Z1, Z2, and Z3 HDD FAQ

[Donovan]

For expanding the volume I would recommend using the diskpart tool that ships with Windows Vista. It will easily expand that partition. You can use it by booting to a Vista DVD and entering the command line. Alternatively you can use it while running Vista if you have the drive plugged into a secondary IDE channel or external esata or firewire enclosure. I haven't tested this yet, but i will shortly once my new drive arrives.

Hope this helps!

[rage2]

[quote name="33k!"][b]BUT[/b], there is a 2MB partition of unallocated space BETWEEN partitions SDATA and MSV. Due to the limitation of 4 partitions on a FAT32 disk, MOST cloning will FAIL. Ghost 2003 handles this with the "Image All" option. But, ONLY if you use Ghost in DOS booted from floppy (make a Norton Ghost boot disk from within Ghost)

My drive, imaged this way with Ghost has not crashed or rebooted in 3 days. My Z2 is a June model, bypassed. I have tested Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba drives, all crashed unless cloned with Ghost. Shock was tested at 25mph runs over local speed humps (10 hump test). I have ripped 20 albums watched DVDs while driving, etc etc to try to make it crash and it doesn't. We finally have a 5400RPM solution.

Now, we need to find a tool to expand the MSV partition and , shazamm, we have a 30GB music partition, instead of the 9GB they have allocated.
But, like I said, most software fails to handle this disk because it has 5 partitions. [b]Who is a hard drive expert than can shed some light on expanding the MSV partition?[/b][/quote]
The unallocated space doesn't matter. I've cloned my Z2 drive using standard ghost copy (which gets rid of that 2mb space) to a bone stock drive and it works perfectly. The windows OS recognizes 4 partitions and everything works fine.

I went with a few different routes yesterday for testing. The extreme route, I got a 7200rpm Seagate Momentus 100G drive. The other route some old 60G drive I found kicking around, not sure of RPM's or what not.

First test, did a straight clone from my virgin Z2 drive onto the 60G drive without changing partition sizes using GHOST. Everything worked perfect. Spent about an hour using this setup, driving, ripping, playing from library, routing using Nav.

Next, I cloned from the virgin Z2 again to the 60G drive, this time I increased MSV partition to make use of all 60G. It took about 10 mins of driving around doing the same test process before the unit started rebooting on it's own.

Seeing as some people have reportedly increased space by 10G (to 19G), I cloned from the virgin Z2 again and only increased the space by 10G. Drove around for about 30 mins doing the same test, and everything was good again.

Onto the 7200rpm drive. I wanted to improve performance so I went and played with the 7200rpm drive.

Cloned the image to standard size, thing rebooted itself every 10 mins. Cloned the image to 100G full size (just for kicks) and it rebooted itself every 10 mins. As an interesting note, the hard drive free space screen shows 48% used with the full use of the 100G drive, even though it was from a virgin image.

So I figured at this point, the 7200 drive made the interface feel faster, but it must be vibrations that's killing it, since it's rebooting at standard partition sizes. So I parked the car and sat in it for 10 mins ripping CD's, and sure enough it rebooted itself.

Next, I thought it was heat. Let the unit cool down completely, turned on AC and blew cold air on the unit. Fired it up, rebooted really fast (like 3 mins into ripping a CD). Pulled the HDD out it was only slightly warm, pretty much cold. So not heat related. At this point, I'm thinking the power draw is too high on the 7200rpm drive.

So, after testing so far, I've come to this conclusion.

You can only increase the MSV partition slightly. The software will get confused with too much free space, reporting incorrect usage, and rebooting on it's own when it encouters a problem.

You can't use 7200rpm drive, well at least not the Seagate Momentus drives. The power draw is too high, unit will reboot randomly.

That's all I got so far, will be testing a few more faster drives hoping to figure it out. For now, I'm driving around with an unknown brand 60G drive that I pulled out of some old laptop, with the MSV partition increased by 10G, free space reported properly, and no unallocated space gap between the 2nd and 3rd partitios.

[Josiah]

Very good observations and testing. Really doesn't make sense why you can extend a partition 10gigs but not at 10+ gigs without causing it to reboot. My knowledge shows it's limitations here, what kind of 'transformer/module' does it use to supply power to the hdd? If we knew the voltage of that we could figure out exactly what we need to swap it with in order to sustain power to the new and higher voltage, higher rpm hdd. However there has to be a deeper explanation as to why it shuts off after 10 mins or so.

[Xartni]

Ok, I've been reading up and am getting ready to make the plunge to a bigger drive.

Can someone tell me if the latest version of Norton Ghost will work? Looking at Symantec's website, it is version 12.0.

Also, looking at the instructions in the first post - my PC does not have a floppy drive, can I leave a DVD-ROM drive connected and use the CDRom Iso (Magic_Boot_Disk_ISO_v2.0)?

Thanks,

Jason

[grahamtwatson]

Just tried to upgrade my Z1 to Z2 and increase to a 40Gb disk at the same time. When I put the new disk in the Z1, it came up with a message "Cannot use HDD" (in three languages).

I had a couple of issues which may be the cause, but would appreciate advice...

1) When I wrote the Z2 image using Acronis, it expanded all the directories to take advantage of the extra space. I used Paragon HD Manager to shrink all but the user partition back to the original size, and take up the extra space with a bigger user partition.
2) The partitions were not names USER etc, they were all named something like "DO NOT DELETE". I didn't change these.
3) Two of the screws attaching the original disk to the carrier would NOT come out, so I put the new disk in without a carrier.

