propman07 said:

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.

I have increased the size of the music partion using Acronis during the restore image process to 37gb (all reamaing space on a 60gb dfive). I have had over 300 CD's on it for well over a year and have NEVER had a reboot problem...

Hey Guys,

Trying to turn off security on my Toshiba drive to put the z3 OS on. I have all other drives unplugged from my tower. Using the IDE adapater, the Toshiba drive is plugged into the Master ATA plug.

I also have the boot disk in the CD drive. It goes through it's boot process, says no hard drive found quickly and some other text flys by. Then it goes to the MHDD prompt. So I type "EID", and it says "bad command or file name".

Above that on the screen it says:

"Disk Contains:

list of things.......


Your CD/DVD-ROM (if any) is mapped to Z:
MHDD is located here: C:\MHDD
C:\MHDD>EID
Bad Command or File name"

What is going wrong here?

Thanks Duke

type "mhdd" then click 'enter' to start the program, then continue with the instructions...

garrettoomey said:

type "mhdd" then click 'enter' to start the program, then continue with the instructions...

So you're saying at the "C:\MHDD>" prompt, I should type "MHDD" and hit enter to start the program? At which point I will be entering in "EID" etc in the list of instructions on page 1 of this thread?

I was starting to think it was because I needed a bios update from Abit for my Abit I35 pro mobo.

F150 Duke said:

garrettoomey said:

type "mhdd" then click 'enter' to start the program, then continue with the instructions...

So you're saying at the "C:\MHDD>" prompt, I should type "MHDD" and hit enter to start the program? At which point I will be entering in "EID" etc in the list of instructions on page 1 of this thread?

I was starting to think it was because I needed a bios update from Abit for my Abit I35 pro mobo.

You are correct. type "mhdd" at the prompt.

garrettoomey said:

F150 Duke said:

garrettoomey said:

type "mhdd" then click 'enter' to start the program, then continue with the instructions...

So you're saying at the "C:\MHDD>" prompt, I should type "MHDD" and hit enter to start the program? At which point I will be entering in "EID" etc in the list of instructions on page 1 of this thread?

I was starting to think it was because I needed a bios update from Abit for my Abit I35 pro mobo.

You are correct. type "mhdd" at the prompt.

Sounds good, I'll give it a try after work. Thanks for the advice! The only final hicup I see for me will be trying to use one of those free downloads to expand the music partition.

I wish I had seen your ad a couple months back when I bought this drive (originally to upgrade in January to the z2 but put it off). I'd jump all over that offer as a convenience to save time, but alas I wouldn't have anything to do with the $70 drive that is sitting on my desk.

Well I type MHDD and it pulls up the numbers 1 thru etc. With nothing listed. I press shift plus F3 and still nothing pulls up.

The Toshiba drive is plugged into the adapter and then into the master cord with the adapter power plugged in.

At the MHDD, I still hit #3 even though it was blank and it took me to the MHDD prompt in blue. I typed "EID" and it said "Drive not ready in red".

I feel like it cannot see the drive. I am wondering if I'm having a similar problem as another guy previously who needed to update his bios.



I have an Abit I35 pro mobo.

Version 16 was released on 3/18/2008 which is after I purchased the mobo but not long enough for me to think they updated it. It has the following updates.

Update AHCI ROM version.
Update CPU Micro code.
Enhanced 45nm CPU compatibility.
Fixed C1E function abnormality.
Fixed Quick Power On Self Test function abnormality.
BIOS compiled date: 03/18/2008.

1. I formatted a CD, burned the 5 files to the CD.
2. Tried to boot from CD but that didn't work.
3. Using my Windows Vista 64 bit OS, I went to Run->cmd
4. then switched over to the cd drive and typed "runme" per the instructions from abit. I came up with an error that this was made for a 16 bit os and that I should contact the manuf as it was not compatible with my 64 bit os.


I'm fresh out of ideas. Any help?

Not sure why, but the link for the hard drive unlocker on this thread does not include the AVIC411 discount. Found this on the Z1/Z2 to Z3 thread, hope it saves someone a few bucks:

http://www.hdd-tools.com/products/rrs/l ... ic411.html

Mossman said:

Okay, finally got my Z1 stock HD to unlock. I had to use my work's Dell machine running Win2K to do it. It's not that easy, either. For some reason, the system will not boot when the drive is installed. I had to boot the machine and install the drive after it is on. Basically, hot swap it. I thought I was going to fry the drive but it's all good. Just thought I would give my 2 cents to someone who might be having the same problem. Thanks.

THANK YOU. My bios would see the secondary IDE master drive as the Z1 drive, but windows wouldn't. I started it up with the CD attached, then hotswapped the cable over to the Z1 drive. At first it didn't work, but then I scanned for changes in device manager. Drive showed up! Not sure why secondary IDE master wasn't coming up before...

