I don't see where anyone has even made a backup of the drive yet.

Please if someone has let me know how to do that.
Then I would like to try a larger format. But for now how di I clone my drive.

There has to be something in there that tells it to shut down if it sees greater than 30 GB. If you clone a drive, you are doing just that, an exact duplicate. So I figure there must be some lil' script in there to check for 30 GB's.

DataAve said:

There has to be something in there that tells it to shut down if it sees greater than 30 GB. If you clone a drive, you are doing just that, an exact duplicate. So I figure there must be some lil' script in there to check for 30 GB's.

Anyone have a 30 GB drive to test it out and see if it works? Ideally a 7200 RPM one.....maybe a lot of the lag in certain areas would be fixed this way rather than using the slow HDD pioneer suplied with the unit.

jkawar said:

DataAve said:

There has to be something in there that tells it to shut down if it sees greater than 30 GB. If you clone a drive, you are doing just that, an exact duplicate. So I figure there must be some lil' script in there to check for 30 GB's.

Anyone have a 30 GB drive to test it out and see if it works? Ideally a 7200 RPM one.....maybe a lot of the lag in certain areas would be fixed this way rather than using the slow HDD pioneer suplied with the unit.

I tried that. It didn't work any better than the 80 gig I tried to use.

It might be the fact I was using ghost. I know with my thinkpad laptop, ghost is a pain to get an image that will actually boot. I have acronis and casper and will try making images with those as well. I'm pretty much done testing the bypass on the new units and that seems to be the ticket. Once things calm down a bit, I'll get back to playing with the hard drive.

ducatiboy said:

ghost is a pain to get an image that will actually boot. I have acronis and casper and will try making images with those as well.

I don't have experience with either of these, but if anyone is on a mac or a linux box, the available tools are a bit more... atomic. Using dd is probably the best thing out there for imaging an entire drive device to a file, and then you can play with the file itself from then on. Similar to how ghost works, but without any windows api's to go through, you're getting direct drive access to image and restore, bit for bit.

Ducati, do you have access to a linux box? Does Pulp or BigFloppy? What ever happened to the guy with the mac that seemed to be the first guy to get his drive read? I can walk people through a dd process. I'd do it with my drive, but I'm stuck with my laptop in Florida for the next week, with no way to mount the drive.

Also, you can download a linux liveCD booter that will give you access to these tools on a pc - you just pop the cd in, it boots into linux.

-Craig

udecker said:

Ducati, do you have access to a linux box? Does Pulp or BigFloppy? What ever happened to the guy with the mac that seemed to be the first guy to get his drive read? I can walk people through a dd process. I'd do it with my drive, but I'm stuck with my laptop in Florida for the next week, with no way to mount the drive.

Also, you can download a linux liveCD booter that will give you access to these tools on a pc - you just pop the cd in, it boots into linux.

-Craig

I've got a RaQ3 running Sun Cobalt OS sat here, gonna need instructions on how to use dd... (can only telnet into the b*tch though... it's a headless box)

I have a thinkpad also and never had a problem with Ghost. I also choose not to have the IBM crap to not partition and name my hard drive to "Secure Drive". Keep in mind, I took most of the IBM Bloatware out of it, so speeds are mucho pleasure. I kept the fingerprint schtuff. :wink: Do you know what brand of HD it uses (the Avic-Z1). From what I am reading, it is winblows automotive as the op sys.

BigFloppy said:

I've got a RaQ3 running Sun Cobalt OS sat here, gonna need instructions on how to use dd... (can only telnet into the b*tch though... it's a headless box)

Ok wow - super quick dd tutorial.

The command is "dd"... It takes two parameters that we care about: "if" - which is Input File, and "of" - which it output file.

Devices on UNIX/linux-like systems are the in the /dev directory, and are named as follows: /dev/hdX#, where the X and # are letters (for which device in the chain it is) and numbers (for the partition numbers). (I'm not 100% positive what SunOS calls it, though)

For example on Linux, if you insert the HD into your machine (unlocked, of course), there should be devices named *something like* /dev/hdb0, /dev/hdb1, etc for each partition.

To duplicate these partitions individually, use the following commands:

dd if=/dev/hdb0 of=parition0file.img

dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=parition1file.img

dd if=/dev/hdb2 of=parition2file.img

... and so on, for each parition that is available.

where the value for "if" is whatever your drive shows up as. (Quick hint - if you print the whole /dev/ directory before you connect the drive, and then again after it's connected, you'll know exactly what the OS calls it in the /dev directory.)

Do this above code for each parition, so you'll have as many files as there are partitions. (If you leave off the partition number, you should be able to image the entire drive into one file. This, of course, will be a 30GB large file!)

To restore, swap the "if" and the "of."

