Cowon Q5W Teardown & Hard Drive Upgrade
There’s already a good, in-depth review on gadgetaholic.com of Cowon’s new, wi-fi enabled, super-PMP (personal/portable media player), the Cowon Q5W, but I’m going to attempt to answer a burning question of current and would-be Q5W owners: “How can I get more storage than 60gb?”
The simple answer is, “Stick a bigger hard drive in it!”. Can it be done? The only answer I can give at this moment is, “I don’t know…yet. But I intend to find out!” First thing I need to do is figure out what’s going on inside of the Cowon. I’m looking to see what kind of hard drive it has, the hard drive connector type, general layout of the internals, available space, etc. That means I have to pull it apart.
Update: This upgrade is possible! Read on…
Beware!If you choose to follow along with the following steps, you WILL void your warranty. I’m accepting the risk for my own Q5W in the name of science and bragging rights, but you might want to think twice about messing with yours and wait to see if I blow mine up first!
Tools you’ll need:
1. A Torx head screwdriver, size T5 (I have no idea what T5 means, except that it’s pretty small). If you’re not familiar a Torx fastener, it’s sort of like an allen head fastener, except instead of a hexagon shape, its more of a star-like shape. I bought a T5 Torx head screwdriver at Radio Shack this afternoon.
That’s it.
Next,we’re going to remove the back cover of the Q5W. This is very easy.
1. There are six torx screws; three on top, and three on the bottom (see photos – the photo on the right shows the screws removed).
2. Gently wiggle the cover off. Be careful here because the battery is mounted to the back cover that you’re tugging on and there is a VERY short battery connector cable to the main circuit board. The connector cable is at the bottom of the unit, so as you’re wiggling off the back, once it’s free of the unit, swing it open as though it’s hinged at the bottom. This will ensure you don’t pull on the connector.
3. Once inside, the hard drive is immediately visible. Pull out the black rubber shock absorber around the drive. As previously noted, check out the short battery connector (left image below).
4. There are some springy mesh shock absorbers stuck on the drive. Gently pull them off and peel back the hard drive cover. It too is stuck on the drive. Pull it back from the direction where the ribbon cable connects to the drive. Once part of the ribbon is exposed, hold it with your thumb while you continue to pull the cover off so you don’t put undue stress on the ribbon.
5. Sit back and admire your accomplishment! Now put it back together exactly as you found it!!!
observations so far is that the Q5W’s hard drive is a 1.8″ Samsung model number HS060HB. It has a ZIF ATA-100 connector, similiar to the 1st generation Zune 30gb (not sure about Zune 2), Creative Zen Vision W, and 5th generation video Ipods. It is a thin drive, thinner than the stock 60gb drive in the Zen, which I have, but there is no problem fitting athicker drive into the Q5W, there is ample room.
What’s next: I am going to attempt to stick ahigher capacityhard drive in the unit (a 100gb 1.8″ Toshiba MK1011GAH). The Q5W is a Windows CE device at its core, so it won’t be a simple matter of swapping out the old drive and putting in a new one. It’s a bit more complicated, so stay tuned!
Dec 18, 2007 Update:
New drive has been shipped. Should be here by Friday, Dec 22nd, so I will be working on the upgrade, hopefully with an update by the next day.
Dec 24, 2007 Update: New drive has arrived! Once again the Q5W was on put onto the operating table for the hard drive transplant. Here are the steps I performed to do the upgrade.
- Copy ALL of content on your Cowon (not just your media files) to a folder on your PC. All folders, files, subfolders including the Windows system files. Make sure you keep all existing file and folder structures when you copy. I put them in a folder on my C: drive on my desktop computer.
- Follow the steps above, disassemble your Q5W and remove the hard drive. The ZIF ATA-100 connector can be tricky. On the 60gb drive, there is a black connector lock that needs to be flipped up. Use your fingernail to get under it, and flip it towards the ribbon. I’m sorry I can’t give a better description of this process. The photo below shows the black connector (the thin, black strip) in the up postion.
- Install the new drive. You will need to flip the connector lock up on the new drive in order to insert the ribbon connector.
- Once the new drive is in place, stick the large, sticky cover back on the ribbon cable. In my situation with the new Toshiba drive, I did not need to install the springy spacers because the Toshiba drive is thicker than the stock 60gb drive (see photo below – the stock 60gb drive is on the left, the Toshiba drive on the right).
- Boot your Cowon in Recovery Mode. Do this by first pressing the ‘+’ volume button, then sliding the power switch to the on position and holding. The device should boot up and the screen will go into recovery mode.
