I've got a Vodavi Dispatch Analog 4 port voice mail with what appears to be a hard drive crash. (clunky sounds at start up, then led's 1,3,4,5,and 7 stay lit.)
Is there anything I can do to try to repair this thing myself? Or is my only option to buy Vodavi's Hard drive repair kit for $240?
Neither ecom or admin softwares are getting any response from the unit.
Thanks in advance!
Unless you have a Ghost of a Dispatch hard drive, you'll have to purchase the kit from Vodavi.
However, if it is a hard drive issue, you should see some info from the bios on ecom if you have it plugged in when the unit is booting up.
Thanks nfcphoneman. I've got another customer with a working Dispatch that needs a service call. Do you think if I get the Ghosting software loaded onto my laptop, then go service them, that I could "Ghost" their Vodavi hard drive while I'm there?
Then later, back at my office, download to the new hard drive on the funky Dispatch. And, voila, a just like new Dispatch is born.
I'm not sure how ghosting works, so I may be way off the mark here. Thanks again!
I have never had any luck doing that, but then I am not very computer literate. It seems as if it should be possible though. I always just bite the bullet and by the factory replacements. At least that way, we end up with the latest software version on it.
My question to Larry is that since communication with this system is via a 9,600 baud serial connection to the laptop, is that how it would be "ghosted" or do you physically remove the drive? The reason that I ask is that a full backup for the Dispatch or Talkpath takes twelve hours to download and another twelve to upload. I would imagine that ghosting would take as long or even longer.
If my assumption is correct, this seems like an awful long time to spend to avoid buying the regular replacement.
You have to remove the hard drive from the Dispatch and install it into a PC, or you could also install it into a USB Hard Drive case. You'll need a software like Norton/Symantic Ghost. It only takes about 5 minutes to image the Dispatch Hard Drive.
Once you have the image, you can load it onto a new hard drive and install it into the Dispatch. You can then install the latest/greatest software from the Vodavi web site.
It would not be practible to do this with another customers voice mail.