Where's the Hard Drive?

Discussion of Infiniti's amazing (and underrated) sport-luxury crossovers, the EX35 and EX37. For 2014, the EX series will be renamed QX50, in line with Ininfiit's new naming conventions.
Boomdude
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Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 7:45 am

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I'm looking at getting an EX35, I've looked at all the photos, test driven an AWD Journey, and generally love the car.

I'm also an IT guy, nerd, etc... so of course I want to see what I can do to improve things here n' there. So with that, does anyone know where the 9.3GB hard drive is located? How it's formatted, shape / size, etc? I'm thinking of throwing in a solid state drive or just a bigger drive in general.

Any help is appreciated!
Modified by Boomdude at 7:25 PM 5/31/2008


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dividedhighw
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Car: 2008 EX35 AWD (Technology Pkg)
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As I understand it, the NAV is also on the hard drive, so I don't think it's a 9.3 GB hard drive, per se; rather, that capacity is available for music, while the rest is used for other purposes.

That said, I'm also in the "technology" field, so am VERY interested in anything anyone else might know on this topic!

Cheers,David

Boomdude
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Oh yeah, I'm sure it's probably a 10 to 12GB drive in reality, who knows!

I'm thinking that if I can just *find* where it is physically located, then I can see how it's connected, mounted, what kind of drive it is. From there I can use a Wiebetech device to hook it up via Firewire or USB 2.0 to a Mac or PC and clone the entire drive, partition map included, to a bigger drive. If I can just do that, heck I could leave the Nav system alone and just use the extra space for more music.

We'll see, this could be very cool if we find out where it is.

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inteller
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Car: 2008 EX35 Journey AWD

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the hard drive is 30Gb. Of that only 9.3 Gb is available for music.

Only Seagate makes automobile hard drives. Probably the ST930813AM Ultra ATA/100 or 30GB ST930814AM

The EE series only goes up to 40Gb so doubtful you would get much more space. IF the volume is not locked by some sort of copy protection you could probably use something like Norton Ghost to image the entire drive over to a new partition. However knowing Infiniti they have probably hard locked the 9.3 for music down in its own partition. Then you have to worry about what happens with nav street updates. Will it freak out if the drive serial number doesn't match?

Considering you can get a 16Gb compact flash card these days, you'd be better off messing with that. You can put a LOT of music on that, and not risk screwing up the car. Remember, you can't just copy MP3s to the hard drive...so it is fairly useless IMO unless you have stacks of original CDs. Myself, I can't remember the last time I played a real CD.

Boomdude
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30GB?! Wow, I underestimated the amount of storage space taken by the nav / electronics. How'd you figure out the capacity?

I'll keep the flash card in mind. If this is too daunting and risky I'll back out of the idea completely. So, do you know where the drive is kept?

Thanks for the information thus far, that's a huge help.

Edit: After looking around on Seagate's site, I found the EE series that matches the drive you describe, it looks like the drives are made up to 80GB now. Link: http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/in...Model

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dividedhighw
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inteller wrote:Considering you can get a 16Gb compact flash card these days, you'd be better off messing with that. You can put a LOT of music on that, and not risk screwing up the car.
You might want to be careful about any conclusions based on the availability of 16GB CF cards.

Page 4-48 of the manual documents that with Nav, the maximum number of files recognized is 512 (255 in any one folder). I have a 2GB card absolutely full (only 2 MB free), and it has 496 MP3 files on it. I will admit that most of my MP3s are encoded at 128 kbps, but some are VBR or 160 kbps. That is to say, I doubt even a 4 GB card would buy you much additional usable capacity, much less a 16 GB one.

One more data point to consider. On another forum, an owner said that his EX would only recognize 2 GB of his 4 GB CF card. Based on this report, the possibilities are:1. he didn't have the card formatted FAT32, so the capacity wasn't properly recognized2. he had more than the limit of 512 files loaded3. indeed the EX only supports 2 GB cards at most, even though the manual makes no mention of this

(BTW, I don't have a 4 GB CF card to experiment, and the original poster hasn't seen fit to provide an update.)

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inteller
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Boomdude wrote:30GB?! Wow, I underestimated the amount of storage space taken by the nav / electronics. How'd you figure out the capacity?

I'll keep the flash card in mind. If this is too daunting and risky I'll back out of the idea completely. So, do you know where the drive is kept?

Thanks for the information thus far, that's a huge help.

Edit: After looking around on Seagate's site, I found the EE series that matches the drive you describe, it looks like the drives are made up to 80GB now. Link: http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/in...Model
The 80Gb you quote are not as rugged as the EE5400.1s They may work, but still.

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inteller
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Ok, so 4 4Gb CF cards instead of 1 16Gb (probably cheaper anyways). I find that to be more reliable than hacking into the nav system hard drive. If you are packing almost 500 songs a card, that is a LOT of music to listen to.

I also believe that the aformentioned user needs the nav system update which eliminates a bunch of voice commands that G owners gripe about, but grants capacities of 8Gb and above.

Boomdude
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Ah ha, yeah after a closer look at the Seagate site, I see what you mean. So I wonder if a Solid-state drive would fair better, or at all for that matter... Still gotta figure out the location of it in the car...

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nghivdo
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Joined: Fri May 23, 2008 11:12 pm
Car: 2008 Infiniti EX35 AWD Journey, Premium, Luxe Style, NAV, Black Obsidian, Graphite Leather

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I'm pretty happy with my iPod connection, though scrolling to the end of the alphabet can be tedious. Answer: make shorter favorites playlists to more quickly access artists/songs. Up to 160 GB's!

siehead
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I agree, the ipod interface seems like a much better option here than hacking into the hard drive. However, if that's what you are into, let us know how it works out.


Boomdude
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I love it too actually and plan to use it everyday, I just figured if I could make things bigger & better, why not. Seems like the location of the drive in the car may be unknown right now, no big deal.

rushmdat23
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Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 11:55 pm
Car: 08 EX35 / 08 335xi

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As I recall, the hard drive(s) are in the rear cargo area. Lift up the cargo floor, and above the spare tire is a screwed down cover with the HDD's attached and connected.

Boomdude
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Awesome, thanks for the info, that's exactly what I was looking for.

It'll take me a few weeks before I actually take delivery, but when I do and find out more information, I'll report back with what I find. Could be very cool to see what kind of info the drive holds.

rushmdat23
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Car: 08 EX35 / 08 335xi

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I'll double check tomorrow when I'm home. It's my wifes car. I may be wrong, but a swear there were two drives, one for the nav and the other for music, but don't hold me to it. Let me know if you need any other info.

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Dodgeyaussie
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rushmdat23 wrote:As I recall, the hard drive(s) are in the rear cargo area. Lift up the cargo floor, and above the spare tire is a screwed down cover with the HDD's attached and connected.
It's in the dash and it takes the place of the CD changer.

The thing screwed in to the top of the spare is the Subwoofer.

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Dodgeyaussie
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rushmdat23 wrote:I'll double check tomorrow when I'm home. It's my wifes car. I may be wrong, but a swear there were two drives, one for the nav and the other for music, but don't hold me to it. Let me know if you need any other info.
Nope, 1 drive and as mentioned above, 9.3GB set aside for music.

Boomdude
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Dodgeyaussie wrote:
It's in the dash and it takes the place of the CD changer.

The thing screwed in to the top of the spare is the Subwoofer.
I didn't think it took place of the CD changer, but perhaps it's behind it or just near. This would make more sense as the length of the IDE cable (or whatever interface the drive has) would be extremely long if the drive(s) are in the back... hm, so close...


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