- Once in Recovery Mode, connect your Q5W to your computer. Here’s where it gets a little weird. The new drive needs to be formatted, and formatted with the FAT32 file system. Yup, you heard right. The stock 60gb drive is FAT32. My new 100gb drive came formatted with the NTFS file system, and although the Q5Wcould read the drive contents, it would not boot. There is an option to format the drive in the Q5’s Recovery Mode menu, but it won’t work. The Q5W will generate an error message “Dismount Partition Failed”.
I’m running Windows XP, so there is no option for formatting a drive with the FAT32 file system. I downloaded a free utility called “fat32format.exe” from here (direct link to the utility here). Copy this utility to your PC. - Take note of your Q5’s drive letter in Windows Explorer. On my PC, it was listed as the G drive.
- Open a Command Prompt window on your PC (Start -> Run, type “cmd”, and press enter). Change the directory to the root of C (or wherever you placed the fat32format.exe file).
- Type “fat32format.exe g” (replace g with whatever your Q5’s drive letter is on your PC). The program will ask if your sure you want to format, respond with ‘y’. The format only takes a few seconds.
- Once the format is complete, copy all of the content you copied back in step 1 in this list back onto the Q5.
- Shut down your Q5 and restart normally. That’s it!
If all goes well for you, go into your Q5’s system stats and marvel at the additional 40gb of storage.
Some of you are probably already thinking bigger, like the new crop of 160gb drives from the iPod classic. Beware! I examined one of these drives and it does not have the same type of connector as the Cowon’s stock drive. The iPod classic uses a CE-ATA connector which is smaller than the Cowon’s ATA-100 connector.
Firmware upgrades: Yup, they work too:
Hope you enjoyed this article. I found the upgrade easy to do once I figured a few things out. I didn’t immediately discover that the file system on the Cowon’s stock drive was FAT32, but using the Disk Manager in Windows XP allowed me to determine the file system. You can format disks with Disk Manager, but the only formatting option is NTFS.
If you would like me to perform this upgrade for you, I’ll charge you a modest fee of $50 (plus postage) to do the work. But you should really try it yourself! It really is easy. If you still feel unsure of yourself, and want me to do the upgrade, you’ll need to send me your Q5 and the Toshiba drive. Important: Performing this work WILL void your Q5’swarranty. I cannot beheld responsible for any repercussions related to a voided warranty. Do this at your own risk!!!
If you’re still interested, leave me a post at the bottom of this page (I won’t publish it for public viewing) with an email address forcontacting you, and I’ll send you a shipping address.
Here is the link for the Samsung 160 gig.
Too much $ for my taste.
http://www.upgradebay.com/c1_itemdetail.asp?rid=gg&itemid=168760047&gclid=CPXArL6mzpQCFQ4RnQodqE95rA
Yeah, I called upgradebay earlier in the week and they didn’t have it in stock. It was around $250 then, now they jacked it up over $300. A bit much for me too.
EXCELLENT! Cheers to you my friend!
Ive had major internal dialog for some time now deciding weather to splurge the cash on a 60GB/80GB q5. Now i know i can save my ££ and upgrade a much cheaper 40GB version later on. Thanks for braving the front line and showing us this is possible. 🙂
Hi just changed mine to the 120gb drive, thanks to your article. Went without hitch and very quick. A useful note: I tried installing it in an external 1.8 enclosure, intending to add external storage to the q5w, but it wasn’t too happy – maybe a power issue – not even with the ac adapter in, although worked OK in a regular laptop. So had to go for the swap, but far more convenient in the end. Have the 40gb in the external enclosure now.
BTW I have flacs of all my collection, hence the size. But anyone wanting for audiophile use it’s not so good as spdif is upsampled to 48khz, not bitperfect and the sound is a tad rounded and flat as a result. Great for portable quality headphone use though with a Monica dac and quality class a opamp headphone amp.
I’m definitely gonna try this ^^ Just a quick question, does the Cowon have unicode support? Specifically, I’m wondering if it can display Japanese characters…
And, is it possible to buy a 40GB model and upgrade it in the way you’re discussing, or do you need to buy the 60GB model?
It can be either the 40gb or 60gb model. I chose the 60gb originally just in case the hard drive swap didn’t work and I had to go back to the original hard drive. In that case, I would want the larger 60gb drive. But since the swap DID work, save yourself some cash and get the 40gb model.
