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"Official" Olive Thread Opus 4, Opus 6, Melody 2, Olive 2, Olive 4/ 4HD, 06HD - Page 65

post #1921 of 2401
5/7/12 at 1:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by fuerstmyschkin View Post

Hi mumsoft - you are not the only one! I'm an owner of two olive 4 and two melody 2 players. I'm frustrated about the update politics of Olive and do not understand, what makes it difficult to run the 4.2 firmware on the Olive 4 players. I guess that 4.1.9 was the last update for us

Thanks. I think so too, but asking that to Olive, I got no clear answer.
But they followed my suggestion to do something at the title for the release notes, and they changed that for all the updates (so, including the older ones) to:
Release notes Olive 3HD, 4HD and 6HD.

If you have access to the software, it is not hard to find differences that are made for the different Olive models, so I'm sure that it would be no real hassle to do this for the Olive 4 also this time.
I really believe that they value the new backup so much that they hope you will sell your 4 and jump onto the HD bandwagon.

But I won't. I think that my Olive 4 makes lovier music than any of the newer models, that is, playing the cd-format of 16 bit 44.1KHz.
For the bigger but not better resolutions I have already invested in an external DAC.
And my backup scheme can't be beaten by something so obscure as what Olive provides

Marc
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post #1922 of 2401
5/8/12 at 1:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by gareth67 View Post

Drawing on some good work from mumsoft, I've found a way of copying my music off the Olive on a Windows computer - complete with metadata and with separate folders for the different CDs.

I thought I would post it here, so it's available to everyone.

First, I made a backup on a portable harddrive. (This was made using Olive's old firmware, but I assume it will still work with the new firmware).

Second, I connected the harddrive to my pc and copied the files. As the Olive uses Linux, it is is necessary to mount the drive using special software. I used DiscInternals Linux Reader (which is freeware). Google for discinternals. The main files containing the music are a series of 2GB files named audiolibrarybackup.taraa, audiolibrarybackup.tarab etc. I copied all the files onto my hard disc - I had to copy them in batches of 40 files or so, as the software was very slow 'enumerating the files' (as it described it). These files, when combined, are one large zip archive.

Third, I concatenated all the files together. (I found opening audiolibrarybackup.taraa only opened the music in this file - not the others. I think Mumsoft, who was using Linux, didn't need to do this - but I could be wrong)

To do this, you go to the command line prompt (type cmd.exe in the search box), then navigate to the correct directory. (cd is the change directory command; the drive letter followed by colon changes drive. So type d: then return, then cd \\music\\olive to navigate to drive d and a subdirectory olive in a directory music)

You then type the command copy /y /b audiolibrarybackup.tar* combined.tar

This combines all the files into one single file called combined.tar. This will take some time.

Finally, you use 7-zip to open and extract all the files from combined.tar.

I've been using compressed flac. In my case, the files were contained in separate folders for each cd (except the files which had been copied from my computer - which were in an imported folder). The flac files contained both the metadata and artwork when opened in Mediamonkey.

All of this takes a while and a lot of hard disc space (as you wind up with 3 copies of your music). You can delete the original files after combining them if this is a problem.

No warranties given, but hopefully this will work for everyone. Obviously, this only applies to Windows computer - but I suspect you could adapt this to a Mac.

Cheers
Gareth

Hello Gareth -
Once the Linux Olive back-up drive is mounted as you describe, could you not read the file directly with 7-zip? Why the need for all the addtional work? is it that Olive deliberately separates the files to make it hard?
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post #1923 of 2401
5/8/12 at 1:57pm
Originally the backup drive was formatted as FAT, which has severe limitations, one of them is the maximum file size of 2 GB. You can't blame Olive for that.

Marc
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post #1924 of 2401
5/8/12 at 2:50pm
I decide to take the plunge into music servers when I upgraded our primary audio system recently. I like the Olive all-in-one concept and the physical aesthetics. Our living room was already ethernet ready, so did not need Wifi. Hence, the 03 seemed like a good place to start. To complete the internet capabilities, we added an Apple TV hooked through a separate DAC to the integrated amp. So, we mirror an iPad onto the Apple TV for Pandora, Spotify etc. Olive does the rest including a few internet stations that we like.

So far so good. About 250 disks into our small collection. Corrected some artwork for old (late 1980's college-era CD's), but this was not hard. Running 4.2 software, no issues. Back-ups run without problem. However, on just a few CD's, the Olive transport has problems reading. Perhaps 1 out of 50 or so. The CD's in question read perfectly on the iMac; my car, which also shows correct metadata, and even a $12 Timex CD radio.

