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Note that this is not the other Creative MUVO 2

A hard drive-based music player.

• Properly titled Creative NOMAD MuVo²

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• This was replaced by Dell DJ Ditty

• 2005-01-31 - Died

  • My Creative MuVo2 died on the way to work. It just booted up in an "I suck ass" mode. It completely died before I got it home.. probably because of battery drain. I played around lots, but couldn't re-flash it or format it or anything. I ended up taking it apart.. fuck the warranty.. and tried a 256MB SanDisk CompactFlash (type 1). No go. Oh well.. another one bites the dust. The microdrive wouldn't work in my pc either, even after knocking it around a bit. I wonder if I should use the old "freezer trick" for it. God, I want to forget those old skills. Well, it's dead and now I want a mini-DVD mp3 player. =p

• This replaced the MpTrip MP3 CD Player

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• firmware update (archive) (direct download)
• https://www.theregister.com/2004/04/26/creative_muvo2_review/ ^[ 1 ] was https://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/26/creative_muvo2_review/

• [http://www.viperlair.com/articles/howto/mods/muvo2/index.shtml Modding a compactflash into a MuVo2]

Introduction ∞

I went with this after my We Wa Concertmaster II 256MB MP3 Player died.

It died Monday Jan 31, 2005. The hard drive failed. Yay. Well at least it's user-serviceable. I might pick up a compact flash to stick in the thing, but I'm not sure I care right now. Sigh.

A 256MB (year 2000) and a 2GB (year 2004) SanDisk CF cards would not work in it. It wouldn't properly boot up. It spins up the original drive but never gets through the recovery mode, and I'm not willing to install Windows to flash it.

After this I went with my Dell DJ Ditty.

SmartScan failed.
Unable to proceed.
Press MENU to start recovery.

<menu> <it reboots>

Recovery Mode v1.00

<menu>

Review ∞

• Small
• Rechargable

• Good battery life

  • And the battery is replaceable.

• Hitachi minidrive

  • Purported to be of better quality than those found in the iPod.
    - Turns out to be quite false, at least in my case. Sigh.

I'd write more, but mine died.. so I don't care any more..

Issues with the Creative MuVo2 ∞

• Skipping

  • Is there even any skip protection?
    - At first I thought it was certain songs which would crash. But after updating from 1.11.01 to 1.11.01 I haven't seen that happen. Wait, did I get those numbers right?
    - Nowadays, it seems to skip according to certain movements. I'm pretty sure the drive is just coughing up a lung when moved and the MuVo2 isn't handling it properly. I just move along and the system stops playing and then starts autoplaying at the last point it was turned off at. Boy does that suck.

• Crashing

  • Sometimes, instead of skipping the system will completely lock up. Sometimes it will give me the startup demo/logo screen for a while and then continue at the last powered-off position.
    - Sometimes I have to pop the battery and put it back in to continue.

• USB-charging

  • This is a pox, a plague, an absolute horror. Instead of charging, it will suck the life right out of the device.

• Powering up for no reason

  • I've turned it off, hung up my coat and later returned to find the device powered up. I've noticed circumstances when I've put it down for the evening and it has no battery life the next morning.
    - I've set power saving and perhaps that's solved or helped this issue. I'm not sure yet.

• The controls

  • Ok, I really do dislike the stupid one-button nonsense. Five directions out of one button is shiny, but not useful for large digits. I can deal with this, but frankly I would have much preferred a better design. Eesh.

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• My roommate's appears to only be USB 1.0, and it'll take forever to copy files.. winding down in speed until it halts. He reported that rebooting his computer will let him begin the copy again.. for a while. Copying small blocks of data has helped.
• Also, he reported that occasionally when playing a song, another song will suddenly begin before the first has ended. After updating his flash from the latest version to the latest version, it hasn't happened again. This has ha penned to me once (after updating from the latest rom to the latest rom).

• He's had a corrupted filesystem of a sort.. and has had constant reports of this whenever he disconnects it from his computer. Formatting, which took forever, appears to have resolved this. Actual filesystem checking found nothing and did nothing.

Hacking ∞

• MuVo² Compact Flash Compatibility List
• http://www.mortier.free-online.co.uk/muvo2.html
• Creative MuVo 2 CF Mod

• Hitachi 4GB Microdrive from Muvo2 MP3 player

  • (a comment mentions the Hitachi microdrive replacement)

Last updated 2020-06-14 at 05:15:51