I’m having a problem with the harddrive upgrade. I’m at the point to where I’ve in recovery mode, but my computer does not recognize the new drive. I’ve left it on the first recovery screen and I’ve selected backup and format, when I select that it goes to the next screen where it lists 01 connect adapter, 02 connect USB, 03 Move Hard disk, 04 Harddrive format. It will not let me select either. can you offer any help, Thanks. I can hear xp give it’s beep when I connect the q5 with the usb cord, but nothing shows up in explorer.
I know this sounds overly simplistic, but it sounds like you may have dislodged the drive’s ribbon cable from either the drive itself, or, where it connects to Cowon’s “motherboard” (under a piece of adhesive covering). This can happen quite easily when you’re monkeying around with the hard drive replacement and I’ve done it myself. Upon powering up the Cowon, put your ear to the device and you should hear the hard drive spool up. If not, the hard drive ribbon became dislodged. Even if you do hear it spool up, check the ribbon anyway, and on both ends.
A computer friend of mine checked both cables and still the computer recognizes with a beep, but no drive letter. Even when it was connected to his computer it recognizes the new drive, it even listed it as cowon q5 as new hardware found, but still no drive letter in explorer.
Can you hear the hard drive spinning on boot-up of the Q5?
No, I’ve listened and my friend Alan has listened, nothing.
Hmmm, that’s a tough one. It could be a defective hard drive, defective Q5 firmware, or a defective Q5. It could also be that although the drive is connected, that the ribbon cable is connected backwards. That is, pin 1 is lined up with pin 16 (I think its 16) and vice versa. Have you tried putting the old drive back in and seeing if that works?
Yes I have and it does the same as the new one, the computer recognizes, but no drive letter.
That’s strange. You did mention you broke the connectors on both drives, so that could be it. Other than that, I’m at a loss. It might need Cowon tech support to repair. Otherwise, you could chance getting a new drive, and letting me have a look at it.
I’ve already ordered a new drive, it should be here today or tomorrow, I’ll e-mail you when it does. Thanks for all your help.
Hi there 🙂
Rg revmike and disk detection problem.
Some new disks need to be ‘initialized’ when new – it may also need a drive letter to be manually assigned. Any road your first port of call should be disk manager. right click my computer icon>select ‘manage’>choose ‘disk manager’ snapin on the left, near the bottom.
If the disk is working [and the xp beep you mention tells me it is] it will be listed in disk manager – it may require action to get it going, uninitialized disks and volumes without drive letters assigned will not show in explorer…
good luck 🙂
DIGITALDEVIANCE
Thanks for the suggestion, but I tried that last night and although it beeps, it does not show in disk manager either. There is a listing for it under device manager for usb controllers and clicking on properties shows that it is the cowon q5, but there is an exclaimation point and clicking on properties for the q5 it takes you to the general page where it says, This device cannot start. (Code 10). I tried to install new driver by letting the computer seach and I’ve tried deleting the driver, but nothing at this time works.
Hello.
Attempted to upgrade my 40gb unit today with a 80gb drive, also failed with the same problem as revmike. Im sure this can be overcome by preparing the disk before installing it into the Q5 – i think its due to the disk file system and cluster size, the Q5 just wont play ball with it. Unfortunately i cant test any further until my 1.8″ ZIF USB caddy arrives sometime next week!
During my adventure around my Q5 inards i didnt notice any warranty seals/stickers or chasis intrusion mechanisms – im confident cowon will still honor my warranty should i need it. I sugest upgraders just keep the original Q5 disk to be re-fitted in the event they need the warranty.
I request rcgrabbag share further info on the Q5 upgraded. Hardware revision (stamped on internal PCB) bootloader and firmware versions in user during upgrade.
thanks, ill let ya know how i get on next week. 🙂
The drive I purchased was already pre-formatted with the NTFS file system. I’m wondering if the drives you purchased were not pre-formatted and have no file system. If that’s the case, maybe that’s why your computers don’t see the Q5 as a drive. revmike is sending me his Q5 and new drive so I can attempt the upgrade. We’ll see how that goes. I have a 1.8 inch hard drive enclosure that I’ll put his new drive in first and see if it has a file system. If not, I can pre-format it before doing the upgrade. I’ll keep you posted…
DIGITALDEVIANCE,
Did you try putting your old drive back in and did it work? revmike tried to put his old drive back in and had the same problem as with the new drive (Q5 booted in recovery mode but no drive letter assigned in Windows when connected to Q5 via USB). That is especially troubling and leads me to believe that it is more of a drive initializing or formatting issue.
Hi,
Yes i re-installed the original disk and it was fully working again.
