Just because I thought it worth giving it a try I replaced my Columbus HDD with an 80 Gig drive.

I'm just loading the firmware now (1024 for starters)...we'll see if it works soon.

I have to say it's not for the feint hearted as I had to disassemble the unit completely to the bare chassis get to the one final screw that holds the HDD bracket in place.

As far as I could tell from taking the unit apart it is designed for a very specific build order for speed. It is a bit of a bugger to take apart. The design uses twisted metal tabs from the chassis passing through slots in the boards to secure the logic boards in place together with screws.

The OEM HDD is a Hitachi Endurastar J4K30 mechanism with a spin speed of 4200rpm. It is specced to have an operating temp range of -20 to 85 degrees c, It also has higher rated shock handling than a standard laptop drive with shock sensors for data integrity. Power rating is 5v @ 1.0A

I replaced it with a Hitachi HTS541680J9AT00 mechanism which is 5400rpm spin speed and has an operating temp range of 5 to 55 degrees c. Power rating is 5v @ 600mA and is reputed to run 10% cooler than other drives.

I'll road test it for a week or two to see if there are any shock or heat issues. I fully expect it to crap out with heat but I had the 80 Gig hanging around so thought it worth a try.

More later on how the extra capacity is handled by the RNS510 and if there are any other issues.

Mark

Update

Firmware loaded without hitch. HDD has to be raw and unpartitioned for this to work. The Columbus Firmware load partitions the disk into two areas, one for maps and one for music. the ratio is somewhere around 35/65 so with an 80 Gig HDD you end up with close to 50 Gig for music.

I'll soon find out how it copes with pot holes and warm weather.

Nice work! Did you take piccies at different stages of the stripdown? Get 'em posted!

Unfortunately I didn't but I will when I strip it down after the HDD crashes and burns and I have to put the original back in

What I can do is suggest a procedure with instructions to avoid all the niggles I had (when I get the time).

Anyone brave enough and who knows enough about how to handle static sensitive parts and is familiar with laptop ribbon cables and connectors could probably do it with few problems.

What's important to note though is the 80 Gig drive I used is from the same manufacturer (Hitachi) and has the same drive geometry as the original 30 Gig OEM drive - 16383 Cylinders, 16 Heads, 63 Sectors. That may be important to the BIOS of the RNS main board in recognising the drive and handling the extra capacity. Although I can't think of any technical reason why any 2.5" ATA drive wouldn't be recognised. There may be an upper limit to partition size the RNS can map but that's anyone's guess (unless they work for Continental)

It will be interesting to see if a standard laptop HDD can handle the shock of being in a car. The HDD is mounted vertically with the interface at the bottom so that must help prevent the heads crashing.

I've been running it on the bench all day and it seems to run cooler than it did (the new drive draws 40% less current and is claimed to run 10% cooler). The real test will be when it's in the enclosed space of a dash surround.

Anyone who thinks they want to try this should probably wait to see if my Columbus has turned into complete disaster of smoke and ruin! I'l post the results of my road test over the next few weeks.

Nice work that. Hopefully all will be well.

Update.

So far so good.

I've been driving my usual 50 mile round trip to work and back over London roads...pot holes every 10 yards, some of them a foot deep and no grinding or crunching noises from the HDD. Lots of f'ing and blinding about the state of our roads from me as per usual.

We'll se how we go over the next couple of week before I give it the all clear.

The only real problem I have is trying to find 50 Gigs worth of music I actually want to listen to.

Best Regards,

Mark

I hope you can give me advise about my HDD. After updating the firmware from 2660 to 2760 the system keeps asking for navi cd/dvd. When I put the disc in nothing happens. It does not ask if i want to copy, it just uses the disc for navigation. How can I copy the dvd to my harddrive again??

I tried renaming the dvd label to higher number

I tried resetting the system

I tried downgrading

Nothing helps!! Hope you can help me!!

Ralph

Could I politely suggest that you keep hold of your old drive.

When you start hitting high summer temperatures and low winter temperatures with high humidity, your hard drive isn't going to like you for putting it in a car.

Okey, after a call with Continental, I know what causes the problems!

They have a system for combinations. So for example type 1T0035680A with HW 11 can only work with firmware 2684.

If you update the firmware anyway, you get problems like poor signal of GPS, not reading navi harddisk, e.d.

