The Rio SuperKarma... sorta

[br0adband]

Someone over at Riovolution posted about this a few days ago, and I just made a decision earlier tonight to go get a Rio Karma long after I know I should have bought one when they first came out. But take a look at this one:

Rio SuperKarma, the iPod Destroyer

My god, I hope if I do get a Karma soon I can someday upgrade it like that. Simply amazing. Anyone care to loan me the cost? I'll pay high interest on the loan... j/k

bb

 

[brian183]

I've been meaning to do this to my karma but my X5 has been doing an excellent job so far.

 

[seeberg]

Well, the last time I checked, it'd be about $170 for the 60GB drive, which I would try my best to install myself, which would requre precision dremeling, or recasting of the back plate (I'm thinking polishable non-magnetic metal here). As nice as 60GB's would be for size (That's way more than I'd need on a portable player, that's for sure), I'd rather get a far, far more reliable version of the existing drive, if such a thing were available- perhaps if Hitachi adopts the technology of perpendicular drives for their 1.8" Travelstar series (and retains the shape of the drive and the connector used) this will become a welcome reality, that and if a third party made firmware for the Karma, but that seems to be more of a definite impossiblity. Whatever the case, I definitely won't attempt anything until at least February if my budget allows and something goes wrong with my Karma's hard drive.

,
Abe

 

[br0adband]

After waiting so long (basically for various reasons dealing with my so-called real life) to get a Karma, I'm Jonesing pretty hard right now hoping to get one soon. I'm moving to Colorado in a few weeks so it would really come in handy on the trip - definitely an improvement over this Rio Cali I have for most stuff. Kinda miss my iPod mini 1st gen but, hey, I traded it for a ThinkPad and I know I came out ahead on the deal.

From what I've read just in the past few hours at Riovolution.com, it seems the 40GB drive is a direct replacement for the 20GB - same size, etc. and might even use less battery power than the stock 20GB so... I might consider the swap sometime. I have a lot of catching up to do, but I don't think I'll be disappointed in the Karma once I get one finally.

bb

 

[seeberg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by br0adband From what I've read just in the past few hours at Riovolution.com, it seems the 40GB drive is a direct replacement for the 20GB - same size, etc. and might even use less battery power than the stock 20GB so... I might consider the swap sometime. I have a lot of catching up to do, but I don't think I'll be disappointed in the Karma once I get one finally. bb

Hmmm, can you link what you've read at riovolution? I'm suddenly quite interested in the prospect of a direct fit 40GB drive that is superior in function to the original if the price is right. Did it say anywhere that the 40GB drive had the same overall thickness as the 20GB drive? If so, I may put this near the top of my list of things to upgrade.

,
Abe

 

[br0adband]

Ackk... my booboo. The 40GB drive is somewhat thicker, to the tune of about 2.5mm than the 20GB so people that I've read about used a Dremel tool to "gouge out" some plastic inside the back cover of the Karma to fit the 40GB drive in - pretty much everyone that tried it was successful at the upgrade from what I've been reading.

It's the 30GB drive that is exactly the same size as the 20GB stock drive. The product number listed for the 30GB is HTC426030G7AT00, it's a Hitachi 30GB 7mm high drive. But it seems Hitachi decided to one up themselves recently by shrinking it even more and created the Travelstar C4K60 Slim which comes in at a nifty 5mm in height - that's even smaller than the original 20GB at 7mm.

So, a few upgrade options exist: get a 30GB 5mm and have some breathing room or get the 30GBm 7mm and have an exact size replacement. The 40GB and 60GB models are two platter drives (each) so they're stuck at 9.5mm for now. I doubt any major shrinkage is going to happen anytime soon unless Hitachi finds a way to create a single platter 40GB model; the 60GB I doubt is feasible in the 5 or 7mm variety.

The 30GB "Slim" one seems to be tough to find, however. All I kept locating was the standard 7mm drive. One thing that I did notice was that of the handful of people that had upgraded to the 30GB (and even the 40GB and 60GB for those brave souls that Dremeled out a lot of plastic in the back case cover) all stated the upgraded Karma(s) worked much faster when it came to transferring music to and from the new(er) drives. That's a definite plus, of course.

It would be pretty nice to see this on the Karma though, wouldn't it:

As far as the battery life issue goes, all the Hitachi documentation I can find points to a 10-20% power requirement reduction for all the current generation of C4K drives, sooooo... I would assume that means yes, using one of these new(er) drives should definitely translate into somewhat longer battery life. But you know what they say about assumptions.