I cant vouch for the origin of this disk im using, it was just one we had floating around the office. I think it maybe from an IPDOD gen 5 – perhaps they are somehow different.
Yeah, I fixed revmike’s Q5 after he sent it to me. Turns out it was a bad hard drive ribbon cable in the Q5. I made this determination after putting his drive in my Q5 and booting up successfully. I inspected his Q5’s hard drive cable and found some of the connectors at the end were damaged. I trimmed off a tiny amount of the end of the cable and was able to get it to seat more deeply in the drive’s connector, past the damaged part on the cable. Once I did this, his Q5 booted successfully with the new drive.
Hi there
I successfully upgraded my Q5 today using a 60GB disk, i guess the 80 i had was faulty. I couldnt just copy the files accross from the old disk to the new, the Q5 would fail to boot for some reason. I tried using a snapshot util to clone the disk over, it then booted but weirdly i ended up with a 40GB patition on a 60GB disk, even though the util should have expanded it. I had to install the disk, and use th Q5 recovery menu to restore and get it going again. Still, it worked and was quite easy.
Just waiting for cheap 120GB disks now, 60GB will suffice till then.
cheers 🙂
Nice work!
I’m currently picking between a q5w and an Archos 605 160gb. I was about to rule out the q5w but this has ruled it straight back in. How do you find the interface? I might in the future, when I have enough money, email you about you upgrading the q5w to 100gb.
Thanks,
Andy
Hello,
I think I might try this out when I have enough cash for the player and drive, or if I can get a drive from my computer class 😉 since my teacher lets me take a lot of crap from the class. Anyhow, would a 160gb drive actually work, cause I though that the FAT32 file system would only go to 120gb? Or would you be able to have two partitions? Also, a couple of other things: How does this affect the battery life and is it possible to also upgrade the battery?
Thank you.
Hi All,
This is a great walk-through and thread. I am looking at buying either the Archos 5 or the Cowon Q5W. The storage size is a large determining factor in my decision. Chris, you should be able to format a large drive over 160GB. I have a 160GB 2.5″ drive and formatted it with FAT32 in Mac OS X. Has anyone tried the 160GB Samsung drive?
PATA type drives are the ones you need. 40 pin ATA connector. Not sure whether the connector is ATA-100 or ATA-133. Drive should still work I beleive. Toshiba have released a 240GB two platten drive MK2431GAH but I can’t find it on any sites yet. Anyone had any luck with their upgrades?
Is there any way to stick windows 2000 or XP on this? Preferably keeping the original OS on there two I was just looking for a way to run some games like Rollar Coster Tycoon or an N64 emulator…
Nope, this is a mobile device and won’t run 2K or XP.
Is there any chance you know of a device that you can modify to run 2k or XP that is roughly the size of the cowon? Looking at the stats most of these pmps have the power to do it
Not that I know of. These mobile devices may have the power, but they lack the memory and/or the processor chips have an improper instruction set to run an OS like XP.
Thanks for your help its a pity no one has thought to build a pmp system around 2000 instead of CE its alot easier to use apps on 2000 then CE…
One device that’s probably the closest to what you describe is the iPhone. It runs a pretty robust version of OS X.
hi i have a COWON Q5W I FORMATED THE HDD BY MISTAKE , TWO WEEKS AGO AND I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO ALL KIND OF THINGS TO GET IT BACK ON TRACK . WHAT IS HAPPENGING IS THIS , ONE THE UNIT CAN NOT BE POWERED OFF WITH THE SWITCH .TWO WHEN I TAP ON COWON LAUNCHER THIS THING POP UP AND SAY [CANNOT FIND COWON Q5 MAIN OR ONE OF ITS COMPONENTS MAKE SURE THE PATH FILE NAME ARE CORRECT AND ALL THE REQUREDS LIBRARIES ARE AVALABLE .I HOPE YOU CAN HELP ME . I AM NOT SO GOOD WITH COMPUTERS THANKS YOUR FREIND LINCOLN THANKS
Can you still access the Cowon via USB from your computer? If so, download the latest firmware and Applications from the Cowon website here. Follow the upgrade instructions and that should restore everything that was missing.
Hi! I want to take your opinion about exchange the ‘old’ HDD with an SSD.
I know, that is’s still a bit costly, but I’m interested, how much the battery time will be longer. — Excuse my Englis please, and thank You for Your time…
An SSD will most likely DECREASE battery life. It depends on the power requirements of the specific drive, but most SSD’s require MORE power than a comparable rotating drive. Check out this article for more info: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955.html
Hmm. A bit stunning, but understandable. Az I see in the test, there is the possibility, but it needs look after more. In mine opinion, performance is not so important is this case. I mean, if the SSD wont be faster, but use less power is enough. Thank you for the link.
