Quick tutorial-- replacing Zen Touch hard dr

Question

I got the "click of death" last week on my 40GB Zen Touch and the "hard disk error" message. I tried slapping the player to unjam the HD, but that didn't work. When I called Creative, they told me it would be $79 to repair. Through doing a little research, I was able to replace the HD for $57. Here's how I did it:
<FONT color=#ff0000 size=2>Disclaimer: please don't try this unless your warranty is expired!
) Purchased a HITACHI Travelstar C4K60 hard dri've on ebay for $57 (shipping included). The model number on the one I got is HTC426040G9AT00. This is not the same exact dri've that came with the player, but it is the same brand. From what I gather, they key is to get a dri've that's
a) .8 inches (not 2.5)
b) 4200 RPM
c) Hitachi brand, as there's no uni'versal form factor. You need to get a Hitachi to be sure it will fit in your Zen.
I think any Hitachi 4200 RPM, .8" dri've should work. Unfortunately, there aren't a ton of these available on ebay. They're mostly about $90+ off ebay.
2) Followed these instructions for opening up the Zen.
http://www.stainlesssteelrat.net/Pictures/20050520/Touch.mht
By far, the hardest part of this was unscrewing the little screws. Be sure to get the right sized screwdriver because it's easy to strip the screws. They screws are in there tight and are a pain to get out.
3) Pulled out the old dri've, put in the new one. Pretty self explanatory once you've opened it up following the site above. I used a small screwdriver to gently pry the old dri've off as it's in there pretty tight.
4) Put the player back together. Note, the touchpad won't work well unless all the screws are in fairly tight, so be sure to do that.
5) Start up player. The menu should come up giving you four options, Clean Up, Format All, Reload OS, and Reboot. Run Format All. It should just take a few seconds.
6) Install firmware. Download it from here, http://www.nomadworld.com/language.asp?sDestUrl=/support/downloads. Run the .exe file with your Zen plugged into the USB on your computer. From there you should just have to follow the prompts.
You player should now be back in working order and you can now reload your music. Hopefully you backed it up. :-)
I would estimate this took me 3 hours of work, 2 hours of which were spent trying to unscrew those darn screws! Well worth the $22 I saved. The process wasn't very complicated at all and takes very little techinical knowledge. I hope this helps others as this seems to be a common problem. Thanks to whoever made that guide to opening the Zen, you saved me a lot of money!

Answer 1

Bump, nice post Bertt and I'm happy very happy you took the time to post your success story. Unfortunatly the link is down for me at the moment, I tried a quick google search for "Opening a Zen Touch" but didn't find anything useful. Their is still valuable HD info that everyone should take a look at.
Also I agree with your comment that replacing a HD doesn't take much tech understanding, especially a direct replacement. You just have to put everything back the way it was when you opened it. So good luck for all you who try to save yourselves a good amount of $$ (I dont think you even including S/H in the price you listed.)