Is there any other program that can disable security on the drive?
MHDD won't turn off security on my original, unlocked Toshiba drive. I get "Device Error". I tried on two machines so far. Perhaps the problem is I have the drive connected to Primary Master, but none of my computers have a Secondary Master because they all only have one IDE port. I've been searching Google for an alternative program and come up with nothing.

It's usually harder to unlock than it is to remove security. Are you sure the drive is being recognized? Are you booting from a floppy or a CD? You can send it to me and I'll disable the security for you, it takes all of about 10 seconds.

Yeah, it's correctly recognized by all but my Intel G33-based machine, MHDD didn't see any drives on that one. I tried both boot floppy and CD. Only my AMD machine has a floppy drive so that's the only one I tried the floppy on. I've tried it in many machines so far:

AMD X2 w/AMD 690G chipset
Jetway 945GM motherboard
Intel G33 w/C2D CPU
IBM Thinkpad X20
IBM Thinkpad T43

4 of them see it, and the 4 that can see it can read the info from it just fine, but can't change the config. Could I be doing it wrong? Once I'm in MHDD and select the correct drive, I just type CONFIG. At the end when it asks if I want to make changes, I type Y. I enter through everything except the "Set security off y/N" where I type Y. At that point it says something about calculating checksum and writing configuration failed and "Device error". I tried doing EID first like the first post says, but that makes no difference.
I even tried the commandline switch /ENABLEPRIMARY and that didn't help.

No idea... when you type in EID, do you see the security line at the bottom? It'll say something like security off (if it's on), and won't even be there if security is truly off. Also, when you type pwd, does it say the feature is deactivated or does it actually give you the option to put in a password?

Yeah, it says "Security: high, OFF". If I type PWD, it does give me the option to put in a password.

I also tried a USB adapter, I don't even have access to CONFIG with that. :(

Then it's definitely still got security on it. Again, I'd be happy to try and disable security for you. Shoot me a PM.

Thanks for the offer, but I was too impatient. I just went ahead and let the Z2 relock the drive. I did the cheap $5 unlock so it's no big deal. I didn't care about salvaging the library because I just got the Z2 from eBay and didn't care for the seller's taste in music. The Z3 image works fine and I won't need to worry about unlocking it until Pioneer updates the maps which probably won't be till next year.

It's strange though, MHDD worked fine to disable the security lock on one of my Hitachi 2.5" laptop drives so it turns out my computer has no compatibility issues with MHDD. It just doesn't like the AVIC's Toshiba drive. I wonder if it has anything to do with the drive firmware, RB102A? Could it be possible that a batch of newer drives cannot have security turned off?

That's strange, maybe you're right about the version of HDD. Anyone else having this problem? Like you said, for $5 an upgrade that's still not a bad deal! Even at $43 to keep your music, not bad!

garrettoomey said:

propman07 said:

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.

I have increased the size of the music partion using Acronis during the restore image process to 37gb (all reamaing space on a 60gb dfive). I have had over 300 CD's on it for well over a year and have NEVER had a reboot problem...

I'm curious as to what method you used to increase the MUSIC Partition size. What version/flavor of Acronis did you use?

I was unsuccessful in getting Acronis (Disk Director) to increase the partition size on my 60GB Toshiba after fully restoring the Z3 image to it.
I'm sure the problem has something to do with the 4 partition limit on a FAT32 disk.
So here is something that I plan to try:
1. Restore only the first two Z3 partitions with Acronis.
2. Then, with Windows Disk Manager, create a 37GB (or smaller) partition from the remaining unallocated space.
3. Using Acronis again, restore the 3rd Z3 partition (Music) to the partition created wtih Windows Disk Manager. The partition should remain whatever size you created it at.
4. Restore the final Z3 partition to the remaining unallocated space.

Theoretically, this should work...but not sure if it will have a negative outcome once the drive is installed in the Z unit.
Has anyone else tried it this way? I'm sure there is an easier way to do this but I must not have the proper software.

I use acronis, and restore each partition individually. Acronis then allows your to select the size of the new partitions.

Here are the stock partition sizes:
LDATA 17.52 gb GPS
SDATA 572.8 mb System files
MSV 9.308 gb Music
USER 572.8 mb Personal Files

Choose to restore each partition individually, then select the new partition size. You need to do them in order. When you get to MSV, just make sure that you leave enough unpartitioned space for the USER partition.

This can all be done in one recovery run. After you complete the first partition setup, Acronis askes if you want to restore another partition, just say 'yes'.

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.

P.S.
After installing the new hard drive, is it necessary to perform a full reset of the Z with the reset button?


Thanks again!

You do not need to do a reset when replacing the HD.

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.

Did you use acronis and expand the music partition during the restore process? I was not sure if my instructions were very clear.

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.

Z1 newbie said:

Passat 05 said:

'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. :?:

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:

hahahah! I did the same thing :oops: