Another HDD upgrade experience

[Subterranean]

Not sure if its particularly useful but here’s my recent hdd upgrade story.
I had a H320 with an upgraded 2200mAh battery, the large cheap ipod replacement kind you get off ebay. This had all worked perfectly for months and I was very happy with the set up. That is, until I saw an non-apple branded 6006GAH HD go up on ebay. It was badly described and had no photo, but the model number was there and all my checks (on feedback and stuff) ran fine. I wasn’t desperately wanting this sized HD but I put a modest offer on it, and eventually won.

Anyway, a whole 2 days after winning it came in the post. I had been wondering whether I would be able to fit it in along with the bigger battery, the blue padding, the screws around the buttons and everything else I’d heard people have to remove to make it fit. Considering I had had to squeeze the thing shut with just the upgraded battery in it, it looked doubtful. Opening up was easy enough this time, and I only had to get the back open to access the HD but immediately the size difference was obvious. Leaving everything else as it was I changed out the HD, and had a quick try of getting it back together. Wasn’t happening.

With the case still opened I proceeded to connect it to the computer. I heard the HD spin up with the usual quiet high-pitched whine, no clicks, scratching or other worrying noises, and using the swissknife utility, a ~57gig FAT32 partition was quicky created and a single mp3 file put onto the drive as a test. It transferred perfectly, and when disconnected from the computer, played perfectly too. I transferred all my music and a rockbox build over at this point. Of course I still hadn’t managed to close the thing up, but didn’t want to think about that just yet

After the music had transferred and further tests showed it to play fine, and rockbox to load fine, I had to decide how to get it closed up. Further tries with my big battery still in showed something would end up breaking, even if I did somehow get the sides closed enough to get the screws in, even without the blue padding The battery had to go, but thankfully I had kept my old stock battery and it was a simple replacement. I put the padding back in and managed to get it closed with screws in place. A quick fright when it wouldn’t switch on any more, was quickly relieved when I plugged it in and the charging screen came up and everything worked fine again.

In conclusion, it’s perfectly possible to fit a dual platter drive into a H320 with all padding inside, but not with an upgraded, larger size battery. Am I right in thinking that all replacement batteries nowadays are physically larger than the stock battery? I did enjoy the extra life it gave me, but with the latest rockbox builds’ battery issues solved, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.