Anyone else seen this issue? I am reasonably comfortable with PC's, worth replacing the CD drive unit? Perhaps just a lens cleaning?? I have the special bits for the 'tamper resistant' fasteners Olive is using (can be purchased at any Lowes BTW). The 03HD is just a few months old, but would rather not send back to CA, even under warranty.
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post #1925 of 2401
5/8/12 at 3:37pm
^^^

I have seen a few issues where my 06HD will not read discs that are read by other drives

the Olive CD drives are definitely more finicky than most

I don't think a lens cleaning or drive replacement will address the issue but please keep us advised if you make any headway
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post #1926 of 2401
5/8/12 at 3:50pm
I have ripped about 1600 cd's with my two Olives 4 and never had any troubles with reading cd's. I would not bother about 1 out of 50 cd's that won't work. Just read them with your Apple and import the stuff.
Occasionally one track has flaws that the Olive can't overcome, than it is time to let the pc do some work.
Maybe the HD-models have more flimsy units than the rock-solid Opus 4, but again, don't bother.

Marc
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post #1927 of 2401
5/9/12 at 6:22am
Hello Marc & Mark- Thanks for the advice. In fact that is what I did (imported trouble tracks from the MAC, not lossless but not bad either). I am liking this music server concept much more than anticipated; we are spending a lot of time listening to music again. The kids took over the media room, so we reclaimed the living room. It will be some time before we even approach the 1500 CD capacity of the 03, but we will give it a go.
The 06, which my local dealer does not have on display, looks very cool, but very likely outstrips the rest of our system. What is the opinion on their larger glass-on-glass display?
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post #1928 of 2401
5/9/12 at 8:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mumsoft View Post

I wonder, am I the only one here left with the old fashioned (vintage) Opus 4?

Marc

No, I also have a Olive 4. As I use an external DAC, I do not see any benfits in migrating to a 4HD.

And I really do not understand all those people trying to backup there Olive: why not simply rip all CD's on a PC and import that to the Olive?
That way you have an easy backup (from the PC) and if you ever decide to go for non-Olive all music is ready to be imported to something else.
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post #1929 of 2401
5/9/12 at 8:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by clpetersen View Post

Hello Marc & Mark- Thanks for the advice. In fact that is what I did (imported trouble tracks from the MAC, not lossless but not bad either). I am liking this music server concept much more than anticipated; we are spending a lot of time listening to music again. The kids took over the media room, so we reclaimed the living room. It will be some time before we even approach the 1500 CD capacity of the 03, but we will give it a go.
The 06, which my local dealer does not have on display, looks very cool, but very likely outstrips the rest of our system. What is the opinion on their larger glass-on-glass display?

I use maestro on my powerbook that the 6hd wonderful screen would not be a great benefit to me. I also use my iPhone as my remote from anywhere in the house.

For those few discs that olive doe not like I rip them into my itunes then export them via my network right into the Olive. Works great!

I too like this machine more than I would have thought and could not imagine not having such a unit.
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post #1930 of 2401
5/10/12 at 9:23am
I agree. Great concept; cool design. If Olive brings cover flow mode to the iPad app we'd be talking 'bout something. I do think Olive should make the CD drive and/or software data-read path more robust. It seems many people have an occasional problem yet itunes or similar plows right through 'problem' discs.
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post #1931 of 2401
5/10/12 at 9:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by clpetersen View Post

The 06, which my local dealer does not have on display, looks very cool, but very likely outstrips the rest of our system. What is the opinion on their larger glass-on-glass display?

prior to the 06HD, I had the 04HD (I upgraded)

there is little difference: the 06 has a headphone output & larger display

I used to have the 06 on my desk and guests admired it: I have since moved it to a closet so the large display is of little value to me: I am happy with either one
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post #1932 of 2401
5/10/12 at 1:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfert View Post

No, I also have a Olive 4. As I use an external DAC, I do not see any benfits in migrating to a 4HD.

And I really do not understand all those people trying to backup there Olive: why not simply rip all CD's on a PC and import that to the Olive?
That way you have an easy backup (from the PC) and if you ever decide to go for non-Olive all music is ready to be imported to something else.

Hi Wolfert, I don't see that as a backup, but as the raw data. I have put several years of work in editing this stuff, and I would HATE it if I loose it. Also the capability of the Olive's to split cd's and combine tracks into (classical) works is invaluable, and can't be done on a pc (I think). Let alone the trouble you have when you try to edit the data on a pc in such a way that the olive's understand.
Maybe, for popular music your method will hold.

