[XavierItzmann]

Hello, upon rebooting a BS5, two things happen:

1. The BS5 asks if I want to start on regular mode or on recovery mode. Is this normal? It counts itself down to normal startup in 5 seconds, but it’s not a very elegant thing to do, though I see how it could be very useful in an emergency.
2. The reboot takes over two minutes from the time the reboot command is executed “Go”, and appears to end on a Standby status (dark screen), from which it can be awakened via Beo4 or keypad. The unit has a spinning hard disk. Is this normal? I know I am supposed to never reboot the device.

I don’t think these questions are discussed on the Getting Started nor in the User Guide.

The sw is 7.04.01.1945. I’ve uploaded an album from a Mac using the shared folder and Master Linked the thing; the system works fine, but before today’s sw update the screen was too dark; I suppose the backlight or ambient light sensor may fail sooner or later. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of radio stations. The few ones I tried worked fine.

Thanks in advance,

[XavierItzmann]

My BS 5 has the CD device but not the very short cables that connect CD to screen. If anyone has them for sale, please advise. I wonder if B&O still stocks them?

[NQVHNWI]

The BS5/BM5 (known here as a single unit) should be on and permanently on.

Reboot can take a long time, sometimes, multiple restarts have been known. It sorta gets hung up on its own reboot.

if you are so-minded, buying a 2Tb 3.5in SATA hard drive and big big cache (the max I think you can do on that OS) and clone the whole thing, then while on the cloner, change partition size of the music store so you benefit. This will help a slow and aging motherboard.

disclaimer: do this at your own risk. These PCs are now delicate throughout

 

[XavierItzmann]

Thank you, Mr. 10Percent.

Posts in the old forum recommend, if I recall correctly, the Crucial MX100 as the only tried and tested upgrade for the disk, with various people having had problems with Samsung and other disks. Then again, most of these old posts date about a decade to when SSDs were an expensive novelty.

Crucial now only sells the MX300 and MX500, and it appears the MX100 is no longer available. Do you have an SSD brand and model that you recommend for the BM5?

[NQVHNWI]

These are SSDs I believe? I’m talking about fast 3.5in SATA hard drives. SSDs are problematic on the BS5. A HDD with a big cache, high rotation, etc will be good enough.

[griebel]

I replaced the native HDD by a Crucial SSD 1 To MX-500. Everything works perfectly and needless to say that performance (e.g. reboot speed, access to media files, connection to N.Radio stations) have dramatically improved.

[XavierItzmann]

Thank you both Mr. 10% and Griebel.

I will now order both an HDD with a big cache and the Crucial SSD 1 To MX-500 and clone the original disk to both. You can never have too many backups! If the SSD can be persuaded to work, no vibration and less heat should be good for the BM5.

Not having a light meter, it is hard to say if the BS5 regulates its brightness automatically or not. It always looks quite brilliant, whether day or dark. Insofar as the blacks are a bit washed out —unless looking perpendicularly at the screen—, it might be that mine’s backlight is always at 100%.

Is backlight failure on the BS5 a concern? Or do other parts generally fail first, i.e., the motherboard on the BM5?

[XavierItzmann]

I cloned the BM5 disk drive using a $25 “FIDECO Hard Drive Docking Station Support Offline Clone” on Amazon. The steps were:

1. Connect the cloner to power, but leave it off
2. Insert the original 1TB B&O 3.5″ drive on bay 1

3. Insert a $66 “Crucial MX500 1TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5 Inch Internal SSD” on bay 2

4. Turn on the power switch, depress the “Clone” button for 3 seconds

The process took less than 4 hours (just a handful of CD’s on the BS 5). I had some trepidation because it turns our the actual Crucial box doesn’t advertise itself as 1TB, like Amazon does, but instead as 1000GB. And 1000GB < 1024GB, so I half-expected the cloning would fail.

But no, the BS5 started up flawlessly and has been playing N.Music and N.Radio for over one hour. We’ll see if problems crop up later.

I am indebted to all those who contributed to the epic 210-post “Upgrade beomaster 5 harddisk” thread from June 2013 to February 2022.

[Author]

Posts