Please send in your guide how to create an hidden partition from scratch on an gen6 device. I might prepare another post on how to create the hidden partition from scratch myself, but that is very low on my priority list unless someone wants to motivate me buy “buying me a beer or two”. ;)

UPDATE: Problem solved! See peterq’s answer to my suggestion. All you need to do is to install an regular firmware first (don’t worry that it doesn’t boot!) and then proceed with the regular guide to installing the boot menu.

PS: I suspect this will also work on gen7, Archos5IT units but don’t have it confirmed.

Tags: archos5, archos7, avos, , hdd, hdd-lock, menu, , replace, , swap

In gen6, gen7. You can leave a response, or trackback from your site.

One Response to “How to replace an broken harddrive in an gen6 unit with original firmware”

  1. Tweets that mention How to replace an broken harddrive in an gen6 unit with original firmware: I’ve seen several cases where people re... -- Topsy.com says:
    2010-04-21 at 14:42

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Archos Info. Archos Info said: How to replace an broken harddrive in an gen6 unit with original firmware: I’ve seen several cases where people re… http://bit.ly/bb6MOP [...]

    Reply