Marc
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post #1933 of 2401
5/11/12 at 7:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mumsoft View Post

Originally the backup drive was formatted as FAT, which has severe limitations, one of them is the maximum file size of 2 GB. You can't blame Olive for that.

FAT32 limit per single file is 4 GB per file; FAT32 partition size limit for a single HDD appears to be 2 TB for sector size of 512 bytes; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32#FAT32

More recent HDD file formats are all journaling file formats with much greater size limits, such as the relatively new EXT4 (Linux/Unix) and the somewhat older EXT3 (Linux/Unix) and likely still older NTFS file system (Windows).

Out of honest curiosity, what file format does Olive use for HDD of it's current 06HD (top of the line) and the slightly older 04HD players?

1. For the internal HDD inside the 04HD/06HD unit itself?

2. For the (external?) HDD that one does a backup to?
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post #1934 of 2401
5/12/12 at 12:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mumsoft View Post

Hi Wolfert, I don't see that as a backup, but as the raw data. I have put several years of work in editing this stuff, and I would HATE it if I loose it. Also the capability of the Olive's to split cd's and combine tracks into (classical) works is invaluable, and can't be done on a pc (I think). Let alone the trouble you have when you try to edit the data on a pc in such a way that the olive's understand.
Maybe, for popular music your method will hold.

Marc

I only hab eclassical music and Jazz.
I do all editting of tags on the PC with MP3Tag (using flac).
The only edditign that I sometimes need to do on the Olive is the recombine discs, if for some unclear reason the Olive splits an album into multiple albums.

On my PC I often combine multiple CD's into 1 album.That also works great.
So What I have on my PC is a correctly taged music collection, ready to import for ANY player.

What do you think you can do on the Olive, that can not be done on a PC?
(and second question: do you really think you will be using Olive the rest of you music life?)
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post #1935 of 2401
5/12/12 at 12:50pm
Hello Wolfert - looked at some screen shots of MP3tag. Looks pretty nice. So, Olive/Maestro can import from the MP3tag database correctly? Does that imply a standardized database format for music metadata that everyone recognizes? Sorry if this is an obvious question. I am familiar with image database standards for medicine; just not music.
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post #1936 of 2401
5/15/12 at 7:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by clpetersen View Post

Hello Wolfert - looked at some screen shots of MP3tag. Looks pretty nice. So, Olive/Maestro can import from the MP3tag database correctly? Does that imply a standardized database format for music metadata that everyone recognizes? Sorry if this is an obvious question. I am familiar with image database standards for medicine; just not music.

Yes,
The FLAV and MP3 have standards with metatags. This means that all info that you enter in Mp3Tag (including cover pictures) are embedded in the music files themselves. You can just copy the files, and Olive (and any other music player) will recognize the tags.
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post #1937 of 2401
5/17/12 at 6:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfert View Post

I only hab eclassical music and Jazz.
I do all editting of tags on the PC with MP3Tag (using flac).
The only edditign that I sometimes need to do on the Olive is the recombine discs, if for some unclear reason the Olive splits an album into multiple albums.

On my PC I often combine multiple CD's into 1 album.That also works great.
So What I have on my PC is a correctly taged music collection, ready to import for ANY player.

What do you think you can do on the Olive, that can not be done on a PC?
(and second question: do you really think you will be using Olive the rest of you music life?)

Hi Wolvert,

Sorry for replying so late, but again AVSforum refused to alert me about the new entries.
As I have Linux, I never bothered about MP3tag, which is for Windows only. Now i found puddletag as alternative http://www.webupd8.org/2011/01/puddl...ke-editor.html
Maybe I give it a try when I'm back home (currently on holiday in Sicily). I still think that it takes a lot of investigation to do the editing in such a way that it imports in the Olive without any re-editing. Thinking alone at the artwork. And how about dividing cd's into works?

Of course I hope that my Olive's last forever, at least as long as I live. But if they don't, at least I have all the flacs + the sqlite database containing all the metadata. I reckon that that will be enough.
BTW, how sure can you be that your pc-collection can be imported in another musicserver without any hassle?

Marc
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post #1938 of 2401
5/18/12 at 6:44pm
Hi All,

Below is a quote from an email exchange I am having with Olive. Do any of you have these symptoms and if so, what have you done to resolve them?

Thanks

"I have a 4HD and three Olive 2 units. I usually control music play with the iPad or iPhone app.

