Just as a curiosity, I bought a 64GB SSD (solid state drive) to see if I could install it into the Korg MR1000. The HDD in the MR1000 has a special 1.8" ZIF form factor. So after some research, I purchased a 64GB ZIF SSD.
At first, it didn't work. The MR1000 didn't recognize the drive. I had a hunch what the problem was, and had to purchase a little more hardware to help figure it out. I'm not going to say what extra hardware I needed to purchase -- in case there's a market for this type of upgrade. But I will say it's required to make this work.
After quite a bit of work, I finally got it to work. To guarantee my biggest chance of success, I didn't try to utilize the entire 64GB SSD; instead I created the disk to be the same exact size as the MR1000 disc. After powering up, the MR1000 repoted a 60GB HDD with 40GB free. This is exactly what I expected for this first test.
My next test was to create the same drive using the entire 64GB space and see what happened. Powered up the MR1000; it reports 60GB space and 60GB free.
I'll post a picture as soon as my camera battery is charged.
Korg MR-1000 with 64GB SSD
Moderators: Sharp, X-Trade, Pepperpotty, karmathanever
I once lost recording (it just disappeared) because of a little movement during hard drive operation of some kind, therefore i'm interested in this topic. I'm afraid of doing such changes (replacing HDD) on my own... This is a serious disadvantage to MR-1000 - not being equipped with SSD. But I recorded many times carrying it in the bag and it never happened, the only time was when it was laying on the table :)
Please, let us know how it's working and how you did it.
Please, let us know how it's working and how you did it.
It would nevertheless be so interesting...PencilGeek, this should not be a secret. The market can sell this idea anyway ':)'
Just publish how you fix this and what hardware you are talking about.
I will do the same thing with my MR1000 recorder. I have already bought ZIF/CF adapter.
http://cgi.ebay.com/CF-1-8-ZIF-adapter- ... 3f0191d6e4
and I will buy 64Gb compact flash card:
http://cgi.ebay.com/FileMate-64GB-600X- ... 2eace2380b
As soon as I get foolproofed installation instructions I will upgrade my recorder. I use my recoreder every week so I have no time to play or make a mess with this upgrade. ':?'
Just publish how you fix this and what hardware you are talking about.
I will do the same thing with my MR1000 recorder. I have already bought ZIF/CF adapter.
http://cgi.ebay.com/CF-1-8-ZIF-adapter- ... 3f0191d6e4
and I will buy 64Gb compact flash card:
http://cgi.ebay.com/FileMate-64GB-600X- ... 2eace2380b
As soon as I get foolproofed installation instructions I will upgrade my recorder. I use my recoreder every week so I have no time to play or make a mess with this upgrade. ':?'
2020 Korg MR1000 SSD - some things that don't work
I decided to make a serious effort to make this work. Rather than try to format the SSD with the Korg, I bought a ZIF to SATA converter and 1st removed the 40 GB spinner from the Korg and checked it out with Partition Magic, a partitioning, formatting and recovery program on my Windows 10 machine.
The Korg set up is FAT32, no drive letter, no name, 37.26 GB (due to reporting as 1024/1000 static ram vs 1000/1000 HDD mfg and a little overhead for the boot record etc) and I could not figure out if it was formatted as Primary (able to hold an operating system) or Logical (data only). I was able to format the new SSD to 37.26 GB FAT32 PRIMARY w/ no name. Unfortunately, the Korg did not recognize it ("Fatal Error-not FAT32), so that failed.
DON'T DO THIS: I then tried to format it with the Korg itself. It started and never finished - in the end, I had to pull the power to stop it. Back attached to the PC to try to save it. Partition Wizard then reported it as 2048 Tera Bytes unallocated and though it would try to reformat it, it would not work. So, something more is needed and 11 years ago, Pencilgeek claimed to know what it is. It is possible that the ZIF to SATA board is responsible for my problem because the same thing happened to another SSD that never made it into the Korg. The question is, how many $60 drives and $15 boards am I willing to buy to keep working on this?
