07 G35 Hard Drive Hack? / Upgrade Info

[weinberk]

Hi all-

Long time lurker, first time poster. Searched but didn't find anything.

I've got an 07 G35x with Nav, so it's got the 30GB hard drive, with 9.5gb free for MP3's. I did a little research on some other forums and found that it's a 30gb Seagate 2.5" PATA extreme condition drive. I would LOVE to:

1) Be able to remove this drive and upgrade with a larger one, when seagate comes out with one (seems that 30gb is the largest they make now in the extreme condition line)

2) At a minimum, be able to pull the drive or jerry-rig it so that i can pull MP3's off of my home network and put directly onto the car's hard drive. it really is a pain to have to rip from cd - especially when I already have all of my cd's ripped on my home network.

So the questions are:

1) Has anyone pulled this hard drive? How hard was it? Where is the drive physically located?

2) Has anyone had any luck manually adding files to the drive (without ripping a cd)?

Thanks

[Omegamerc]

Hi wienberk! Grats on your first post!

There are various tools out there to copy a hard as a form of an image (ie exact duplicate), the ONLY foreseeable problem I can see is that.

a)That there may be an actual bit check on the hdd, this would mean that only hard drives produced by the SAME manufacture with the SAME size - OR - same bit encryption onto the hard drive would work. Very similar on how you add a larger HDD to the xbx360 while spoofing the system to believe its the original hard drive that came with the system. If anyone has more information on this I would like to hear from you too!

b) Its format would not be supported by whatever OS you run in order to do the exact image/copy.

[C-Kwik]

It's possible that the player may only be able to play music encoded on the HDD at a certain bitrate as well.

The best way to approach this is to first pull the drive and see if you can read the data and file structure. then see if you can add your own music and play it on the G's player. Then try duplicating all into your own drive and see if it works. It's possible it may be very straight forward, but if not, you'll need to see what issues you need to resolve to get it to work. I'd guess some trial an error is going to be necessary and since the car is still quite new, information on this is going to be scarce. you might become the first documented case to do such a mod if you act quickly. If you accomplish or attempt this, please post your results. We'd love to hear about it and perhaps we can brainstorm any troubleshooting with you as well.

I look forward to hearing more about this.

[weinberk]

We're on the same page for sure- I've done plenty of TiVo (DirecTiVo) upgrades. So simple, but those are linux drives. Who knows what file system this unit uses.

I've only had the car for a couple of days, but I hope to find the time (soon?) to remove the dash and go digging for the hard drive. Does anyone know exactly where it is located?

[NeverOld]

Your out of my league on this kind of project but the Service Manual - Audio & Video System 2007 Infiniti G35 Sedan located below may be of some help. You need to be a member to download.

http://x.infinitihelp.com/foru...id=24

It appears to be located inside the AV Control Unit which is behind the lower console (radio/clock/temp)

[Omegamerc]

Your out of my league on this kind of project but the Service Manual - Audio & Video System 2007 Infiniti G35 Sedan located below may be of some help. You need to be a member to download.

http://x.infinitihelp.com/foru...id=24

It appears to be located inside the AV Control Unit which is behind the lower console (radio/clock/temp)

Whats up with the 1/1 allowance, I can only view the A&V but its connected to other files

I need to see IP(section 11) pdf.

From what I can tell the HDD controls more then just the songs/nav.

Its also the brain for the breaks/light settings/turn signals/rear lights/bluetooth phone system. Its access is pretty straight forward. Removing the face/clock that contains a plethora of screws, this allows access to the AV unit which has a large 3 piece mounting system + cage itself for the PATA(?) hard drive.

Other then that - I can't find any relevant information about the hard drive manufacture or any type of reference to a model number.
Modified by Omegamerc at 3:33 PM 2/27/2007

[G_whizz]

Welcome to NICO!! Glad to see you decided to post after SEARCHING!! +1 for you

I definitley have no expertise on this...I'll see what I can dig up! hang tight...

[NeverOld]

If you go to the link below you can get a paid subscription. Still may not get to the links inside the manuals though.

http://x.infinitihelp.com/forum/payments.php

Infinitihelp.com Forums Non-recurring 1 Year subscription-- Unlimited Access to Available Knowledgebase Files Includes ----Owner's Manuals ----Service Manuals Note Due to the service manual configuration some of the links to external pages in the service manual pages or table of content may not work.

[weinberk]

That Audio Nav guide is great. I see what you mean about the link to ip.pdf though. There's also a link to INT.pdf (which explains how to remove the headliner and rear pillar cover).

I posted over at another forum to see if anyone there has those files.