If I get a Karma (and I'm on the constant lookout, I almost have enough money in the checking account to get one from Amazon right now this second but I'm a few bucks short), I'll definitely be looking to get a 30GB replacement if for no other reason than improved operation speed and possibly longer battery life while keeping the original 20GB drive as a backup.

If I get any more updated info I'll keep you posted.
bb

 

[gsferrari]

If I do this...I want to do it along with a few other blokes so that I dont ****** up my beautiful Karma. I dont want another DAP and too bad they dont make this monster anymore...

I'm watching this thread with keen interest...my Karma is still chugging along like new...but I wanna be ready in case something happens to the HDD..

 

[no1likesme]

when my hdd on my karma finally dies (hopefully in a long time) i will go with the thinner drive because i think that the tight fit of the drive in the case is partially to blame for the lockups so a thinner drive would hopefully stop this (although my hdd hasnt locked up in 3 months or so

)

 

[catachresis]

I'm interested in a replacement/upgrade hdd as well. Group buy anyone?

'I am Karma, Destroyer of IWorlds.' - has a nice ring to it.

 

[br0adband]

Quote:

Originally Posted by catachresis I'm interested in a replacement/upgrade hdd as well. Group buy anyone? 'I am Karma, Destroyer of IWorlds.' - has a nice ring to it.

hehehe Cute.

I'd think that 30GB Slim one would be the winner, but it's still nice to know the regular 30GB is an exact size match.

I just need to get a Karma now.

Doing constant searches all over the place for one I can get my hands on. Man I hate being "a day late and a dollar short," so to speak.

bb

 

[br0adband]

Aha! See what mindless searching through forums and stuff can teach you.

Just found an older thread over at Riovolution that says someone contacted Hitachi regarding those 30GB Slim versions of the hard drive. It uses a ZIF connector instead of the normal IDE connector ('normal' for 1.8" and 2.5" IDE drives). Oh well.

So, at this moment it seems the normal 30GB CK4 Hitachi drive should be the only exact swap option. Until I get a Karma myself and crack one open I can't say for sure. I've done this kind of mod stuff going on 25 years roughly. I admit it, I'm a geek with some of the craziest Superglued together (just kidding) hardware you'll ever see. Doing a mod like the back case sand out shouldn't be that big of a deal.

Now that I think about it, there could be a tiny cottage industry for someone that had experience working with plastics and forms - one could do a mold of the normal Rio Karma backing cover and then perhaps extend it a tiny amount, say 3mm or so, maybe 4 or 5, to accept the larger 9.5mm 1.8" drives.

Hmmmm... a cottage market indeed because I'm quite certain almost every diehard Karma owner would go for a hard drive upgrade (for more storage, faster operation, and increased battery life). Wow, I wish I was capable of making this kind of stuff myself.

If anyone does it, just remember: I get some credit for coming up with the idea.

bb

 

[no1likesme]

i would do it if i had the extra money

 

[austonia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by br0adband If anyone does it, just remember: I get some credit for coming up with the idea. bb

no offense, but that idea has been kicked around for nearly 2 years @ riovolution.

...

on a seperate note, we've seen 60gb Karmas on eBay before. could have been the same seller (i don't recall).

 

[Jeremy]

I just purchased two brand new (not refurbished) Karmas last week, one from computers4sure.com and the other from erwincomp.com

Give them a try.

 

[br0adband]

Quote:

Originally Posted by austonia no offense, but that idea has been kicked around for nearly 2 years @ riovolution.

Depends on what idea you think I was talking about, yanno. And it wasn't about just swapping the hard drives, I was talking about creating a new form fitted back cover for the Karma in quantity that would easily accomodate a 9.5mm drive with the proper braces and even the metal bracket that's already on the stock back covers.

If I had some modeling experience, I bet it would be rather easy to do this kind of thing at least once to create the custom injection mold that would be required to mass produce the back covers.

If it's been suggested over at Riovolution, I sure didn't find a posting that proposed the idea in the past day or so of reading a few thousand posts. Was just trying to make a joke about it, but who knows. If I get one, and I love it like I think I'm going to love it (and I see no reason not to at the moment unless it's DOA), there just might be a future for this custom molded back cover idea.

We'll see what happens.
bb