Don't know if this has been done or discussed, but is there any way to replace the current hard drive in our music box with a larger hard drive??

 

Long story short: Probably the easiest way to find out how PnP it is, is take your current HD out, slap it on a PC and see if it can read what's on the HD.

Long story compressed: First step is find out what type of file system it uses. Next would be find out if the "O/S" is on some type of ROM on the unit, or actually on the HD. If you get lucky and windows can read the filesystem fine AND the O/S is on the HD maybe you could just do a flat out copy to a larger HD or ghost an image and put it on the new hd if a flat out copy fails. Or if the O/S is on some sort of ROM and your PC can read the FS just buy a new HD, format it, and hopefully it works fine.

Long story long: too lazy to think about it or type it out unless someone tries the above, fails, and is still interested and actually wants to get into nitty gritty.

Edit to long to compressed. Now that i think about it i doubt the O/S is on a ROM since they'd need to be able to update the UI for added features and such in the future... but it still may be on some sort of static memory on the unit and not on the HD.

 

On my Pioneer Avic Z Hard Drive system (which I am trying to trade), I replaced the hard drive from a 10gig to a 60gig music file partition. As mrodenburg suggested, you will need to remove the drive and hook it up to a computer. There should be multiple partitions on the drive, such as Operating system, Navigation, Music, and possibly more. You will need to ghost the original drive and then restore the ghost to the new drive. This will give a 1 to 1 copy. You will then need to go in and change the partition size of the volume containing the music. You will most likely loose all your saved music.

Now, back to the Avic, and most likely the Nissan system... The drive is most likely protected by an encryption system involving a boot sector password. There is software available to overcome this, but it will cost. There is no way around this if it is encryped.

So, you have to decide how much time, money and effort this is worth having a bigger music volume.

IF you need help with this, please let me know. I am well known on the Avic411 forums and have done multiple drives for other people.

 

Also if you're going to attempt this i'd suggest looking into a solid state drive. I haven't seen the HD enclosure, but i doubt going over bumps and such are likely making a traditional HD with it's moving parts very happy no matter how well designed the enclosure is.

 

I have tried to find the hard drive by taking just about everything in the dash apart, but there is nothing that stands out visually as a hard drive, so i'm thinking it is integrated somewhere (maybe the stereo itself or monitor?)

Has anyone found the hard drive location? This seems like a great first step

 

It's Most likely in the head unit. Should have an access port somewhere to get to the drive

 

i've searched for this a while ago, can't remember where, but the drive itself seemed to be a 80 or 120 gb hd from Toshiba... anyway, I didn't wanted to mess up everything. File format was some embedded linux, I stopped there... but, on the usb, it is very easy to plug a usb drive of 32gb, just make shure it is formatted in Fat32, as NTFS is not supported by nissan's system. Pretty easy to simply plug it in you computer, put all your mp3 on the flash drive classified by album folder.... working pretty fine to me...

 

Having dealt extensively with Linux the past few years, I am sure this is running on Linux as other have said. It is free, fast and very stable if built to specific hardware which they are able to do. Linux can normally read NTFS, but is much happier with FAT32 (I used this when creating data drives on my Linux boxes). The idea of tearing everything out to expand the drive space seems a bit much when USB thumb drives are so cheap, and easily managed by taking it in your house and organizing things the way you need them to be. A 16GB generic thumb drive can be as cheap as $15 this time of year. A very cheap and simple solution, especially since it is out of sight in the arm rest. Just my two cents.

 

I'd love to do this but the miriad of other option to play music with the same results seems a little pointless. Portability of either USB flash drive or iPod trumps the time and effort it would take to upgrade the music box HD. Techie wise it would be cool to do...just not worth it in the end. Post pics though if ya do it!