Hi all... Long-time lurker, first-time poster.

I'm counting the days 'til my brand-new 20 GB rio car arrives in the mail. I've got a question, though:

I have a spare 12 GB IBM drive right here, ready to go -- should I install it immediately or should I wait a while?

I've read the Drive Upgrade faq ( http://www.riocar.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Drive_Upgrade&file=index ) and don't expect I'd have any trouble with the installation process. However, I don't yet have 20 GB worth of music and I'm a little wary of tearing apart a device before I've given it a chance to crap out on its own without any of my help.

I read that transferred music is written to that drive with the most free space, but that doesn't seem to help sway me one way or the other.

Veteran insight greatly appreciated.

Cael

my vote would be to wait as long as you possible can
wait till you've filled that 20gigs
wait till you have MP3s out your ears
and then wait some more

than and only then, go out and buy the biggest drive you can afford
I say this as I don't think the extra 12gigs is going to make that much of a differance, but an extra 40 or 60gig would

If you don't have 20 gig of music yet, then why rush the install? If I were you, I'd Ebay the 12 gig now, and down the road a bit when you need more room, buy a more serious drive, like a 40. The money you get for a 12 today will probably buy you a 40 in a year.

Although I agree with the "don't rush it" mentality mentioned by the others, I would like to point out that you might end up with one of the dodgy cables. If that's the case, you'll get a replacement and clearance from David to open the unit. At that point, I'd add the second drive just because I had the player open and I was already half way there.

And Welcome, by the way.

Thanks, all, for your (ridiculously quick) responses.

I do think selling this drive and waiting 'til I've got a larger music collection is the way to go. Now all I need to do is find someone with a laptop so I can make certain this drive has already been wiped.

Always good to have a couple of these...
http://store.yahoo.com/cablesonline/44pinto40pin.html

Ooh, I didn't even know laptop ide -> pc ide connectors existed. Thanks again.

I would wait, I got to the point where I had about 3MB left on the player and my stack of new CDs where at knee height before I upgraded. I took some piccies of the upgrade which are in the riocar.org picture gallery.

BTW <tony>Welcome to the forum!!!</tony>

Is it possible to use these adaptors for a quicker download vs ethernet?

short answer: No, it is not possible.

long answer: With a large amount of hacking and software massaging, I suppose anything is possible, but it'd take longer than waiting on your download, and you'd have to remove the drive from the Empeg every time you wanted to use it and risk accidentally damaging the hardware.