Please could anybody offer me some suggestions, I have had a BeoSound 3200 since July 2005 which incidentally was a replacement for the original I purchased because I had a problem recording on to the hard drive. Last week for no apparent reason I could not access the memory either with the remote or manually. I contacted my local dealer who collected the unit to check the fault out and they have just informed me that the hard drive needs replacing at a cost of 695 pounds plus the fact that I will lose all my 200 plus cd's that I have recorded is a bit of a shock to the system to say the least.

Has anybody else had similar problems or can you suggest my best course of action?

Welcome to the forum!

This is really unplasent news, and it seams to me like a clasical hard drive faleioure ...

Maybe you can ask them to give you hard drive and to try to bring drive to some computer hardwer specialist, and maybe they can restore your data ....

I don't know which drive B&O use for 3200 but I assume that is some well nown manufacturer ....

You can also download service manual from beoworld ( for that you need to be gold member).

This are my thoughts about this issue, you should wait and I'm sure someone who is more technical in this will answer...

Good luck!

Hi:

Again, someone more technical may correct me. However, I am sure the HD is a standard laptop type. I wanted to get a 3200 and upgrade the HD. However, apparently it is very difficult to do so. I haven't looked into it but I imagine that the HD has some kind of Linux coding on it which makes it readable by the player.

I would suggest getting the system back, taking the HD out and connecting it to a PC (you can buy 2.5" to 3.5" HD connector cables from Maplin and pulling the salvagable files off and putting them onto another HD or multiple DVDs for storage. Perhaps someone could copy the files necessary to make the 3200 and HD communicate and you could install these on  a new drive. That said I am sure B&O don't want you to do that and it is not as easy as it should be.

Thanks

Graham

jameschap66:

Please could anybody offer me some suggestions, I have had a BeoSound 3200 since July 2005 which incidentally was a replacement for the original I purchased because I had a problem recording on to the hard drive. Last week for no apparent reason I could not access the memory either with the remote or manually. I contacted my local dealer who collected the unit to check the fault out and they have just informed me that the hard drive needs replacing at a cost of 695 pounds plus the fact that I will lose all my 200 plus cd's that I have recorded is a bit of a shock to the system to say the least.

Has anybody else had similar problems or can you suggest my best course of action?

I have looked at the service manual and quite why this should cost anything like £695 is totally baffling me.

The new HDD kit does involve some leads, software and a computer. Given that HDD's are as cheap as chips nowadays, one wonders if the service people don't just think of a number and keep doubling it until they think the cost will put you off.

There is a good chance that your stored info can be written over to the new disk.

I suggest that you try another dealer.

Well.. here's one for you.

BeoSound 3200 arrives, and we always delete the HDD.  I press the buttons, they all say 'READING' then 'EMPTY' after a few seconds.

So, no HDD to reset - it's empty anyway...

I then send it to our engineer to give it a look-over and service if needed, and to adjust the doors.  He then calls me and says 'did you know the hard drive is empty?'

'Yes, i checked it - there's no music on it' was my reply.

'No, the hard drive is empty - did you know?'

'Yes, i just said - i've checked it and there's no music on it'

'No, really - it's empty'

'I know'

'So you know there's a big hole and an unattached ribbon cable where the memory should be?'

'WHAT?!!!'

After laughing, then crying - we found that our customer had owned the 3200 for 2 years and never used the memory as he couldn't get it to work. He thought it was something he was doing wrong, but never pursued it. He bought it from a small ad in the local newspaper so obviously had no recourse.

Anyway - B&O wanted almost £500 all done for a HDD, so i declined and i'll keep it at home. 

So - question.  Is there any way of buying, fitting and programming a non-B&O HDD to it?  If not, no worries - but i'd like to store my music on it!

Lee

One thing's for certain, B&O do not make hard disks, and the one in the BS3200 is nothing special at all so £500 is just typical of the often obscene markup we have to endure.

As Graham has said above, this is just a 2.5" laptop spec hard disk from one of the major manufacturers, such as Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi to name a few, and I'll be damned if its not using anything other than an industry standard disk format, such as FAT32 or a Linux Ext variant.

Thats not difficult to replicate, and you probably can't still buy a 2.5" disk of such a low capacity as the ones fitted in a Beosound 3200 - e.g  320Gb drives can be had for less than £40 from almost anywhere. It'll be a Parallel ATA disk, connected with a ribbon cable. There's the potential for B&O to have embedded something in the firmware of the drive itself to identify it, but unlikely.

Having read this, if I ever bought a BS3200 I would immediately remove the disk, 'image' it on a PC for the day when it dies, and replace it back in the unit rather than be charged prices like that. Hard disks pack up all the time, B&O must be laughing every time one of these comes back in.

I would take it to someone with experience of computer repairs - I doubt they'll be stumped by this one.

9 LEE:

After laughing, then crying - we found that our customer had owned the 3200 for 2 years and never used the memory as he couldn't get it to work. He thought it was something he was doing wrong, but never pursued it.

This is a very interesting piece of information: you seem to imply that otherwise the 3200 was functional.  I specifically avoided a 3200 when I sought a NET.MUSIC-capable upgrade for my BeoCenter 2300 a few years ago because I read a post here in the forum where a member indicated that 3200s do not work at all when their disk goes bad, as they all certainly will sooner or later.

Wanting to avoid the £500 expense, and not having the skill set nor inclination to unmount, image the brand new drive out of the box, and mount it back, I decided to avoid BS 3200 completely and went instead for an old stock but new in the box BS 3000 which was very difficult to find.

Now, if the new information is that a BS 3200 with a bad drive can simply have it removed and the system otherwise becomes exactly like a BS 3000, then this sounds like a great opportunity for people wanting to get the equivalent of BS 3000 for very little money —just get a damaged BS 3200.