[TheBigDu]

Hey all,

A friend of mine got a Rio Nitrus (1.5 GB) for Christmas last year, so it's still pretty new. However, Rio's crappy 30 day warranty can't do crap for him now.

His problem is that he accidentally dropped the thing onto a semi-hard floor from a few feet up a couple of weeks ago. Now, usually when he starts it up, the thing takes forever to start up, and then runs very very slowly when on. There is clearly a problem with the HDD here.

He also asked CC how much they'd charge to fix it and they said it wasn't worth it--told him to buy a new one. Only problem is, he got this thing as a gift and it's still pretty much brand new.

Has anybody experienced this issue and can you offer some advice as to whether it is DIY repairable? Thanks very much.

-Brian

 

[Bolt San]

Since it still works and the hard drive is one of those small CF ones, I think that it may just need a good formatting.
When a rio hd based player's hd gets messed up in a few sectors, it sometimes doesn't rebuild the database that's responsible for making it smooth and fast afterwards.

Worth a shot.

 

[ian]

It's not a 30 day warranty, it's a 90 day warranty.

 

[TheBigDu]

oops, my bad, it is a 90 day warranty, but either way, it's out of warranty now

 

[Idiot MD]

First thing to try is what Bolt San suggested. A format (preferrably low level if possible) might solve your problem.

Question: Did it hit first flat on its face/back or did it land on it's sides/top/bottom?

If it landed flat, its likely that HD's magnet read heads struck the platter and either (more likely) damaged the platter or (less likely) damaged the read head. If so, the hard drive needs to be replaced. If it landed on one of the sides you might smacking it once on it's back with something relatively solid but soft so as not to damage the dap's body. It might be that the arm that the read heads are on is jammed/misaligned and a jolt might loosen it up. Do NOT do this more than once though as there is the chance of having the read heads impacting the platter and damaging as the above.

Another thing you might check, if you can disassemble the thing, is to see if the connection between the hard drive and it's controller is loose. If you can get inside you might also check the buffer memory chips to make certain none of them were damaged as well.

Unfortunately, I've never had a chance to look in side a Rio so I don't know any specifics but I hope these suggestions helped a little.