I guess if the drive crashed or something all the software to get back up and running is online somewhere?!

Yup, any one of the software upgrades at the Empeg web site will completely re-write all of the kernel and player software from scratch. And it'll do it without touching the music partition. So even if something goes wrong that completely ruins the software (and nothing will unless you do something stupid in the developer kernel), you can still re-create a working player from scratch using one of their downloadable software upgrades.

If you completely lose a disk drive (something that in fact happened to me recently), recovery is easy assuming you still have your MP3 files: Connect the replacement disk drive, format it (formatting utility available at the Empeg web site), install the latest player software, and then upload your MP3s again.

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Tony Fabris