Epson P-3000 hard drive upgrade #2

Since the old WD 1200BEVE drive was resetting (or something) whenever it was flipped around or jarred, I decided to get a Samsung HM160HC on sale from NCIX for about CAD 56 after tax. Here it is installed in the P-3000. Sorry about the poor lighting. The Epson P-3000 would not boot up if the entire drive (minus a bit for EPV_SYSTEM) was partitioned for data, so I did a some binary searching to find a working configuration. Here's what I finally settled on:

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xfa08a67c

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1       16700   134142718+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdb2           16701       19457    22145602+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5           16701       16784      674698+   b  W95 FAT32

There's about 20GB of unused space, but at least the P-3000 boots up and behaves normally. Further tests are obviously required. Here's the interesting bit. If the first partition goes from 1 to 16701 (and all the other partitions are moved along appropriately), the P-3000 boots up normally but the menus are suddenly in Japanese! Same with numbers 16702 through 16703. I was able to reconfigure the P-3000 to use English again, but I didn't feel comfortable about it. If the first partition is configured to go from 1 to 16704, the P-3000 boots up normally. but the menus didn't make sense. They appeared to be in Korean, and I couldn't figure out how to change the language back to English. Using cylinders 16705 and beyond, the P-3000 wouldn't boot up beyond the "EPSON" screen. Here's how much space my P-3000 has now: And here are some numbers collected from data sheets:

Feature	Fujitsu MHW2040AT	Samsung HM160HC
Rated current	0.55 A	0.85 A
Rotational speed	4200 RPM	5400 RPM
Buffer size	2 MB	8 MB
Spin up current (max)	0.9 A	0.9 A
Read/write (typical)	1.6 W	2.0 W
Idle (typical)	0.5 W	0.6 W
Standby (typical)	0.2 W	0.25 W
Sleep (typical)	0.1 W	0.1 W
Acoustics (idle)	1.5 Bel	2.2 Bel

Subjectively, the Samsung seems as quiet if not quieter than the Fujitsu, despite what the data sheets say. I'll post again when testing is done. In the meantime, the usual disclaimers apply. My advice is: don't try this. I am not responsible for anything that happens if you try to replicate my results. You undertake any modifications at your own risk. If you format the wrong drive or part thereof, destroy your (or anybody else's) equipment, lose photos, videos, music, or other digital data, burn down your place of business or domicile, suffer any personal, financial, or material loss or injury, pull out your hair, go crazy, go bankrupt, get separated or divorced, or anything else, it won't be my fault. Remember that my experience, skill set, test cases, use-case scenarios, support network, and criteria for success are probably different from yours, so what looks good here may turn out to be disastrous for you. Update: my tests were successful. I was able to backup from an 8GB CF card about 16 times until the disk was full. I was also able to use the Epson Link2 Utility v1.21 to browse the drive. The Samsung drive is staying, the old Fujitsu is going into storage, and the WD has been turned into an external drive.