[Speighty]

I have spoken with the seller and they said I should hopefully have the cable this week.

[detach]

thanks for the update Speighty

seems like 4 users have already ordered the sata cable

one from aliexpress (first link I gave)
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Original-...06662.html
K***s C (yesterday) from UK

and 3 from ebay
http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?V...7675.l2564
all three yesterday

Please report back if they worked.

[SvenLorenz]

I will report back but I doubt I will be the first as the both the cables on AliExpress and ebay come from China. I bought from Ebay as they used Paypal and the shipping times seemed shorter. Cant be too careful giving you credit card details out overseas. Having said that I have bought through AliExpess before and received the items without a problem but I think that I used Paypal with that seller, the ones selling the cables on AliExpress all seem to be non Paypal now.

[Methanoid]

Just got my box and a few comments to add to the discussion

1) it is pretty quiet, even sitting less than 2 feet from my ear on my desk

2) there is ENOUGH space for basic use. There is 8.2Gb wasted on the recovery partition for those who are worried about lack of space. Plus a quick uninstall of the HP s/w and Foxit etc and a blast with CCleaner and WiseDiskCleaner and there was 18.1Gb free (plus 8.2Gb waiting to be wiped).... 26.3Gb free from a 32Gb SSD seems enough to me!

3) Windows seems to like the mouse pointer to be showing busy almost continually even when CPU usage is around 1%. Wonder what that is about.

All in.. a nice little box. Not sure if it is gonna be HTPC or if I will chuck my 2Tb drive in it and let it do light server duty. I ordered the cables from HP (ordered 2 just in case) and then ordered the cheap 4 pack from China. Have to buy 3 more of these boxes just to make sure the cables get used!!

[Methanoid]

update to the screws

Regarding the screws that I used to secure the 2.5" hard disk, they were a set of M3 x 5mm (I think) that I had in my odds-n-ends box. The key factors are the thickness of the washers (2mm all round to snugly fit in the plastic frame), and having fairly large domed heads on the screws, as they're the part that clips into the frame (the washers are just spacers between the disk and frame).
Regards,
Charles.

Just checked my HDD and it has about 5-6mm depth inside the case, the washers take 2mm, so I would say get a 6mm bolt to give you 4 mm inisde the case.
£1.45 for 10
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10-PACK-A2-STA...338460ff21

The ebay washers I linked to won't do because the inner diamter is to small for M3
so the tried and tested Maplin will do
£2.99
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/anti-vibration-washers-a26gf

so thats £4.44 (unless you can get your own screws)

(this is an update to this post http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2058915)

so now users that are wanting to get screws have an affordable option.

Can I suggest you edit the post with advice to make it clear you are suggesting M3 x 6mm screws at that eBay link as he offers many sizes and would be nice to make sure people get right ones. Once you confirm I will be ordering enough for 3 machines. I've ordered 4 cable pack from China so might as well have kits ready for multiple machines. Now I have it I like it so may buy more!

Thanks for all your informative posts and keeping the 1st post completely up to date. Really helpful! I hope other people will add their thanks to 1st post and your rep.

[stammie]

Just got my box and a few comments to add to the discussion



2) there is ENOUGH space for basic use. There is 8.2Gb wasted on the recovery partition for those who are worried about lack of space. Plus a quick uninstall of the HP s/w and Foxit etc and a blast with CCleaner and WiseDiskCleaner and there was 18.1Gb free (plus 8.2Gb waiting to be wiped).... 26.3Gb free from a 32Gb SSD seems enough to me!

3) Windows seems to like the mouse pointer to be showing busy almost continually even when CPU usage is around 1%. Wonder what that is about.

All in.. a nice little box. Not sure if it is gonna be HTPC or if I will chuck my 2Tb drive in it and let it do light server duty. I ordered the cables from HP (ordered 2 just in case) and then ordered the cheap 4 pack from China. Have to buy 3 more of these boxes just to make sure the cables get used!!

I was advised earlier in this thread not to delete the recovery partition as this version of Windows is using wimboot and the recovery partition is required for Windows to operate properly.
I'm not doubting you but following most of your steps (I didn't use wisediskcleaner) I was down to 6GB free before I just put a new SSD in, although my large media library was causing about 4 GB's of use from Kodi.

[noggin]

2) there is ENOUGH space for basic use. There is 8.2Gb wasted on the recovery partition for those who are worried about lack of space. Plus a quick uninstall of the HP s/w and Foxit etc and a blast with CCleaner and WiseDiskCleaner and there was 18.1Gb free (plus 8.2Gb waiting to be wiped).... 26.3Gb free from a 32Gb SSD seems enough to me!

Err - doesn't the 32GB HP 260 G1, like a lot of Windows 8.1 devices with limited SSD/eMMC space, use Wimboot? That means the Recovery partition, which contains the Wimboot image, also contains a large part of your Windows system partition's actual files. AIUI Wimboot installs use a virtual filing system to avoid the duplication of content between the Windows system folder on the C: drive and the recovery partition, effectively mapping the C: windows folders to the Wimboot image in the Recovery partition, which itself is compressed to save space (and thus decompressed on the fly)? My understanding is that this was introduced for 16GB Win 8.1 with Bing tablets but is also being used on PCs with limited sized system drives.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...94399.aspx

How does it work?

In a standard Windows installation (without WIMBoot), every file is written to disk at least twice: once in the compressed form for recovery, and once in the uncompressed form in the applied image. When the push-button reset feature is included, the compressed image remains on the PC. Having both the Windows installation and recovery image on the device can take up a lot of disk space.
When installing Windows with WIMBoot, you write the files to the disk only once, in compressed format. Next, you apply a set of pointer files onto the Windows partition that point back to the compressed files in the Images partition. When the user adds files, apps, or updates, they're added onto the Windows partition.
In WIMBoot, your WIMBoot image is also used as the recovery image, saving disk space.

