ozone777

Yeah, I already found what I needed after going through the thread multiple times and piecing together the info. Hopefully, what I've gathered is correct and complete...I'll find out soon enough. Being in the tech support biz, I realize that sometimes it's difficult to put yourself in the uneducated guy's shoes when you already have all the answers. I mean, geeze! You already did all the hard work involved in obtaining the knowledge...why can't everyone else do the work as well?! Maybe that's why some of us are teachers and some of us are students. And all teachers are students at s

I have an AVIC Z2 with a Z3 image from 2008 (03.0000), installed on an aftermarket previously unlocked drive. I can't remember if I removed security back when I first unlocked/imaged the drive...but I'm pretty sure I did. What is the specific procedure for upgrading a previously upgraded-unlocked-security-removed drive to the 2010 firmware? Can I do it without losing my existing data?

So were you able to run it (MHDD)? And, if so, were you able to remove security on your drive?

Try typing "MHDD" at the prompt.

Did you disable security on the drive before you put it in the Z? If not, you will have to pay to have it unlocked. For unlocking your 80GB drive it will cost you about $10 if you go to http://www.hddunlock.com/ Once you get the drive unlocked, be sure to first DISABLE SECURITY, then restore ALL of the partitions to it. Then it should work. Assuming that you are using Acronis to do the restore, you should also be able to expand the "MUSIC" partition (the 3rd partition) to take advantage of the extra space your drive has.

Yes, I used Acronis and it worked just as you said. I was able to expand the Music partition and my Z is chuggin' along with the new drive as if it was born with it. Thanks again for your help.

Thanks for all the useful info garrettoomey. I built the drive yesterday at work and installed it without a single problem. Didn't even have any trouble with the mounting plate screws (it helps to have the proper sized screw driver). I loaded a couple of gigs of music on it last night and then played songs for about 2 hours with no issues. Then played music during the 30 min. drive to work this morning and it performed flawlessly. Thanks again for all your great information.

D'oh! :oops: I knew there had to be a simple way to do it. I guess my wife is right about me always over-complicating things. Thanks for the info. I'm going to try this today. Wish me luck. [b]P.S.[/b] After installing the new hard drive, is it necessary to perform a full reset of the Z with the reset button? Thanks again!

[quote name="garrettoomey"] [quote name="propman07"]PPDdawgg- Great information. I can vouch for the drive crashing if you try to increase the size of the music partition. I bought a 60GB Toshiba drive, and tried to increase the music partition. The unit functioned okay, until I started to add CDs to the music library. After I added two CDs worth of music, the system went into a rebooting loop. I pulled the drive, and re-imaged it, this time, leaving the partition sizes alone. I have been able to add six CDs worth of music with no performance issues.[/quote] I have increased the size