Really sorry about this guys and gals. I meant to get to this project but life sometimes has a way of creeping up on you and derailing all your projects. I plan on looking into this in the next week. By the way, here is what I'm planning on doing:

1. Remove the drive from the Outlander
2. Mount it in an external USB drive enclosure
3. Fire up a copy of Symantec Ghost and rip the entire drive image to my pc
4. Take an 80gb drive I have laying around and put the image on the drive and using Ghost again, expand the partition to fill the rest of the disk
5. Look at the file structure of the drive with music in the Music Library already ripped to the drive
6. Try to determine a file structure and naming convention and then copy my own album to the drive
7. Insert into Outlander and cross fingers

Any better ideas?

 

Sounds good. Hopefully Ghost will be able to "see" the proprietary file system of the MMCS.

 

Still hoping to hear how this worked out. Any news? My music server has long since been filled up.

 

I've tested this and it doesn't appear to be an option.
1) Removed the drive from the Outlander
2) Connect a 2.5" IDE to USB adaptor
3) Connected the USB to a Windows system

The OSfound the device as a mass storage device but no additional response. When I looked in the device manager I was able to see the manufacture and model but that was all. There was no stats or even driver info, so no way to peek at the drive structure.

I also triedit in Linux, butI got nothing at all, no options to mount, but that might be just my distro and/or my config.

Returned to Outlander and validated everything still worked, which it did.

The drive is a Toshiba MK3029GAC 2.5� Automotive HDD 30GB. The drive also has higher then normal specs, like “MK3029GAC can withstand operational shock of 200g and non-operational shock of 800g� and “Operating temperature of -4o to 185oF (-20o to 85oC)� So since this was designed for automotive maybe they have a special driver needed to interact with the drive in an OS like MS or even Linux, or maybe there is no way to read it with a normal computer.

Here is the link to the drive info: http://www.sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=HardDrivesOpticalDrives/2.5-inchHardDiskDrives/MK3029GAC

If anyone wants to take another stab at it that would be cool, because I would also like to be able to add songs in bulk or maybe figure out a way to create skins. Who knows maybe my IDE to USB can’t support something about the drive, but I am currently using it with a 2.5� 60GB drive so I think it’s OK.

Shawn

 

Q: Is it possible to install my 2.5" Toshiba Hard Drive into my desktop or tower system?

A: Yes, by using a HDD mounting kit, you can install a Toshiba 2.5" drive into your desktop or tower system. Contact your local computer supplier for kit availability.





Q: Should my 2.5" Hard Drive be configured as a Master Drive or Slave Drive?

A: If you are using a single drive configuration, set jumpers to Master. If you are using a two drive configuration, you can set the drive as either the Master or Slave, depending on what the other drive is set at. In most situations, Toshiba's Hard Drives are shipped with no jumper present, making it a master drive.





Q: My system is not able to recognize all available capacity on my Hard Disk Drive. What do I need to do to utilize the complete hard drive?

A: There are some systems that are unable to recognize the new larger Hard Drives on the market. 3rd party software is available that breaks the "capacity barrier". A suggestion is Disk Manager DiskGo by Ontrack. Check with your local computer/software supplier for availability or contact the software manufacturer.


Theres a link on the site you posted that I got all that information from.

The page I was reading is here http://www.sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx...cesSupport/FAQ

 

I think thatFAQ might befor all 2.5" hard drives from Toshiba so I'm not sure that applies toonly automotive drives, even their laptop 2.5" 160GB has the same FAQ, http://www.sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=HardDrivesOpticalDrives/2.5-inchHardDiskDrives/MK1637GSXProductPage/MK1637GSXSupportbesidesthe BIOS on my HP Compaq nc6320 is just over three months old so I doubt I need software to read "large" drives, besides I able to read a 60GB. But please, please prove me wrongbecauseI would like nothing better then to get into the drive to take a look around, so is there anyone out there that wants to try it? I might have time this weekend to try it on some or all of my other systems; 4 laptops,4 desktops and 1 server (HP DL380.)

Shawn

 

Wow, I don't know how I missed this thread ...

I believe the hard drive in the MMCS is "locked". A friend & I took the entire MMCS apart a few months ago to "see how its works", and part of that was putting the hard drive in a PC with knoppix.

The drive's symptoms seem to be that it's merely "locked" per the ATA specification. Just like the XBOX if my suspicions are right. That tells me we either need to read (and reverse engineer) all the EEPROM in the MMCS's bootloader, or try and get the HDD's unlock password. My friend and I are going to try the latter by hooking up a digital logic analyzer to the data pins of an IDE ribbon cable connected to an "inter-poser" to literally sniff out the data bytes sent to the hard drive during boot-up. Among those bytes should be the ATA unlock command and the passcode. I suspect its different for every serial number, but if it goes well, I should then be able to unlock the drive and make an image of it for futher analysis.

Of course we've been planning on doing this for about 3 months so far, but my friend with the tools is in portland and i'm in seattle, so its taking us a while to get everything put together, but if/when we do it, i'll definately update you guys!

 

Hah - I have no idea what you said but it's impressive! Best of luck!

 

This company claim to have a password disable utility that removesthe HDD protection
system. In the referance list the MK3029GAC Toshiba drive are included.

http://www.starmount.co.uk/productversion/613.html

best of luck, and remeber to keep us posted

 

Here is some userful info about unlocking an ATAhard drive:

Overview:
http://www.storageandsecurityonline....0&Itemid=1

Software tools:
This one looks worth a free checkup: http://www.hdd-tools.com/products/rrs/howto/
Cheap service good for MK3029GAC: http://www.hddunlock.com/support/faq/