More often than not I am playing music through one of the Olive 2 units.

I usually load CDs from my iMac by connecting to the 4HD through my network.

More often than not, the touchscreen on the 4HD is locked up. Sometimes the normal green and black Olive screen is displayed, but tapping on it produces no results. Other times the green and black display appears, but it is "fractured", i.e. the Olive logo may be split in two, etc. In order to resolve the lock up, I either hit the start button on the front or turn the unit on and off from the power switch in back.

Often when I take these steps, the Olive never boots up. Instead I receive the gray scale version of the logo with the text "Olive is starting up" or something to that effect. Frequently this screen begins to flash, alternating between the display I just described and a blank screen. This flashing usually cannot be resolved via either the front switch or the back on/off switch.

While often I can still play music via the iPad/iPhone app, I cannot use the touchscreen on the 4 HD. I am also unable to access the unit through the network to transfer files I have burned to my iMac.

I really I have no idea why this is happening. It is a chronic issue.

Please let me know what additional information I can provide.

I really like the concept of the Olive and it does a very nice job playing music. But frankly it is pretty frustrating to use."
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post #1939 of 2401
5/18/12 at 8:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric KC View Post

Hi All,

Below is a quote from an email exchange I am having with Olive. Do any of you have these symptoms and if so, what have you done to resolve them?

Thanks

"I have a 4HD and three Olive 2 units. I usually control music play with the iPad or iPhone app.

More often than not I am playing music through one of the Olive 2 units.

I usually load CDs from my iMac by connecting to the 4HD through my network.

More often than not, the touchscreen on the 4HD is locked up. Sometimes the normal green and black Olive screen is displayed, but tapping on it produces no results. Other times the green and black display appears, but it is "fractured", i.e. the Olive logo may be split in two, etc. In order to resolve the lock up, I either hit the start button on the front or turn the unit on and off from the power switch in back.

Often when I take these steps, the Olive never boots up. Instead I receive the gray scale version of the logo with the text "Olive is starting up" or something to that effect. Frequently this screen begins to flash, alternating between the display I just described and a blank screen. This flashing usually cannot be resolved via either the front switch or the back on/off switch.

While often I can still play music via the iPad/iPhone app, I cannot use the touchscreen on the 4 HD. I am also unable to access the unit through the network to transfer files I have burned to my iMac.

I really I have no idea why this is happening. It is a chronic issue.

Please let me know what additional information I can provide.

I really like the concept of the Olive and it does a very nice job playing music. But frankly it is pretty frustrating to use."

What happens when you do a hard power off of the machine, then restart and use the touch screen without using the iphone?
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post #1940 of 2401
5/21/12 at 9:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nalod View Post


What happens when you do a hard power off of the machine, then restart and use the touch screen without using the iphone?

Not to ignore this question, but I did receive a very thoughtful response from Olive. They speculated that this was a firmware issue. Apparently there is a new firmware release coming out within the next couple weeks.

Eric
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post #1941 of 2401
5/24/12 at 6:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric KC View Post

Not to ignore this question, but I did receive a very thoughtful response from Olive. They speculated that this was a firmware issue. Apparently there is a new firmware release coming out within the next couple weeks.

Eric

Be curious to see what the next round of improvements are.

These machines are so complicated.

The ability to down load new firmware makes these machines much workable then the nightmare they potentially could be without it.

Naturally its better to have Olive work with the customer than fishing for answers on the internet. Good luck!
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post #1942 of 2401
5/28/12 at 11:43am
hi guys,

Any idea why my O4Hd is not loading any radiostations?
I' m connected to the internet and was always able to access hundreths of stations before.

Tim
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post #1943 of 2401
5/28/12 at 1:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by greywolf62 View Post

hi guys,

Any idea why my O4Hd is not loading any radiostations?
I' m connected to the internet and was always able to access hundreths of stations before.

Tim

Tim, try to connect your Olive to the internet. Maybe it is more capable to access radio stations than you do.

(Sorry, I could not resist this. OT: maybe it's a firewall-issue)

Marc
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post #1944 of 2401
5/28/12 at 3:49pm
lol
assuming it has to do with firewall, where do I adjust that?
Tim
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post #1945 of 2401
5/29/12 at 4:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by greywolf62 View Post

lol
assuming it has to do with firewall, where do I adjust that?
Tim

Just wait till other users of a HD-model have replied. Maybe it's a 4.2.0. issue, than others might have the same problem.

It can also be a block by your provider.