ADDITION INFO and CAUTIONS:
1. The electronics in the Korg are sensitive to electrostatic discharge. I worked in aerospace for many years, the risk is real. You can bet that a significant number of bad reviews for various computer parts bought on Amazon and NewEgg etc were caused by the customer unknowingly zapping their new device. Wear a wrist strap and use a grounded static dissipative surface.
2. ZIF "Zero Insertion Force" cables are different. The cable has no connector and easily slides into place, but only if the latch is released! All ZIF connectors have a latch and they are flimsy plastic and DIFFERENT. Look on Youtube for guidance first. The ends have different thicknesses (blue = thick, white = thin). The Korg came with a Blue/Blue cable. Current SSDs need the thinner white ended cables (a cable usually comes with the drive). Pay attention to the orientation of the HDD and cable. If you put it in upside down, it doesn't make contact. Finally, the latches are different: my Hitachi 40 GB drive has a white latch on the front of the connector; The Korg has a black push in latch at the front bottom (next to circuit board) pull out to release; The SSDs I've seen have a black flip up latch at the back of the connector; the ZIF to SATA has a black flip up latch at the front of the connector. All of them look more like a bar that goes across the length of the connector than what you might think a latch looks like.
3. Opening the unit and taking out the HDD. You only have to remove the 4 screws at the top (2 front, 2 rear), but you have to loosen the bottom 4 screws so the front panel can be pulled out a little to release the top. The side extrusion on the right side lifts out by removing 2 screws that go through the outside of the circuit board (one has a ground wire for the top. One screw releases the housing for the drive, but the resilient pads for shock absorbing adhere themselves to the housing so you have to very gently pry the housing up. NOTE: There is a delicate flex cable hooking the display to the circuit board so don't let the front panel come free unless you disconnect that first (no need to do that).
The Korg set up is FAT32, no drive letter, no name, 37.26 GB (due to reporting as 1024/1000 static ram vs 1000/1000 HDD mfg and a little overhead for the boot record etc) and I could not figure out if it was formatted as Primary (able to hold an operating system) or Logical (data only). I was able to format the new SSD to 37.26 GB FAT32 PRIMARY w/ no name. Unfortunately, the Korg did not recognize it ("Fatal Error-not FAT32), so that failed.
DON'T DO THIS: I then tried to format it with the Korg itself. It started and never finished - in the end, I had to pull the power to stop it. Back attached to the PC to try to save it. Partition Wizard then reported it as 2048 Tera Bytes unallocated and though it would try to reformat it, it would not work. So, something more is needed and 11 years ago, Pencilgeek claimed to know what it is. It is possible that the ZIF to SATA board is responsible for my problem because the same thing happened to another SSD that never made it into the Korg. The question is, how many $60 drives and $15 boards am I willing to buy to keep working on this?
ADDITION INFO and CAUTIONS:
1. The electronics in the Korg are sensitive to electrostatic discharge. I worked in aerospace for many years, the risk is real. You can bet that a significant number of bad reviews for various computer parts bought on Amazon and NewEgg etc were caused by the customer unknowingly zapping their new device. Wear a wrist strap and use a grounded static dissipative surface.
2. ZIF "Zero Insertion Force" cables are different. The cable has no connector and easily slides into place, but only if the latch is released! All ZIF connectors have a latch and they are flimsy plastic and DIFFERENT. Look on Youtube for guidance first. The ends have different thicknesses (blue = thick, white = thin). The Korg came with a Blue/Blue cable. Current SSDs need the thinner white ended cables (a cable usually comes with the drive). Pay attention to the orientation of the HDD and cable. If you put it in upside down, it doesn't make contact. Finally, the latches are different: my Hitachi 40 GB drive has a white latch on the front of the connector; The Korg has a black push in latch at the front bottom (next to circuit board) pull out to release; The SSDs I've seen have a black flip up latch at the back of the connector; the ZIF to SATA has a black flip up latch at the front of the connector. All of them look more like a bar that goes across the length of the connector than what you might think a latch looks like.