-Craig

OK... need to get larger drive into the cobalt and reformat it.. I'm gonna grab me a 120gb drive this afternoon and go for it

Will advise (but will probably be tomorrow before I've got any news

Andy

BigFloppy said:

OK... need to get larger drive into the cobalt and reformat it.. I'm gonna grab me a 120gb drive this afternoon and go for it

Will advise (but will probably be tomorrow before I've got any news

Andy

Also - many utilities for hacking a TiVo would work great for this purpose - do a search for copying drives and expanding the images. dd copies bit for bit, so you can't change partition sizes (it's a file copy utility, and UNIX can treat block devices like hard drives as files). TiVo hacking utilities, however, have been designed exactly for the purpose we're looking for - resizing partitions, copying data over and preserving system files, etc.

and PLEASE be careful with dd. If you set "of" to be one of the /dev block devices and it's the wrong one (like your main hard drive), it'll write right over everything without warning.

-Craig

I'm back from vacation and caught up on most of my other work and can mess with this some if anybody has something they want me to try.

To the new names on the board, I'm the one with the only known Z1 that allows larger/different drives to be installed.

Now the bad news. I got pissed at my corvette, or more specifically, GM for what they are doing to the pricing (dealers are offering $6500 off a new fully loaded 2007 - assholes), so when a dealer made me an offer higher than I could go buy the same model used from the autotrader I jumped at it. I felt like I was dumping a losing stock before it got worse. Sadly I replaced it with a 2006 Honda accord V6 and I don't see a decent way to install the Z1 (the only kit I've seen for double din leaves the stock radion installed so you end up with 2 head units- LOL). I may be selling the Z1 but until I fully research the possibilities on installing it I can run it on the bench to do some testing.

Has any one tried "ophcrack" http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/ , to crack the password and get this drive unlocked for free? I just heard of he program and heard it does a very goodjob. It's linux based and all you need to do is download the iso file, burn to cd and boot from it. I'd try it, but I don't have an adapter at the time to hook up the drive to my computer.

Unfortunately, ophcrack is for Windows Login passwords, not for hard drive passwords.

Locked hard drives will give you a certain number of guesses, after which the drive needs to be reset to try again.. so brute-forcing a password isn't gonna be easy.

Desktop hard-drives manufactured by Seagate have a Serial-port interface if you are willing to build an adapter circuit.. but it's not known if an equivalent interface exists on their Notebook drives. Apparently, you can issue instructions over this serial interface to clobber the password. This doesn't help for the original Z1 drives (they're not manufactured by Seagate), but may be helpful for upgraded drives if you accidentally allow the Z1 to lock it.

'Best bet to unlock the Z1 is to use the $50 (or so) password unlocking service. Anything else is inconvenient (hot-swapping rig) or involves expensive equipment (bus sniffer).

Pulp_Fiction said:

Sadly I replaced it with a 2006 Honda accord V6 and I don't see a decent way to install the Z1 (the only kit I've seen for double din leaves the stock radion installed so you end up with 2 head units- LOL). I may be selling the Z1 but until I fully research the possibilities on installing it I can run it on the bench to do some testing.

DON'T DO IT! YOU'VE BEEN INSTRUMENTAL WITH US GUYS ON HERE... WE'LL HELP IF WE CAN FROM THIS END

I heard from a little birdie that you are on the right track. From what I hear you need to do some reverse engineering for the mp3's, It will not be easy but it is possible.

You will get it soon

As I slip away into the dark again. :D

Cosmic Gecko said:

Unfortunately, ophcrack is for Windows Login passwords, not for hard drive passwords.

Locked hard drives will give you a certain number of guesses, after which the drive needs to be reset to try again.. so brute-forcing a password isn't gonna be easy.

Desktop hard-drives manufactured by Seagate have a Serial-port interface if you are willing to build an adapter circuit.. but it's not known if an equivalent interface exists on their Notebook drives. Apparently, you can issue instructions over this serial interface to clobber the password. This doesn't help for the original Z1 drives (they're not manufactured by Seagate), but may be helpful for upgraded drives if you accidentally allow the Z1 to lock it.

'Best bet to unlock the Z1 is to use the $50 (or so) password unlocking service. Anything else is inconvenient (hot-swapping rig) or involves expensive equipment (bus sniffer).

I believe that the HDD in the XBox360 is a Seagate laptop drive. I know that they have some user made hardware to interface that with the 360. That could be worth checking out to see if it gets anywhere.

-Litos

This kit is for a single din unit, but might be able to be modified to hold a Z1....... http://www.metraonline.com/product_list ... %20climate)&type=0

Hitachi revs up new hard drives for cars


As cars become more computerized--offering such features as navigation, multimedia and communications systems--the gear that goes into them is becoming better designed for the rigors of the road.
With that notion in mind, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced Friday that it will offer two new hard drives designed specifically to handle the jostle of a bumpy, swervy ride.

The Endurastar J4K50 is designed to withstand temperatures as low as minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit and as high as 185 degrees, and can operate at altitudes ranging from 300 meters below sea level to 5,000 meters above. The Enduraster N4K50 is designed to operate at temperatures ranging from minus 3 degrees to 158 degrees Fahrenheit, and at altitudes up to 3,000 meters, according to Hitachi GST.