Any idea which of the above might have caused my problem, or if it could have been something else entirely?

BTW, when I put the old disk back in, everything worked perfectly again.

[bobmun]

I know you have to use the hdd holder it engages a switch of some sort.

[jbhorne]

I have compared the original Z1/Z2 hard drive (MK3029GACE) to the replacement that I and a few others are using (MK6034GAX).

The original drive is an "automotive" drive. From the specs, this means that it has a higher temperature rating, both operational and non-operational. Although this is only a "tested rating", it does concern me as the original drive is capable of operating between 3.2-150*F and the replacement 41-131*F. Non-operating, -40-176*F and -4-140*F respectively. Being in a VERY hot climate that I am, it is not uncommon for vehicle interior temperatures to approach the 160*F mark. Yes, you can cook a chicken or an egg in your car, not to mention burn a metal seatbelt mark into your hand (can't even touch a leather steering wheel!) I also wonder about users in very cold climates, that drop well below -4*F.

It is interesting to note that the operating shock is 125Gs HIGHER on the non-automotive drive. I guess this is because laptops will fall farther that a vehicle and hit harder, requiring a higher shock rating.

Also voltage requirements on the 60GB 5400RPM are a lot lower than on the 30GB 4200RPM.

Anyways, let me know what you guys think. Other than the temperature concern, the drive runs great!

[soundfx]

[quote name="jbhorne"]I have compared the original Z1/Z2 hard drive (MK3029GACE) to the replacement that I and a few others are using (MK6034GAX).

The original drive is an "automotive" drive. From the specs, this means that it has a higher temperature rating, both operational and non-operational. Although this is only a "tested rating", it does concern me as the original drive is capable of operating between 3.2-150*F and the replacement 41-131*F. Non-operating, -40-176*F and -4-140*F respectively. Being in a VERY hot climate that I am, it is not uncommon for vehicle interior temperatures to approach the 160*F mark. Yes, you can cook a chicken or an egg in your car, not to mention burn a metal seatbelt mark into your hand (can't even touch a leather steering wheel!) I also wonder about users in very cold climates, that drop well below -4*F.

It is interesting to note that the operating shock is 125Gs HIGHER on the non-automotive drive. I guess this is because laptops will fall farther that a vehicle and hit harder, requiring a higher shock rating.

Also voltage requirements on the 60GB 5400RPM are a lot lower than on the 30GB 4200RPM.

Anyways, let me know what you guys think. Other than the temperature concern, the drive runs great![/quote]

I want to do the same thing that you did, remove the original Z1 HDD and just install this new MK6034GAX unit with the Z2 software preloaded. I am just wondering if you ever had to put the original Z1 HDD back it for any reason? You see I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and in winter it gets cold. So my question is can I go switch between drives when the temperature gets too cold? Can we do this? would there be a lockup problem by switching drives every 6 months? Any input from anyone would be great.

[dprofeta]

[quote name="grahamtwatson"]Just tried to upgrade my Z1 to Z2 and increase to a 40Gb disk at the same time. When I put the new disk in the Z1, it came up with a message "Cannot use HDD" (in three languages).

I had a couple of issues which may be the cause, but would appreciate advice...

1) When I wrote the Z2 image using Acronis, it expanded all the directories to take advantage of the extra space. I used Paragon HD Manager to shrink all but the user partition back to the original size, and take up the extra space with a bigger user partition.
2) The partitions were not names USER etc, they were all named something like "DO NOT DELETE". I didn't change these.
3) Two of the screws attaching the original disk to the carrier would NOT come out, so I put the new disk in without a carrier.

Any idea which of the above might have caused my problem, or if it could have been something else entirely?

BTW, when I put the old disk back in, everything worked perfectly again.[/quote]

I took the plunge and upgraded to an 80gb drive to load the z2 image onto and hopefully increase the music space, which I am still figuring out. Anyway I ran into the same problem as you with only one of my screws not coming out and got stripped and so I called pioneer and ordered a new tray that the hdd screws onto for $10. Now if I ever need to swap back to the original drive I can and I can just pull the one drive and plug in the other without needing to unscrew the drive from the tray.

[dawgbone]

Does anyone know the size of the torx bit needed to get the HDD out? I thought I read it before, but cannot find it for the life of me.

[nyskinsfan]

Torx bit is a T8.

[dawgbone]

[quote name="nyskinsfan"]Torx bit is a T8.[/quote] Hey thanks, I must have every other size torx bit. but that one.

[Passat 05]

'Had the same problem removing the screws that hold the HDD to the mounting plate that others have reported.
Here is a quick way to overcome:
Grind a slot into the screw head with a dremel tool and immediately, while the screw is still hot, use a good fit flat screwdiver and the sucker will come out without effort. :) :idea:

[img]http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r186/eland_photo/Z2hdd.jpg[/img]

Add to FAQ at the top of this thread. :?:

[dawgbone]

I had to do the very same thing.... It is VERY important to have the right size philips bit....As the HDD mounting screws are butter...

[Z1 newbie]

[quote name="Passat 05"]'Had the same problem removing the screws that hold the HDD to the mounting plate that others have reported.
Here is a quick way to overcome:
Grind a slot into the screw head with a dremel tool and immediately, while the screw is still hot, use a good fit flat screwdiver and the succer will come out without effort. :) :idea:

Add to FAQ at the top of this thread. :?:[/quote]
Damn, why didn't I think of that instead of drilling these screws out.
The plate came off but the rest of the screws are still in the HDD. :cry: