[Ao1]

I’ve been tempted to do this for some time, but finally got round to doing it yesterday.

I’ve read conflicting reports on the benefits of a faster SSD over the stock HDD, but it definitely makes a difference. Boot up is near instant and changing the map scale is much faster.

Getting the HDD out is easy. The hard bit is the fact that the HDD is IDE not SATA so an IDE to SATA convertor is required and software that can image on a bit by bit basis. The IDE SSD was around £80.

Faster speed, plus I have the old HHD as a backup if anything goes wrong. (I’ve read that if the HDD fails BMW will make you change the whole unit).

[hz_diesel]

Originally Posted by Ao1

I’ve been tempted to do this for some time, but finally got round to doing it yesterday.

I’ve read conflicting reports on the benefits of a faster SSD over the stock HDD, but it definitely makes a difference. Boot up is near instant and changing the map scale is much faster.

Getting the HDD out is easy. The hard bit is the fact that the HDD is IDE not SATA so an IDE to SATA convertor is required and software that can image on a bit by bit basis. The IDE SSD was around £80.

Faster speed, plus I have the old HHD as a backup if anything goes wrong. (I’ve read that if the HDD fails BMW will make you change the whole unit).

did you follow a guide anywhere?

How much gb on the ssd?

What did you use to transfer the data from the HDD to SSD?

[Ao1]

This is the guide I used. Everything you need to know is in the thread.

[jammy78]

Great work mate..... I'm going to do this as the map scaling is so slow !

Where did you source the SDD?

[hz_diesel]

Originally Posted by Ao1

This is the guide I used. Everything you need to know is in the thread.

Thanks! Just ordered everything!

Originally Posted by jammy78

Great work mate..... I'm going to do this as the map scaling is so slow !

Where did you source the SDD?

I found everything on amazon prime, the exact parts and adapter for about 125$.

[Ao1]

Originally Posted by jammy78

Great work mate..... I'm going to do this as the map scaling is so slow !

Where did you source the SDD?

The ZHEINO SDD can be found on Amazon. Its not a brand I am aware of. There is also a Super Talent IDE drive. More expensive but probably better.

If you can drop the HDD & SSD off to me I could copy it for you to save you buying the software and adapters. (It will take at least 24 hours)

[IanS100]

I'd love to try this in an NBT Pro Nav

[blood_Game18]

do you know if this would be fine ?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-USB-2-...item3a958607ef

thanks

Originally Posted by Ao1

This is the guide I used. Everything you need to know is in the thread.

[Ao1]

^ That won't work. Its USB to SATA and the hard drive is IDE.

If you PC does not have IDE you have two options. Copy the HDD to a SATA HDD (or SSD) and then copy the image from the SATA drive to the IDE drive. This is what I did, however it is better (less risky and time consuming) to copy direct from the HDD to the SSD. To do this however you will need 2 IDE converters.

Here is a link to what I purchased:

StarTech.com USB 3.0 to SATA or IDE Hard Drive Adapter Converter

Zheino 2.5 Inch Pata Ide 44 Pins 128gb SSD Solid State Drive

Hard Disk Manager 15 Professional

[blood_Game18]

thanks , i'm probably going to get 40GB-60gb but the rest lead would be waste after 1 use

Originally Posted by Ao1

^ That won't work. Its USB to SATA and the hard drive is IDE.

If you PC does not have IDE you have two options. Copy the HDD to a SATA HDD (or SSD) and then copy the image from the SATA drive to the IDE drive. This is what I did, however it is better (less risky and time consuming) to copy direct from the HDD to the SSD. To do this however you will need 2 IDE converters.

Here is a link to what I purchased:

StarTech.com USB 3.0 to SATA or IDE Hard Drive Adapter Converter

Zheino 2.5 Inch Pata Ide 44 Pins 128gb SSD Solid State Drive

Hard Disk Manager 15 Professional

[Ao1]

^ With a 128 GB SSD you will end up with unused space as I don’t think it is possible to resize the partitions. Having unused space is not a bad thing however on an SSD. Most SSD’s will use this for internal garbage collection and wear levelling and this works over the entire drive, regardless of how many partitions are created. As the SSD will not receive TRIM commands this is a good thing.
The next size down from 128 GB is 64 GB, which is insufficient.

[blood_Game18]

Ohh i see , guess ill wait a bit then
Really tempted though

Thanks

Originally Posted by Ao1

^ With a 128 GB SSD you will end up with unused space as I don’t think it is possible to resize the partitions. Having unused space is not a bad thing however on an SSD. Most SSD’s will use this for internal garbage collection and wear levelling and this works over the entire drive, regardless of how many partitions are created. As the SSD will not receive TRIM commands this is a good thing.
The next size down from 128 GB is 64 GB, which is insufficient.

[jammy78]

Originally Posted by Ao1

The ZHEINO SDD can be found on Amazon. Its not a brand I am aware of. There is also a Super Talent IDE drive. More expensive but probably better.

If you can drop the HDD & SSD off to me I could copy it for you to save you buying the software and adapters. (It will take at least 24 hours)

Nice one mate.... I'll be in contact when I have the drive!

[kioneo]

I tried this over the weekend with the following SSD (supposedly it has higher temperate range tolerance). Super Talent DuraDrive ET3 128G.