Marc
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post #1946 of 2401
5/29/12 at 10:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by greywolf62 View Post

hi guys,

Any idea why my O4Hd is not loading any radiostations?
I' m connected to the internet and was always able to access hundreths of stations before.

Tim

Hi Tim,

Keep an eye out for a PM later.

Olive Care
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post #1947 of 2401
5/31/12 at 8:53pm
Welcome to Olive Care!!!

I love my machine and starting to love the company. Great that they're getting involved in this major thread for Olive lovers.

They should be paying Marc for all his great advise over the last years

Tim
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post #1948 of 2401
6/1/12 at 8:33am
I haven't had any 4HD internet radio problems since 4.2.0, but I'm not a fan of trying to add stations.
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post #1949 of 2401
6/1/12 at 2:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by greywolf62 View Post

Welcome to Olive Care!!!

They should be paying Marc for all his great advise over the last years

Tim

Oh, no!
Then I would buy a 06HD and publish a way to open it.
Nevertheless thanks for the suggestion.

But I have offered to help with a Dutch language version, and despite all my efforts, it's not coming.

Yesterday I had some bad luck with one of my Olive Opus 4's. I ripped two cd's, when I started I saw a brief message for a short period, but I could not see what it said. That became clear when I feeded a third cd: it was the unfamous I/O error message. The screen became unresponsive, and I had to restart the Olive. That yielded in the please wait, the system is starting up - the white screen with the olive logo. It did not disappear.
I would be stuck if the unit could not be opened.

Anyway, I opened it, and took out the hard disk. Good chance that here the problem stemmed from. I mounted another disk, and the Olive started up again, but it had an outdated OS, and it was two or three months behind my riping efforts.
So, I had to repair the actual disk, to avoid a lengthy update process. As usual, all but the last partition on it had severe errors in the filesystem, that my linux system happily repaired. But the second partition showed very bad errors, which I did not see before. These were repaired too, but the disk still failed to start.
The disk has in partition 2 and 3 a version of the software, and one of them is the actual version, and the other is the previous version. When you update the system, it writes the new version in the unused, old, partition, and swaps the boot-process.
So, I swapped the Boot-flag of partition 2 to partition 3. But the disk did NOT start, much to my chagrin.
It was getting a sweaty afternoon.
Finally, I copied partition 3 to partition 2, and with the boot-flag still in partition 2, finally the Olive started again, with software release 4.1.8.
That could be updated, and so ended a dreary period in my Olive life.

What would the procedure have been, If I had to go to the dealer? What would I have to pay, how much time would have been lost, how sure could I have been that my backup could be restored?

Is everybody here happy with his closed Olive?

Marc
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post #1950 of 2401
6/4/12 at 4:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mumsoft View Post

Oh, no!
Then I would buy a 06HD and publish a way to open it.
Nevertheless thanks for the suggestion.

But I have offered to help with a Dutch language version, and despite all my efforts, it's not coming.

Yesterday I had some bad luck with one of my Olive Opus 4's. I ripped two cd's, when I started I saw a brief message for a short period, but I could not see what it said. That became clear when I feeded a third cd: it was the unfamous I/O error message. The screen became unresponsive, and I had to restart the Olive. That yielded in the please wait, the system is starting up - the white screen with the olive logo. It did not disappear.
I would be stuck if the unit could not be opened.

Anyway, I opened it, and took out the hard disk. Good chance that here the problem stemmed from. I mounted another disk, and the Olive started up again, but it had an outdated OS, and it was two or three months behind my riping efforts.
So, I had to repair the actual disk, to avoid a lengthy update process. As usual, all but the last partition on it had severe errors in the filesystem, that my linux system happily repaired. But the second partition showed very bad errors, which I did not see before. These were repaired too, but the disk still failed to start.
The disk has in partition 2 and 3 a version of the software, and one of them is the actual version, and the other is the previous version. When you update the system, it writes the new version in the unused, old, partition, and swaps the boot-process.
So, I swapped the Boot-flag of partition 2 to partition 3. But the disk did NOT start, much to my chagrin.
It was getting a sweaty afternoon.
Finally, I copied partition 3 to partition 2, and with the boot-flag still in partition 2, finally the Olive started again, with software release 4.1.8.
That could be updated, and so ended a dreary period in my Olive life.

What would the procedure have been, If I had to go to the dealer? What would I have to pay, how much time would have been lost, how sure could I have been that my backup could be restored?

Is everybody here happy with his closed Olive?

Marc


so how easy was it to change the hard drive? Anything special to it?
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