That was my understanding. If you delete the recovery partition you effectively nuke your Windows installation too don't you?

Have you actually deleted the Recovery partition on your HP?

[nememo]

Yep, don't delete the recovery partition unless you want to lose your windows install!

Nice to see there's potentially another cable out there and not the HP specific one - hope it works out!

[Methanoid]

Thanks Noggin... have not deleted partition and now won't!!

Anyone got rid of the HP logo yet? I wonder if it is hiding in the WIMboot since the usual methods of replacing the bootres.dll with a standard Windows 8.1 one doesn't work!

[User 280945]

I've done this before, but only on Windows 7, not 8.1 - they might be similar. You can nuke the recovery partition if you do the following in preparation:

- copy \bootmgr and the full "Boot" folder to your OS partition.
- delete the recovery partition
- mark your OS partition active using diskpart or Disk Management
- resize your OS partition to fill the space using whatever tool you like to use for that sort of thing - Parted Magic, Easeaus, Paragon HD Manager (my favourite) etc.
- boot from your the Windows CD and choose the "repair" option. It should find Windows and fix it. You'd have thought that Windows would be able to recreate the bootmgr file & "Boot" folder without having to copy them over, but nope, it's too stupid. If you forget to copy over any files, the files from any system of the same bitness (32/64) can be used - the DVD "repair" option will correct the differences.

The recovery partition isn't particularly useful anyway - it has memtest, and the rest can be done with the Windows DVD (Or maybe the Windows DVD can also do a memtest - I can't remember). If you will ever want to use Bitlocker in the future, then definitely do not delete the recovery partition. However, it's perhaps possible to recreate it if you get really desperate, but there's always a chance you could screw something up.

I've ordered the SATA cable in AliExpress item# 32332544428 and will provide feedback when it's delivered. From the standpoint of looking at how the electrical contacts would work, I would expect that the connector would could possibly only be done in one way anyway (pin1 there to pin1, then p2 etc), so I expect it will work. My only concern is making sure that it's sufficiently shielded & then grounded, if possible/necessary, to reduce data transmission errors from interference. I expect it'll be fine though.

[noggin]

I've done this before. You can nuke the recovery partition if you do the following in preparation:

- copy \bootmgr and the full "Boot" folder to your OS partition.
- delete the recovery partition
- mark your OS partition active using diskpart or Disk Management
- resize your OS partition to fill the space using whatever tool you like to use for that sort of thing - Parted Magic, Easeaus, Paragon HD Manager (my favourite) etc.
- boot from your the Windows CD and choose the "repair" option. It should find Windows and fix it. You'd have thought that Windows would be able to recreate the bootmgr file & "Boot" folder without having to copy them over, but nope, it's too stupid. If you forget to copy over any files, the files from any system of the same bitness (32/64) can be used - the DVD "repair" option will correct the differences.

The recovery partition isn't particularly useful anyway - it has memtest, and the rest can be done with the Windows DVD (Or maybe the Windows DVD can also do a memtest - I can't remember). If you will ever want to use Bitlocker in the future, then definitely do not delete the recovery partition.

I've ordered the SATA cable in AliExpress item# 32332544428 and will provide feedback when it's delivered. From the standpoint of looking at how the electrical contacts would work, I would expect that the connector would could possibly only be done in one way anyway (pin1 there to pin1, then p2 etc), so I expect it will work. My only concern is making sure that it's sufficiently shielded & then grounded, if possible/necessary, to reduce data transmission errors from interference. I expect it'll be fine though.

Does this work in Wimboot installs and with Wimboot recovery images? The HP 260 G1 comes with "Windows 8.1 with Bing" - I didn't think that was re-installable from a standard Windows installation DVD (you don't get a printed key either - it's stored in the BIOS's storage area (though can be extracted from there))

[Methanoid]

Does nobody else experience the continually busy mouse pointer? Driving me mad.. Have stopped Windows Search service, paused OneDrive sync. Nothing is "busy" but this cursor just keeps spinning (and irritating!)

[decpvr]

Does nobody else experience the continually busy mouse pointer? Driving me mad.. Have stopped Windows Search service, paused OneDrive sync. Nothing is "busy" but this cursor just keeps spinning (and irritating!)

I haven't noticed it the few times I've used windows on mine (I mainly use openelec via a USB stick).

Could it be busy downloading the Win10 update (starts tomorrow - 29th)?

[As86]

Never noticed the busy pointer myself.

[SvenLorenz]

Does nobody else experience the continually busy mouse pointer? Driving me mad.. Have stopped Windows Search service, paused OneDrive sync. Nothing is "busy" but this cursor just keeps spinning (and irritating!)

Its probably your punishment for telling me to delete the recovery partition. As others have pointed out. I did, its a good job I copied it to an external drive prior to deleting it. Widows dies as soon as you delete it, avoid doing this unless you enjoy repairing broken widows installs. I had to completely delete everything, good job I had not added much.

It did sound like a good idea when I read it and I checked if it was ok to do so via google. This and all other low disk space installs uses the partition but standard windows 8.1 installs don't seem to need it so there is plenty of info out there on how to delete it.

No worries Methanoid, I should have been more careful. For the record I have not experienced the spinning cursor you describe. Something must be trying to run that does not have the correct setup.
Have you connected any devices that you have not loaded drivers for or something?