Could I politely suggest that you keep hold of your old drive.

When you start hitting high summer temperatures and low winter temperatures with high humidity, your hard drive isn't going to like you for putting it in a car.

Thanks for the polite message but please read my posts again.

Quotes;

"I fully expect it to crap out with heat"

"I'll soon find out how it copes with pot holes and warm weather".

"... after the HDD crashes and burns and I have to put the original back in."

"Anyone who thinks they want to try this should probably wait to see if my Columbus has turned into complete disaster of smoke and ruin!"

I am a field service engineer dealing with high end digital audio consoles installed in outside broadcast trucks so I am taking a calculated risk. Please see my post for the specification of the original hard drive and the one I used as a replacement - temp tolerances and shock tolerances etc.

Anyway, to date there have been no problems. Today was warm and the internal temperature of my car was around 40+ degrees (Celcius), outside temperature was 25 degrees. The Columbus internal temperatures are around 38 degrees for the power supply and 36 degrees for the main board after a few minutes of running. Air-con got those down to 35 degrees after five minutes. Remember that the centre dash vents are immediately above the ICE cubby and the pipes help cool the cavity. In all honesty if any HDD rated for regular laptop use suffers a serious failure between -10 and +45 degrees it should probably be considered junk from the get go.

Thanks again for your concern.

BR

Mark

Edited 21 May, 201016 yr by mrose

Interesting topic as I was curious what drive was used, am I reading correctly it's a 2.5in drive? I thought for size reasons it would be a smaller 1.8in drive. If it was a 3.5in drive I'd be concerned about durability given they're generally used in a static chassis but as laptop drives have to be reasonably durable as it is (they have to tolerate considerable heat inside a laptop) hopefully your new drive will be fine.

John

Interesting topic as I was curious what drive was used, am I reading correctly it's a 2.5in drive? I thought for size reasons it would be a smaller 1.8in drive. If it was a 3.5in drive I'd be concerned about durability given they're generally used in a static chassis but as laptop drives have to be reasonably durable as it is (they have to tolerate considerable heat inside a laptop) hopefully your new drive will be fine.

John

Laptop drives don't have to tolerate anywhere near the operating shock of a device in a car, or the humidity when operating.

Also a laptop drive doesn't actually get that hot as there is often a lot of air moving the heat out of the chassis.

As to the OP, yes I did read your comments, I'm just saying I'd expect that drive to die due to my own experience.

Laptop drives don't have to tolerate anywhere near the operating shock of a device in a car, or the humidity when operating.

Also a laptop drive doesn't actually get that hot as there is often a lot of air moving the heat out of the chassis.

Laptops have to be able to tolerate large shocks as being dropped will subject them to a large amount of shock and even in general use they're going to suffer various bangs. The original laptop drive only appears to have similar shock protection technology as to that used to protect the drives when within a standard laptops unlike some of the shock proof laptops which instead use a smaller 1.8in hard drive within a 2.5in shell to provide greater protection.

Your information is incorrect about their temperatures as they're not placed anywhere near the cooling system nor are they attached to it, instead they're usually placed well within the chassis and frequently the furthest away from the cooling system. Even in normal air temperatures the internal temperature of laptops is high which in turn causes the hard drive to run hot particularly if it's in a DTR-class machine - even idling on this low power machine I'm typing on the hard drive is running hotter than the temperatures the OP has listed below.

John

mrose,

thank you so much for contributing a really interesting thing here

i was going to try pretty much the same but got off that idea lately because a few people have done it by now and i am getting to the point where the hdd speed gets on my nerves. copying things over to the RNS is a pain for starters, but there's more issues which are a nuisance with this thing.

I am getting more and more into just using the SD-Card since its way more convenient.

can you maybe state how u experience working speed of the replacement disk? does it feel faster (since it has a higher spin-rate)? or does it maybe not make any difference because maybe the controller for the disk is already to slow?

i was toying with the idea of maybe fitting a solid state disk into the unit at some stage, but am not quite sure it will work out. if speed improvements can be achieved by just "upgrading" the disk it would make that project more interesting.

what do you think?

Edited 28 May, 201016 yr by Sowhat?

Thanks for the sharing.

I was wondering if you might want to try SSD (Solid State Harddisk) instead when your current one failed.

Without moving parts, I presume it will last even longer and you will not even have to worry about the knock and dump.