In short, it didn't work. I'm still investigating a fix and will update this thread.

Removing the old drive and imaging it was easy, but all attempts to use the new SSD resulted in the same problem: the "OS" booted and I got to the home screen, but the Navigation did not load when clicked (it tried but failed with "Function currently not available") and the info section of the onboard music storage had "No Info". It was like the additional partitions were not visible to the CIC.

I tried the following utilities to clone it:

• dd
• Clonezilla
• Paragon (the one shown in the guide)
• odin-win

After much searching (especially in the Jeep and Chrystler forums since they have a similar QNX OS), I downloaded the QNX VMware image and am attempting to mount the filesystem in there and see what is going on.

I've got a few theories at the moment:

1. The old hard drive and new hard drive geometry isn't matching (possibly CHS versus LBA) thus partitions are getting "lost"
   (UPDATE: Since I can mount these volumes in Ubuntu and the LBA stays consistent that's a good sign and probably means this isn't an issue.)
2. The partition table is getting screwed up from QNX's perspective. This is especially intruiguing since QNX and Linux each show different partitions on the disk using fdisk.
   (UPDATE: Using clonezilla or dd gives different CHS values in the partition tables, but the start and length of the data volumes in LBA format are consistent. Neither format works in my car, but both can mount from Ubuntu and QNX.)
3. There is some other kind of protection going on that is trying to prevent cloning.
   (UPDATE: Since I can mount the filesystems, at least we know they aren't encrypted.)

I'll post more as I learn more. Also, if I can mount the file system, then I do believe that enlarging the music partition (though I'm not actually interested in doing so) is probably possible.

Off to learn more about QNX...

Bottom line, I was hoping a simple clone would work, but it didn't. I know others have reported success.

[Ao1]

A simple clone does work if you do it bit by bit. The OS on the drive is irrelevant if you copy the drive on a bit by bit basis. Did you leave a jumper on the drive you copied to? (Slave/ Master set jumper)

I copied from HDD to an SSD and then from that SSD to the SSD I wanted to use with the satnav as I only had one IDE connector. No problem at all.

If you did do a bit by bit copy try a secure erase on the SSD before cloning.

[kioneo]

Originally Posted by Ao1

A simple clone does work if you do it bit by bit. The OS on the drive is irrelevant if you copy the drive on a bit by bit basis. Did you leave a jumper on the drive you copied to? (Slave/ Master set jumper)

I copied from HDD to an SSD and then from that SSD to the SSD I wanted to use with the satnav as I only had one IDE connector. No problem at all.

If you did do a bit by bit copy try a secure erase on the SSD before cloning.

Did a bit for bit copy, but something still got screwed up. No drive had jumpers, so that's not it.

My hunch is telling me that Clonezilla is to blame because it did a partition-by-partition copy (albeit with dd). I need to investigate further, but it may be that the MBR/EBRs are not being recreated correctly (or that Clonezilla or another program I tried with "partition handling" is screwing it up).

I saw a number of type 5 partitions (Extended CHS) as opposed to type 15 (Extended LBA). Certainly if they truly are type 5 on the source, it may be a geometry mismatch. I have an 80G drive (hopefully same geometry) to try as a same-same clone. Then figure out the needed changes when going to the 128G.

That doesn't explain why a dd on the whole drive at a time failed, but again, I'm guessing I have partition table problems.

And you are right, I probably ought to do a complete erase of the SSD. Maybe there is something sticking around.

Getting closer...

[mob17]

I dont understand what this thread is about. I don't even know what SSD means :

[litany]

Originally Posted by mob17

I dont understand what this thread is about. I don't even know what SSD means :

Basically is about cloning CIC hard drives. From old, slow toshiba 4500 rpm to SSD, (solid state disc) new generation of hard drives

[MAN15H]

This all sounds good but from what I've read no one has been able to expand the partition that holds the music so it’s still the same size drive in effect, just faster.

Is there no software available that could expand that partition..? The original drive is 40GB but the new SSD that most people use is 128GB so that’s a lot of wasted space.

[litany]

Originally Posted by MAN15H

This all sounds good but from what I've read no one has been able to expand the partition that holds the music so it’s still the same size drive in effect, just faster.

Is there no software available that could expand that partition..? The original drive is 40GB but the new SSD that most people use is 128GB so that’s a lot of wasted space.

Original Toshiba drive is 80gb and for user is 8gb or 12gb depends of CIC version. I tried few times to expand rest of space for user's partition, but no luck.

[kioneo]

Originally Posted by litany

Original Toshiba drive is 80gb and for user is 8gb or 12gb depends of CIC version. I tried few times to expand rest of space for user's partition, but no luck.

The tutorials I've seen for QNX based systems (which the CIC is) is to mount the music volume inside QNX, save the data, shift around/enlarge the partition, reformat, and copy back the data. I hope to try this and in principle it sounds plausible. Admittedly it isn't easy for non-IT folk.

[Ao1]

MAN15H its not wasted space if you read post 11. Also SSD's are now much cheaper. The first SSD I purchased was an Intel X25 E. £600 for 32GB. What you are getting with an SSD is much faster performance. Instant boot up and faster map zooming.