has anyone tried to take theirs out? I noticed when opening the nav to put in a cd there is a spot for the HDD, but i didn't look close enough to see if it could be easily removed or not. I was curious because I don't have many CDs so I would rather just plug the HDD up to my computer and put all my songs straight onto the HDD. Plus I'd like to see why there is only 6GB for the music server on a 30GB hdd.

 

the rest of that space is being used up by the navigation software and maps... supposedly...

 

It wont read in just any ole computer.

 

I wouldn't say it "wont" read in any ole computer. I would say its more like it wont read anything intelligible in any computer you have. I havn't taken many computer classes, but I do know that the standard formats are FAT32 and NTFS for formatting an HDD. Any computer can read that. With that said, it may be possible to get a larger HDD and copy files from the MMCS HDD to a larger HDD. Only problem there is if made their HW and SW only work with a 30Gb HDD.

The HDD in the MMCS is a Toshiba MK3029GAC. PM me for a pic of the HDD.

 

there is a thread on another mitsubishi forum about someone that cracked the HDD and its a long drawn out process to actually do this....

 

how do you figure?

i work with computers every day, i'm sure i can figure out a way to read the drive. i'm just curious how its partitioned and if the nav really takes up 20ish GB.

anyone know if the drive is SATA or IDE? i would assume SATA and if so i can just plug it right into my computer and read it. then maybe i can dump my music files on it

 

Here is what I found on the drive.

* 30 GB formatted capacity
* UDMA/100 data transfer rate
* 4200 RPM spindle speed
* 8 MB buffer
* IDE interface
* 9.5 mm drive height
* 200g operational shock
* 800g non-operational shock
* 16 ms average seek time
* 7.14 ms average latency

I also found this drive.

http://www.impactcomputers.com/mk-1923fcv.html

stanrc, do you think this could would work. I don't think reading will be a problem because i've seen usb plugables to read hard drives.

 

oh i'm almost positive i can read the drive.

im really surprised mitsubishi went with the IDE drive as opposed to sata.

i don't have any ide cables but i can find or buy an external enclosure for it to hook it up. i'm not too worried about trying to swap to a bigger HDD, i'd be happy just dumping a few GB of my music straight on it instead of having to burn CD after CD of it.

 

That was my thought exactly, a lot better than makin freakin cds.

 

aint gonna work like that homies. You should have seen the procedure to get into this thing. It was un freckin real. Im went to VT for computer science. Im tellin you, the ***** were hackers with absolutely nothin to do. If I can find the thread Ill post it.


Oh oh uh hu here we go... http://www.mitsubishiforum.com/m_182503/tm.htm

let me know when you got it working, ok.

 

brilliant! thanks! i'll let you know what i find.

 

wow crazy stuff. i wasn't expecting the hard drive to be locked down so tightly. props to them

 

i told u man. Mitsu got medival on that ***.

 

uhhh... sure it will... you just need to know your way around linux. They give you the password to disable security on the drive in the first post. They also tell you how the drive is partitioned up, and let us know that the music partition is only 5.4GB....

There's a lot of good info in that thread.... I'm still reading ...

 

oh yeah, they also tell you that the file system is a QNX derivative in the first post. Good luck reading that with a Windows box. Linux can though...

Later in the thread they figure out the OS running it all is Windows CE.

If they keep at it, eventually someone will make some tools that can be used to easily modify the various settings that are controlled by the MMCS, and make it easy to 'upgrade' the HDD to something with more storage space.

Given most of the work is happening in Linux right now, I would bet the first tools to appear will be Linux based...