Does anyone know if you can "upgrade" an RDX cartridge with a larger drive?

Not sure your exact question.
You need to purchase an actual 160GB RDX drive.

I'm not sure how this was unclear, but here is the exact question:
Can you remove the 80GB hard drive from the shell of an RDX-80 cartridge, and put a 160GB drive in the cartridge shell instead?

No.
You would have to buy an RDX compatable 160GB drive.

OK. I need more than a yes-no answer. How does that work? is there a special partition code on the hard drive? setting on the cartridge? What is the mechanism? Can I replace the failed  drive with one the same size?
Please just take a moment to explain your answer, and I'll accept it and close the question.

bmsjeff (or anyone else):
I need some help with your answer:
"buy an RDX compatable 160GB drive"
Does this mean I can swap out the drive; I just need to buy a certain make or model?
Does this mean no, I cannot replace the drive--just buy a new cartridge and throw that one away?
Does this mean you don't understand how RDX works, and were suggesting I get a different RDX cartridge loader?

Cann anyone help answer this question?

Ok what the original poster is trying to explain is that RDX drives are nothing more than SATA 2.5" laptop drives stuffed in an oversided padded plastic box. Take one apart and you will see for yourself. The margin for the vendors goes up dramaticaly on the larger drives so it would be MUCH cheaper to just replace the 2.5" drive inside of the RDX drive to save big $$$.

I tried this, I bought a Dell 80GB and attempted to replace it with a 250GB WD Scorpio. It did not work, the RDX drive did NOT recognize the drive. When I tried the cheapo fujitsu SATA drive that was in the RDX drive in a normal SATA system I get master drive errors. They removed the Master/Slave pins from the RDX hard drive an I am not sure what settings should be.

Long answer short, No. Not until someone figures out how to set the drive up.

Now, we're getting somewhere--I never took a known good RDX drive and connected it to a system to find out they have pins removed!
Has anyone found a way to do this? I wonder if I can simply remove the pins from an after-market drive and then put in in the case.
Thanks!
 

Removing the pins wont make a difference as they are usually not jumpered anyways, its likely that it is a firmware issue. I only added the info about the pin removal to illustrate that these are not standard SATA drives.

I just started to do the exact same thing with an RD1000 cartridge. I have a bunch of 40GB drives that are too small for my use. I  took one apart, as you did, and was surprised to find it is just a 5400rpm 2.5" SATA drive!  (I thought they were solid-state drives, because of the price$$$).
I just started today and I'm not goint to give up til I solve this one!!

My latest try was to CLONE an exixting RD1000 drive to a larger SATA drive. So far, that has posed some problems because the rd drive is not recognized when it is taken out of the cartridge.

I'm sure there are some bios level disk cloning tools that should work, just need to get the time to try them - but I think that is the key - cloning.

BTW, your question was very clear.  I don't understand the "experts" sometimes - why, if they dont' understand the question, would they proceed to try to answer it??

Anyone get any further with this?
Thanks!

I tried a lot of different things, including cloning at bit-level but nothing would work.
With the Dell RD1000, there are multiple proprietary partitions on the drive. It seems they have done a good job of making it impossible to upgrade the cartridge by simply replacing the 2.5" hard drive.  I really spent a lot of time, and purchased cloning software.  I wish there was a way to make this work. If there is, it is beyond me.  I've given up.

I wonder if I removed a known good RDX 160 drive and performed a bit-level image to a new drive if it would work--of course if the lockdown is firmware based, we're still dead in the water.

Oops, I just reread your postings, and you already tried that.
I went ahead and RMA'd the drive, and got it replaced.

Thanks for your efforts--If you ever figure it out, please re-post!!

This is an interesting subject.  I replace my 500GB cartridges with 1TB cartridges (purchasing all new RDX cartridges).  I wanted to take advantage of my old cartridges for use in our laptops here.  Tore down the cartridge, but the drives are not accessible.  I receive I/O errors.  The hard drive appears to be a standard model for use in laptops (WD5000BEVT).  Can't low-level format it or anything.  Tried a second drive with the same results.  It's almost as if there is firmware on the drives that are looking for the cartridge.  Just a theory.

Thanks for the answers, I have a couple of 160GB units and was about to inject some 1TB goodness into them.
However since it isn't possible, I am still inserting suitably large drives into these spare cartridges, connecting a USB-SATA cable (from a cloning kit) and using them as removable hard disks, which should be able to withstand drops of up to 1 metre (as can a standard RDX)

So don't waste older small RDX carts, reuse them with larger drives and a USB cable.

Hope it helps
Steve

They do have a custom firmware that is also password protected by the manufacturers.  The firmware allocates an area for some special drive parameters.