I won’t be doing anything serious with this thing, but here are the results of a Saturday morning messing with it:
http://berniepallek.ca/tiki-index.php?page=COWON_Q5W
These tips should be helpful for those who have managed to partially (or completely) mess up their Q5Ws. After you read the page, everything will make a lot more sense in terms of firmware upgrading and fixing a malfunctioning unit (provided it’s not a hardware malfunction).
Like some of the previous posters, im having the problem with the Q5W in which it freezes twoards the end of the boot process. This issue began after my first initial use of the GPS cradle. I tried resetting and sill have no luck. Then i tried dismantleing the q5w to check for loose connectors and reaseated the hard drive, but still no luck. it seems as though there is no power going to the hard drive because technically it should spool up durring boot… but im not hearing a thing. Dose anyone have any suggestions?
P.S My pc is not recoginizing the device, it is stating that the device can not be started.
I had the same exact problem after I got the GPS. For some reason, when seating/unseating from the GPS unit, the socket at the bottom of the Q5W that mates with the connector on the GPS unit needs to be jiggled a bit to get the Q5W working again. Try seating and unseating the Q5W in the GPS cradle a few times.
I tried seating and unseating the unit into the gps cradle several times (about 15) makeing sure to turn off the unit before i docked it back into the cradle. While doing this i noticed several strange things…
1. When turning off unit while connected to cradle, causes it to restart immidiately.
2. After several times of undocking and docking, i would sometimes get a red indicator light on the unit. ( What dose that red light mean?)
3. When docking and undocking the unit while being tuned to the FM station designated for the unit i would hear a slight poping sound from my car speakers as if the device itself is trying to transmit audio.
Did you dock the unit into the GPS while it was on when you had your issue? When i first had the problem i opened the Nav program then docked it into the cradle. When i did that, all i saw was a bright white light from the screen. Upon restart i had the freezing problem at bootup.
Are you supposed to be able to hear the hdd spool up when you put your ear to the unit when starting it up? Because i dont hear the HDD at all. Or dose it spool up at the end of the boot process?
What other recommendation might you have for me?
This Cowon Q5w is driving me nuts because its my favorite PMP and i really want to get it working again.
The issue I had was the same. I could not hear that the hard drive spinning. The bootup screen showed the progress bar going across, but then it would stop and stay there indefinitely, never loading the main Cown menu. Took me a while to figure out what was going on, but the whole problem started when I got the GPS cradle, so that led to observing that sometimes after docking/undocking, my Q5 started working again. This had happened to me a couple of times. I had it powered off when I docked it. It will power up automatically when you dock it.
The red light might just mean its in standby mode.
Did you upgrade your Cowon to a bigger hard drive? If so, there’s a chance the hard drive ribbon connector inside your Cowon worked itself loose. If that’s not the case, and if the docking/undocking excercise was unsuccessful, then you probably need to send it back to Cowon for service.
How long should i leave it in the cradle when docking to know if it will make it past the boot screen, how long dose it take yours?
Side Note: No, i have not upgraded the HDD i have the stock 80gb toshiba in the unit.
It should only take a couple of seconds, whether in the docking cradle or not, to get past the initial boot screen. I think there’s an issue with that GPS cradle, because what happened to your Q5 looks to be the same thing that happened to mine, except that I was able to get my Q5 working again. But, it has flaked out a few times in the same fashion when using the GPS cradle. That port on the bottom of the Q5 that mates with the GPS cradle, I think the issue is there, but is caused by the GPS cradle. There is some switching going on in that port because the GPS cradle routs the audio from the Q5 to the speakers in the GPS cradle, so some sort of switching takes place. So something is getting out of whack with that port on your Q5 (and mine) when mated to the GPS cradle. You might try hooking up the video cables, which use the same port, and see if you can get it working. If that doesn’t work, you should send your GPS cradle and Q5 back to Cowon for service. Tell them your story and they should fix it for free, if you ask me.
Hi i was wondering what would happen if you took the Q5W Wifi Antenna out because i was thinking of getting one and taking the antenna out.
You’d most likely severely limit the range of the Q5’s WiFi.
Cause i was wondering if it is possible to disable the internet fully because i dont want web browsing… im a teen
If you don’t want web browsing, simply don’t use it. Why would you purposely damage your Q5? You may want to sell/trade it some day for something better.
well is there a way to disable web browsing in the Q5W without taking it apart?