Hard Disk Upgrade/Swap on C15

[surf123]

It's 500GB. I was thinking about the SSD route. I have a 256GB one that I am going to try two different ways:
1. Put it in as is and see if the C15 will auto-format it.
2. Copy the the original to a larger drive, resize the larger partition to 225GB, and then copy both partitions to the 256GB SSD. The size is not what I need, but it will give me an idea of whether or not it is a good idea. I have heard there are issues with green drives and possibly SSD's. I can try it out to see how it works and if there are any issues.

The fallback will be the 1.0TB or 1.5TB drive.

I've scoured the internet and cannot find anyone who has even attempted swapping the drives. The number of Sooloos owners is limited do to the entry point and reduced even more when you try to find tinkerers. On the Meridian Unplugged website you are quickly reprimanded if you even discuss opening the case or about swapping or backing up drives in the C15 or MC200. The admin says he is protecting Meridian's IP, and that all service needs to go through a Meridian dealer.

[Kingsrule]

That size makes sense as I was looking at a C10 drive years ago, not a C15
I'll bet the C10 only has 1 partition and would be conducive to a relatively small SSD. I wonder if the sonics would improve with an SSD in my C10.....

[surf123]

I have C10 as well and will be opening it up shortly to see the insides and if it has a hard disk I will be attempting to swap it with an SSD.

[Kingsrule]

Goodmorning

Looking forward to your C10 results

[surf123]

Dropped an unformatted 64GB SSD into my C15 and it did not boot. My theory about the drives auto-formatting at startup has been shot down. Looking back on it I probably should have left it in for 20 minutes or so to see if it was formatting the disk. At power up the only sign of life was a flashing underscore character about halfway down the screen.

[Kingsrule]

Probably should format the drive to a single NTFS volume before you try to have Sooloos format it

[surf123]

I made some progress tonight. Backed up both partitions and restored them to a larger disk. The C15 booted up and displayed all of music. More testing is in order, but this is promising. I burned up most of the day trying different scenarios.

The next move is to expand the size of the Data partition and see if the increase is recognized.

[surf123]

Follow up:
Sooloos runs on the Windows platform. The install is a stripped down version of what looks like Windows XP. I have not taken the time to look through the file system for files that would confirm this, but that does not matter for the purposes of this exercise. The Sooloos software and ripped music are stored on a single hard disk consisting of two NTFS partitions:

ControlFifteen:8GB containing the Windows OS with custom drivers for the touchscreen.
Media: Consists of three folders (log, share, and tmp). The ripped music and metadata are stored in the share folder.

I ran three experiments:
1. Fail: Insert a blank unformatted disk into the Sooloos and see if it auto formats. It does not.

2. Success: Backup and restore my original disk to another disk with both partitions sized identically as the original disk.

3. Success: Backup and restore my original disk to another disk with a large Media partition.

My next test will be restore the ControlFifteen partition and then create a Media partition with the three folders to see if that will work. The goal of this test is to downsize the partition so that it will fit on a 64GB SSD that I have available. If that does not work I will try reducing the partition size before restoring it.

I also might try inserting a disk containing to NTFS partitions to see if it will autoload and install the OS.

What you will need to repeat this exercise:
-One hard drive (same size or larger).
-Partitioning Software (unlike Windows it can non-descructibly expand and reduce partition sizes). I used Paragon Hard Disk Manager 12 Suite from Paragon software. There are many other products that can do this.
-An external hard drive case or a device that allows you just to connect the drive via USB without inserting it into the case.

A word of caution on using any partitioning software...be careful as you can inadvertently modify your systems disk if you are not paying attention. This is definitely the case if you have a drive with more than one partition or multiple disks in your computer.

If you had two external hard drives connections you could copy straight from the old to new while at the same time expanding the Media partition. If not, you will need to backup the partition data to your computers storage (internal or external) and then restore from those files.

Getting to the Drive:
There are two screws on a door on the bottom of the unit that have to be removed. They are near the edge of the removable door. There are 4 more screws on the door, but you don't need to remove these as they hold the drive to the door. After the door is off disconnect the SATA data and power cables.

You then can connect it to your PC or Mac to and browse both volumes. I would be very careful not to modify anything until you have a working copy of your original. Also, when you connect the drive to Windows it will try and scan the files. I would not allow this happen by canceling the scan of both partitions upon connecting them. There is a lot of detective work left to do in terms of directly swapping artwork and figuring out the file storage logic on the Media volume. I hope to get to that soon.

I always will be researching swapping the drive out on a C10 with an SSD, which will quiet it down. What I don't know is if SSD's are suitable for this type of use.

[Kingsrule]

Thanks for the update

Wouldn't a HD duplicator make this process easier and foolproof?

[surf123]

Originally Posted by g997

Thanks for the update

Wouldn't a HD duplicator make this process easier and foolproof?

Yes, but not everyone has access to one and it would only get you the same amount of storage. To date there is not any information on the Internet outlining how to do this. There is a website dedicated to Meridian products (meridian-unplugged), but discussing anything like this is strictly forbidden.

The purpose of the exercise was threefold:

1. Find out what OS Sooloos uses.
2. Create a backup of my current installation.
3. Increase the amount of storage.

Had the answer to #1 been anything other than OSX, Windows, or UNIX #2 and #3 would have been extremely difficult to perform. The duplicator would have worked in this case, as would software such as dd in UNIX that can perform exact copies of drives.

It is also important to note that by creating a copy of your disk you will have a backup and will be able to replace the hard disk with a new one or an SSD. If this was not possible then you would be at the mercy of dealer and/or Meridian and I am certain their 500GB drives are crazy money.

The drive in my C15 is 3+ years old and I am not willing to game the MTBF of it, considering it has been running for 3+ years without a break.