Zune Thoughts: Broken Zune 80 Given New Life With 32 GB SSD

"Now there is no way I was going to pay $300 dollars for a MP3 player. You can get a netbook or an older laptop for that kind of money, and that to me is ridiculous. There is also no way that I could go back to anything less than 30Gb, (Which is what my previous H300 had) and well there was no way I was going to pay good money for a lumpy brown Zune. So that meant I was looking for a 2nd gen 80Gb Zune in black as a base. I knew to get the price point I wanted I would need to find a Zune that had "issues" and rehabilitate it, so it could return to normal life among the other Zunes in the "social". Since I knew I was going to replace the Zune's original drive, I simply searched around for a seller that was getting rid of a black 80Gb Zune, that was displaying error code 5 on boot. (Error 5 is Microsoft's way of telling you that your hard drive's cheese had slid off its respective cracker.)"

Now, I'm not sure your only option to get a Zune under $300 is to go out and get an SSD for a broken Zune 80, but it's certainly cool that this is even possible. If you were ever curious about the feasibility of using an SSD with your dying or dead Zune, Andrew's story is a worthwhile read. I was wondering how he managed to strip out a full-sized drive into such a small enclosure, and true to form, he didn't disappoint. Now all we need to find out is the speed/battery benefits to see how practical a mod like this actually is.