Yes, I believe the Rio Upgrade Wizard is what is normally used. The idea is to run it to "install" the .upgrade file onto the empeg, and then reboot the empeg to actually "run" the upgrade. After that completes, reboot again (automatic from bigdisk) into the running player software (bigdisk builder only; regular empeg builder requires one to install the software .upgrade after).

Pump errors come from the bootloader firmware, which is a part we never upgrade, and lack source code for. They are almost always curable by zeroing out the partition table of the drive before installing/running the bigdisk builder. The builder itself cannot do this, because it never gets to run when pump fails.

So.. delete all existing partitions first using a PC. I prefer to just zero it using Linux with the drive attached via USB:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=2048

Embarrassingly, Hugo himself had some troubles earlier this year trying to install an SSD -- pump errors (I believe Hugo wrote the "pump" stuff). Didn't figure it out at the time, so he gave up and used CF cards instead, and send me the SSD for forensics. I played with it briefly, and then zeroed out the partition table.. after which bigdisk was happy, and the SSD works fine.

Cheers