Archos MP3 Upgrade

Background

Archos makes products that are small and sleek in design. They are also great for adding high portable storage to. With the introduction of the 60gb hard drives from Toshiba and Fujitsu, you can easily increase any one of these models to the 60gb portable HD or MP3 player. This has been tested with the Studio 20 and the Recorder 20. The design specs for any one of these models are probably all the same (including the Multimedia 20, though we don't have a model handy to test it with; let us borrow one?).

Upgrade Requirements

• Precisoion philips screw driver. If you have an eyeglass repair kit, it will usually work.
• Hex screw driver, T-10 should work just fine.
• Flat head screw driver (small).
• Hard Drive of your specs. The drive must meet the 9mm 2.5" drive form factor.

The process

If you have not formatted this drive in FAT32, you need to format it first before inserting it into the MP3 device. USB appears to have issues formatting 60GB over USB (possibly just our testing, or USB2).

Locate all the screws to be removed. There are a total of 8, 4 philips and 4 hex.

Remove the philips first. Its easier and the smallest component. The hex will help and not add additional pressure to the philips screws to make it more difficult for removal and possibly strip the threads.

Remove the hex screws, they come straight out.

Using your flat head screw driver nsert it in the tabs on the front middle, towards the sides. The face should pop up. Careful, don't force it.

Remove the battery covers to the side, and take the batteries out.

Slide off two of the rubber protectors on the bottom of the device. You'll have to wiggle and force them.

The "computer" part should slide out now with ease. Take this out. You should see the hard drive connected to the bottom of it with a metal plate stuck to it.

Remove the hard drive from the "computer" part. Wiggle slightly back and forth.

Remove the metal plate from the hard drive and place it in the same location on the new hard drive. This plate is for stability on the bottom of the device and to allow pressure to disperse from the bottom instead of someone hitting the motor that drives the hard drive and burning out the motor.

Place the hard drive back into the device and repeat the steps to close the device.

You should be all set to go, plug it in via USB cable and put your music on.

Todo

Everyone likes pictures, so do we. We will post them soon to assist.