3. Opening the unit and taking out the HDD. You only have to remove the 4 screws at the top (2 front, 2 rear), but you have to loosen the bottom 4 screws so the front panel can be pulled out a little to release the top. The side extrusion on the right side lifts out by removing 2 screws that go through the outside of the circuit board (one has a ground wire for the top. One screw releases the housing for the drive, but the resilient pads for shock absorbing adhere themselves to the housing so you have to very gently pry the housing up. NOTE: There is a delicate flex cable hooking the display to the circuit board so don't let the front panel come free unless you disconnect that first (no need to do that).
Re: 2020 Korg MR1000 SSD - some things that don't work
Correction, I used Partition Wizard, Partition Magic has been obsolete for more than 10 years.va-vid wrote:... 1st removed the 40 GB spinner from the Korg and checked it out with Partition Magic, a partitioning, formatting and recovery program on my Windows 10 machine ...
Any further hints on SSD upgrade for MR1000? (or USB issue?)
My MR1000 might just be getting long in the tooth. Suddenly, the USB seems to have stopped working, so it no longer mounts on my Mac computers. This happened after filling the hard drive with 2 awesome recordings, so I had to go into recovery mode.
Bought a Zip drive enclosure and removed the hard drive. At first, the drive was making some horrible sounds, so I thought it had gone belly up - and that that was perhaps why it didn't mount anymore. With some persistence and careful maneuvering, the drive suddenly stabilized and mounted, and I got my data. But I figured after a long run, maybe best to get a new drive.
Bought a 128GB King SSD Zif drive. Had all the issues mentioned above about the blue cable being too thick to fit in the new drive - removed the blue strip to make the cable thinner and gerry rigged a little just to see if I could get it to work.
Formatted it on the Mac with what seemed like the best option available. That gave me a fatal error in the machine, but then I was able to use the machine to format it...which seemed to work. Started up, allowed me to put it in record-standby and get levels and such. But then, when I hit go, it went to something like .383 seconds and froze - had to unplug to reset. This happened several times.
But the USB issue persists as well. Machine wouldn't mount with new drive, nor with old drive back in and re-formatted and seemingly working ok (it recorded fine).
Soooo... I suppose the USB issue is prime, as without that, I don't see myself removing the drive to get the data off of it every time I use the recorder. Anyone have this before? I'm guessing it might be the board rather than the plug, in which case I'm guessing it's simply not fixable.
And then, any ideas why the SSD starts for a fraction of a second and then freezes? And what might be done about that?
Any ideas, hints and/or help is greatly appreciated!
Cheers...
Bought a Zip drive enclosure and removed the hard drive. At first, the drive was making some horrible sounds, so I thought it had gone belly up - and that that was perhaps why it didn't mount anymore. With some persistence and careful maneuvering, the drive suddenly stabilized and mounted, and I got my data. But I figured after a long run, maybe best to get a new drive.
Bought a 128GB King SSD Zif drive. Had all the issues mentioned above about the blue cable being too thick to fit in the new drive - removed the blue strip to make the cable thinner and gerry rigged a little just to see if I could get it to work.
Formatted it on the Mac with what seemed like the best option available. That gave me a fatal error in the machine, but then I was able to use the machine to format it...which seemed to work. Started up, allowed me to put it in record-standby and get levels and such. But then, when I hit go, it went to something like .383 seconds and froze - had to unplug to reset. This happened several times.
But the USB issue persists as well. Machine wouldn't mount with new drive, nor with old drive back in and re-formatted and seemingly working ok (it recorded fine).
Soooo... I suppose the USB issue is prime, as without that, I don't see myself removing the drive to get the data off of it every time I use the recorder. Anyone have this before? I'm guessing it might be the board rather than the plug, in which case I'm guessing it's simply not fixable.
And then, any ideas why the SSD starts for a fraction of a second and then freezes? And what might be done about that?
Any ideas, hints and/or help is greatly appreciated!
Cheers...