Solid State drives and the BR1600

[Super 8]

My BR1600 is the older model that has the 40GB HD. I am considering upgrading the unit with an 80GB one (max. capacity right?) I've just read the .pdf 64 Guitars kindly attached and ... it doesn't look that complicated (even for someone like me) to attempt this HD transplant. I'm just wondering WHAT TYPE of HD to go for that will be fully compatible with the BR1600. Anybody happen to know??
 

[64Guitars]

Finding an 80 GB IDE hard drive could be extremely difficult. I doubt if you'll find a new one unless somebody's got some very old stock. Modern hard drives usually have a SATA interface rather than the obsolete IDE interface used in the BR-1600. And drive capacities are most often measured in terabytes rather than gigabytes nowadays.

Here's what Roland says about replacement hard drives for the BR-1600:

http://www.rolandus.com/support/knowledge_base/201976119


If you should find an 80 GB drive somewhere, here's a page where someone has documented their experience replacing the hard drive in their BR-1600. It might help with disassembly.

http://www.studio-central.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=72911&p=494199

I can't vouch for the method used to format the drive. The right way to do it is with the BR-1600's Initialize procedure.

http://www.rolandus.com/support/knowledge_base/201967159

Although, I don't know if the BR-1600 can partition the drive. If not, you'd probably have to do that on the computer first, then let the BR initialize each partition. I believe you can only have two partitions and each partition can have a maximum size of 40 GB. If you used a larger drive (say 120 GB or 160 GB) and created multiple partitions, it might work but the BR-1600 can only select between two partitions, so the other partitions would be inaccessible from the BR-1600.

[Super 8]

WOW! Thanks for such an informed reply 64 Guitars! Personally what I will take from the above is ... I'm now just gonna stick with the 40GB HD that came installed in the machine (but make sure I do better back up maintenance from here on in!) To attempt to upgrade sounds WAY too complicated! 

[Super 8]

I found someone selling (apparently 'NEW'!) upgrade 80GB hard drives for a BR1600. Now giving this potential purchase some serious consideration. (NB: I've only just upgraded my old OS on my existing 40GB to Version 2.2!)