Here's a scenario for you folks....

1. i pulled the stock drive from the Z1.
2. i unlocked it using the online service.
3. i disabled the locking using the MHDD tools.
4. Made a backup image of the drive using Acronis.
5. Did a full defrag on all the partitions (using the std windows defrag)
6. placed the drive back in the unit.

Observations: all is good for 4 days with the stock drive... improvement in load speed (i attribute that to the defrag). Once placed back into my PC, drive is happy and still unlocked. :-)

7. Bought a Hitachi Travelstar 7200RPM 60GB drive.... On paper looks WAY better than the Toshiba (withstands 300G vs 200G operational and 800G vs 600G non-operational... Way faster seek times, way less latency).

8. Disable locking using MHDD tools.
9. Restore image from step 4. (automatically extends the partitions to fill the drive).
10. Perform full defrag on all partitions.
11. Replace the stock drive with the newly imaged Hitachi.

Observations: seems to load faster than before and more responsive... all functions seem to work fine.

After about 40 minutes on the road, the GUI froze in the map..... the volume, track, folder buttons work fine... Media/Menu/Map buttons are un-responsive. I am playing music off the drive and it never misses a beat... folders and track buttons work fine...GUI is still frozen....

I'm going to take out the drive tonight and run a full analysis on it using SpinRite and see if there are issues.... The drive really looks a lot better "On Paper" anyway. It almost seems as though its the software looking for something like a volume name and it throws an unhandled exception and freezes... The volumes were renamed when Acronis restored the image.... i will try "cloning" the drive next, if SpinRite does not turn-up anything....

Sam

Take 2,

I used the 9/23/05 compilation of the Knoppix 4.0 DVD....

I Installed the Toshiba Stock Drive on the Master of the 2nd Channel and the Hitachi on the slave of the same channel.

1. I load Knoppix....

2. VERY IMPORTANT, enabled DMA transfer for the IDE devices... enables the xfer to go literally 20x faster in mycase.

3. My Hitachi is hdd and my Toshiba is hdc.

4. use FDisk to delete the previous partitions on my Hitachi

4. run dd as follows: dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdd bs=16K (16K seems to give the best performance on my system...YMMV)

5. takes about 28 minutes and it's done! (at about 20Mb/sec). Without DMA enabled would have been literally almost 20x slower!!!

6. install the drive in the AVICZ1.

Observations: to early to tell, but looks promising.... everything is EXACTLY like it was when it last booted.... Loads at least 2x faster than with the Toshiba drive.... no irregular behaviour at all so far....

The true test will be tomorrow when i take it on my commute!

The additional note that i thought was encouraging was that the drive mounted exactly like the Toshiba did on Knoppix.... It recognized the various volumes but was unable to recognize the actual format enough to mount it.

maybe, just maybe.....

So how did it go? I'd love to be able to put in a backup drive so I don't have to worry about messing up my original drive.

I could actually get back to hacking the AC3 file format on the Z1 too... this iPod interface is killing me.

:? well, the navi screen locked up within about 25 minutes of driving.....

The curious thing is how it locks-up....

1. the GUI is frozen at what ever position you were when it froze.....no screen corruption or anything else strange.

2. volume/track/folders work fine.

3. internal music db continues playing flawlessly without ever missing a beat.

4. cannot change source.

I tend to concur with DucatiBoy that it's the environmental tolerance specs for the drive.... the type of freezing is just plain strange.... the logs suggest the exception lies in NAVI.EXE

I do believe 'dd' made a PERFECT copy of the drive..... perhaps there is something special with TFAT partitions..... i'm going to play more, at the moment it looks as though it's the drive specs.

Sam

Yeah, that's exactly what I get.

I think the next test is to buy the exact same drive as is in the Z1. If that drive works then we can assume that there is something looking at the drive model or maybe it's a hack using some weird routine or value stored on the drive. If that drive DOESN'T work then we know we just aren't copying the drive correctly.

You should go back and read the test that a lot of us have already done to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

Hey Cirbirus,
First off, I am sorry that you got so upset with me in the other msg. I didn't see the other post that you made in regards to the AC3 format. I am just tossing some ideas out there that’s all.

So anyways,
I wonder if the HDD lockup issues that you guys are running into are HDD firmware related and or possibly head unit firmware related. Companies like the one I work for, do some things like that to ensure that people stick to our proprietary hardware. If the unit is making calls (procedures) to the firmware on the HDD and the HDD cannot answer them, the unit will stop functioning. It makes sense with the issues you guys are referring to. Especially in regards to the navigation locking up the OS but the rest if the items working flawlessly. Anyways, just a thought.

As I had mentioned before, has anyone thought of logging and observing what is going on with the HDD via emulation?

You could plug in the HDD to a laptop, then have another cable connected to the Z1 and log the activities up until lockup to see what is going on.

Once again, just another thought.

No worries bdmpastx. It just annoyed me that you hadn't bothered to read the posts in the thread in which you were commenting; pet peeve of mine.

bdmpastx said:

I wonder if the HDD lockup issues that you guys are running into are HDD firmware related and or possibly head unit firmware related. Companies like the one I work for, do some things like that to ensure that people stick to our proprietary hardware. If the unit is making calls (procedures) to the firmware on the HDD and the HDD cannot answer them, the unit will stop functioning.

That's what I was afraid of.

bdmpastx said:

As I had mentioned before, has anyone thought of logging and observing what is going on with the HDD via emulation?

You could plug in the HDD to a laptop, then have another cable connected to the Z1 and log the activities up until lockup to see what is going on.

Good idea, sounds like you know how to do that so please do and let us know how it turns out. ;)

Still think it's the drive specs themselves...... since the thing seems to lock-up more often on my commute home vs into work....i'm pretty sure it's heat tolerance and not G shock tolerance (since the Hitachi has better shock tolerance on paper)....

In the morning, it's in the 60's here in San Diego.... on my commute home, the inside of the car could be in the 90s or 100s standing all day.... I get 10 minutes of no-freeze times on my commute home with the hitachi in it..... on my way in to work in the morning it could go 40 minutes without a glitch!

Mine locks up in under a min while sitting in my garage. All I have to do is start changing radio functions.