fullvietFX

Has it been done?

I was thinking maybe I should switch it for a SSD, somehow remove the old HDD and clone the drive. Put that image onto the SSD and voila, way more music.

billy_goat

It's pointless imo. The only way to get music onto the music box/hard drive is to rip it from a music cd. Can't upload it from usb with mp3's.

I think a lot of people get older generation ipods and leave them hooked up to the car. You can get a 8 or 16gb small used ipod. Loading up mp3's is easier and it still has the sick user interface.

roots4x

The drive IS most likely an SSD. I doubt they put a platter drive in a car that is constantly vibrating, rattling, shaking, exposed to extreme temperatures and exposed to extreme Gs.

That said, it probably isn't hard to do, but it really depends on what type of system they are running. If they are running an ultra custom embedded software, then you might as well forget about trying to upgrade the drive. If it's something like Windows CE, then you might be able to upgrade the drive fairly easily.

JohnEnglish

No, it's a standard platter drive. It's not that difficult to create half decent shock protection.

devil2k

Assuming:
1) he can get the harddrive out
2) the harddrive uses standard connection suchas IDE / SATA / USB / etc
3) the drive is in a common file system format
4) the drive is not encrypted
5) the system stores music in a standard format

Then he wouldn't have to rip form a music CD anymore.

devil2k

google g37 seagate "extreme condition"

see first 2 results

seems to be platter

I'd post links here but I recalled that links to competitor forums aren't allowed

HappyG

If my G is running Windows CE, I'll trade it in right now. Windows CE = Crash. Don't want myself to be in the blue screen of death.

Mudgen

I use a Mach Speed Trio Clip 4Gb MP3 player that works great, holds >100 cds ripped. I also have a 2Gb Coby that works fine (Cobys tend to be better rated than Machs). I just leave the Mach connected to the console USB, and it turns off with the car and starts back up right where it left off, just like a CD player. The Coby behaves the same way, so I suspect any USB MP3 player will work like that.

4drScreamer

My 280GB iPod Classic works just fine connected to the USB. All the wheel controls work the same as the other source options. With currently almost 3000 songs and lots of spare room on the drive, I am never short of music I want to listen to. Commercial free and no XM charges to boot.

I just don't see the benefit of ripping into the car to upgrade a hard drive. Cool to you if you figure it out and it works though!

fullvietFX

I've just searched around a bit more, in a thread on G35Driver there's one guy who took his HDD out. No updates after that though.

G35 Sedan V36 2007- 08 - G35Driver

roots4x

Not necessarily. There are a lot of consumer products based on Windows CE, but you're right, it probably isn't (although it could easily be).

Also, yup, I supposed it probably is a hard drive and not a solid state based on its advertised capacity.

photoalexd

I think I read somewhere that Infiniti is using QNX (Unix based OS). I'm pretty positive it's encrypted, otherwise people would hack it left and right

FYI: QNX got bought by RIM (Blackberry) not a long time ago and their new tablet is running QNX-based OS...

carz

The software does NOT run on Windows CE..........(BMW iDrive does)........our system does infact run on unix....i cant verify if its QNX or not.

Someone did pull out the harddrive, but i dont know if they added a larger one.

You would need to extract the OS image and install it on a new OS

Mudgen

Before SCO comes running in and sues somebody, I'd like to qualify that remark: it's better to say "Unix-like OS" lest anybody think it borrows code from Unix. And it's most accurate to say "Posix compliant", which means that Unix and Linux applications can generally be readily ported to it.

Infiniti is definitely using QNX, according to QNX, although they don't identify specific models. It's unlikely that a manufacturer would use different OS vendors across its model lines, though.

Mudgen

I think BMW dropped Windows CE around 2003-4 and went with VXWorks.

%$#@&* BMW! When I went to verify that, I found that they made a lie of my last post: apparently the base iDrive is still VXWorks but the optional CIC multimedia upgrade is QNX.

As to extracting the OS image, they may be booting from a ROM and not the hard drive. QNX has its own filesystem format, but if you could figure out the partitioning scheme (or it's a standard one) you might be able to pull a drive image and restore it to something larger and then "stretch" partitions. And the OS/programs might or might not choke on them.