Both car drives have a maximum storage capacity of 50GB and are designed to withstand relatively hard shocks from vibration and other motion, according to the company. Fluid dynamic bearings are used in the motors, as opposed to ball bearings, for more stable operation.

Hitachi GST also announced a slimmer addition to its CinemaStar hard drive line that will fit in slender digital video recorders, according to the company.

The CinemaStar C5K160 features a 2.5-inch disk drive with a capacity of 160GB. The drive uses "perpendicular" storage technology, which stacks bits vertically rather than on a flat plane, allowing more data to fit on the disk. The drive also requires only 5 volts of direct current, as opposed to the 12 volts required for some 3.5-inch drives. The CinemaStar C5K160 will be available in the first half of 2007, according to a company statement.

Pricing for these three drives will be announced closer to their release date, according to a Hitachi GST spokeswoman. The company said that the car drives will be available for after-market installation, not just as factory-installed options on new vehicles.

For those who have tried imaging their hard drive and it didn't work.....did you happens to use a hash program such as MD5 or SHA-1 to verify the copy is an exact copy?

Yep, I hashed the files. And I had Pulp hash his too against mine. No differences (except the files that actually change like Audio db files).

Finally got around to putting my Z1 into the car this past weekend.

I did a bit-for-bit copy of an original virgin image (via dd in linux) onto a 100-Gig Seagate drive (leaving 70Gigs unaccounted for, for now -- I just wanted to make sure the image was usable.). Everything worked great while I had the Z1 hooked up to the bench power supply.

Everything also worked great when the unit was in the car -- until I started driving around. Then the unit would randomly freeze up regardless of what operation I was trying -- navigation, A/V, play a dvd.

This leads me to wonder if the "freezing" problem has more to do with the (non-Automotive rated) hard-drive's inferior ability to withstand vibrations, because I can reset the Z1 unit back to a working-state by cycling power to it. Perhaps it's a combination of the HD's poor responsiveness (it has to pause until it can correctly read the sector), along with the Z1's software freaking out from timeout issues? Hmm...

On a side note... I gave up on the password-sniffing rig for now, as my logic analyzer seems to think some data lines are floating, and I can't pinpoint the reasons for it at the moment.. probably need to add some resistors to pull the signal up or down... *grr*. I'll probably take a long break from that and work on an FPGA-based solution after the holidays.

Deep Throat Jr said:

I heard from a little birdie that you are on the right track. From what I hear you need to do some reverse engineering for the mp3's, It will not be easy but it is possible.

You will get it soon

As I slip away into the dark again. :D

If you know something we don't it would be nice to share instead of giving false encouragment and cryptic advice.....

I know EVERYONE wants to be able to load MP3's on the HDD...It's SEEMS like it would be as easy as figuring out what type of compression Pioneer uses and duplicating it, but, either way...

I WILL GLADY PAY FOR ANYONE who can figure this out, and I'll pay well!

Getting MP3s onto the Z1 is being worked on, but it's a slow-going process.

My approach (work in progress):
* Mount the 4 partitions unlocked HD under Linux (/mnt/z1/[SDATA, etc..])
* rsync --progress -a /mnt/z1/* /mnt/z1copy
* Reinstall the HD into the Z1, and have it extract a CD
* Put the drive back to the Linux box.
* rsync --progress -a -n /mnt/z1/* /mnt/z1copy <-- -n = "dry run"

At this point, I'd know exactly which files have been changed or added, and then I can copy both versions to a workarea for further analysis in a Hex Editor.

I still think it's just a matter of identifying the Catalog files, and deciphering the format. The first experiment is to replace an *.AAC file with an MP3 file of something else, and then HexEdit the AAC file's entry in the Catalog File to the MP3 file's filename.

If the Z1 plays the MP3, then bingo, we're golden -- we'd know that the Z1 is capable of playing MP3s from the hard drive. After that, it's a simple matter of writing an application to drop the MP3 files and update the Catalog files. Though, everyone's still on their own to get the drives unlocked in the first place..

what about the HDD not playing an MP3, but finding out what format it WILL play and converting MP3's to that format and uploading those files to the HDD??

Cosmic Gecko said:

Getting MP3s onto the Z1 is being worked on, but it's a slow-going process.

...

I still think it's just a matter of identifying the Catalog files, and deciphering the format. The first experiment is to replace an *.AAC file with an MP3 file of something else, and then HexEdit the AAC file's entry in the Catalog File to the MP3 file's filename.

I don't think that's going to work because the existing ac3 files are a modified version and you can't just swap them out with a standard ac3 file. Basically they removed all the format information. I was close to getting the format of the files on the Z1 but I lost interest when I was unable to replace my hard drive due to the crashing problem.

Cosmic Gecko said:

If the Z1 plays the MP3, then bingo, we're golden --

It won't.

Cosmic Gecko said:

we'd know that the Z1 is capable of playing MP3s from the hard drive. After that, it's a simple matter of writing an application to drop the MP3 files and update the Catalog files. Though, everyone's still on their own to get the drives unlocked in the first place..

Sorry but that's just not going to work for the reasons described.