carputer hard drive died in 3 days

therussman2002 · 08-07-2004, 10:18 AM

So tuesday nite i finished my carputer setup to the point where it actually works. I go ahead and enjoy it until friday nite when windows all of a sudden reboots and claims it cannot find critical startup files. Ive seen this before to be a hard drive failure. Perhaps one should not bolt the hard drive to a wooden box with 2 subs powered by a 1000W rms amp?

At any rate, whilst i send this hard drive back for a nice month long warranty replacement, i'm going to need to find a better data storage solution.

I have one random idea of getting one of those 1gb usb pen drives and putting a stripped install of winxp on it with nLite and of course some carputer-like software. Then i could put layer after layer of Dynamat in my glovebox and hide a nice usb2.0 enclosed hard drive in there. Or i could buy a 60gb mp3 player and use the alleged "external hard drive" feature to have the puter access my music.

I suppose i am asking for advice on how one could keep a hard drive from failing so quickly in the automotive enviroment, and if thats not a viable option, what is the best/fastest usb flash drive, and what capacity is recommended for a stripped install of xp, frodoplayer, drivers, cd ripping/burning software, gps, etc.

Thank you all for your time.

trdcpu · 08-07-2004, 11:17 AM

electromagnets are the path to the dark side... electromagnet leads to magnetic field...magnetic field leads to hate... hate leads to suffering.

judoGTI · 08-07-2004, 08:08 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by trdcpu

electromagnets are the path to the dark side... electromagnet leads to magnetic field...magnetic field leads to hate... hate leads to suffering.

LOL! Yeah keep them away from those magents.

Pudge · 08-07-2004, 09:15 PM

In theory ya, but one of the members, Leslie mounts his right next to his sub, no issues. YMMV

Triad.: · 08-07-2004, 10:02 PM

your solution would probably be a laptop hard drive

siberia37 · 08-07-2004, 10:13 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by therussman2002

I suppose i am asking for advice on how one could keep a hard drive from failing so quickly in the automotive enviroment, and if thats not a viable option, what is the best/fastest usb flash drive, and what capacity is recommended for a stripped install of xp, frodoplayer, drivers, cd ripping/burning software, gps, etc.

Thank you all for your time.

Very simple.. don't use 3.5 inch hard drives use 2.5 inch laptop hard drives. They have better operating specifications (tempatures, G-forces etc..), they don't spin at such high speeds (which is unnecessary in the car), take less power and are generally more suited for the car. Also the obvious thing is to keep the hard drives away from huge magnets too...

therussman2002 · 08-09-2004, 09:04 AM

I'm just gonna use the replacement hard drive just how i did before. Except with extra fans, and a slice of dynamat on top. And my 160gb 3.5" hd cost me 60 bucks, a 160gb laptop drive would not be in that kind of price range, if they even make any.

I had a thought of buying a 1gb pen drive and sticking windows/frodoplayer on it, and buying the creative nomad jukebox zen xtra 60gb and keeping it up by the dash with a usb cable. That way my carputer has access to my music collection, and so does my pocket if need be.

fluffy2097 · 08-09-2004, 09:17 AM

I'm going to throw out the idea that the drive could have been bad from the start. Plenty of people have mounted desktop drives near subs with no problems.

Other then that being your problem, it may be your mounting location (though I doubt EMI is an issue). Do you have the drive mounted somewhere that will expose it to lots of vibration? The inside of a sub box would be a bad idea because of the vibration of the box, not the magnetic field.

I can't think of any other reasons for drive failure.

therussman2002 · 08-09-2004, 01:40 PM

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The stars indicate the position of my late hard drive on the left side of the sub box. Imagine two rockford p3's positioned symmetrically on the front of that box there, if you will. The carputer is mounted on the same side of the box, just on the back. The thing was pretty secure using 4 lil "L" brackets. When i get the new drive from warranty this week hopefully, im going to put it in the same spot, and screw some fans around it. And like i said try out a slab of dynamat maybe. So if it dies again i quit

(with the whole hard drive thing anyway, carputers 4-ever!!)

P.S. for a few weeks my hard drive was loose on a piece of foam up by the dash when i had the carputer mounted up there. More random variables.

EDIT: well you get the gist of the drawing, apparently when it posts it removes all seemingly unnecesary spaces

pip · 08-09-2004, 02:38 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by therussman2002

I'm just gonna use the replacement hard drive just how i did before. Except with extra fans, and a slice of dynamat on top. And my 160gb 3.5" hd cost me 60 bucks, a 160gb laptop drive would not be in that kind of price range, if they even make any.

I had a thought of buying a 1gb pen drive and sticking windows/frodoplayer on it, and buying the creative nomad jukebox zen xtra 60gb and keeping it up by the dash with a usb cable. That way my carputer has access to my music collection, and so does my pocket if need be.

I think it would be a bad idea try to put windows on a pen drive or CF card. I think usb pen drives have a limited number of writes just like CF does. Windows will get through that number of writes in a week or two.

EDIT: Though I guess if you can make XP read only you'll be OK.

f150tech · 08-09-2004, 03:12 PM

Compactflash or IDE Flash Module with Windows XP Embedded and Enhanced Write Filter On(Read Only) 4 teh win!

1GB IDE Flash Module for about $150
http://www.transcendusa.com/DLCenter...22&Contain=ALL

fluffy2097 · 08-09-2004, 05:43 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by f150tech

Compactflash or IDE Flash Module with Windows XP Embedded and Enhanced Write Filter On(Read Only) 4 teh win!

1GB IDE Flash Module for about $150
http://www.transcendusa.com/DLCenter...22&Contain=ALL

Only $150 more and you could get a 20GB Ipod for your music. CF is not terribly cost effective.

fluffy2097 · 08-09-2004, 05:47 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by therussman2002

____________________
| |
| |
*| |
*|___________________|

The stars indicate the position of my late hard drive on the left side of the sub box. Imagine two rockford p3's positioned symmetrically on the front of that box there, if you will. The carputer is mounted on the same side of the box, just on the back. The thing was pretty secure using 4 lil "L" brackets. When i get the new drive from warranty this week hopefully, im going to put it in the same spot, and screw some fans around it. And like i said try out a slab of dynamat maybe. So if it dies again i quit

(with the whole hard drive thing anyway, carputers 4-ever!!)

P.S. for a few weeks my hard drive was loose on a piece of foam up by the dash when i had the carputer mounted up there. More random variables.

EDIT: well you get the gist of the drawing, apparently when it posts it removes all seemingly unnecesary spaces

Your problem is vibration. Don't mount your HD on your sub box. mount it somewhere there will be less vibration.

owenjh · 08-09-2004, 05:47 PM

I was going to mount a case inbetween a custom made sub box, guess thats not a good idea after hearing this. Have to rething my plan now.

f150tech · 08-09-2004, 06:09 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by fluffy2097

Only $150 more and you could get a 20GB Ipod for your music. CF is not terribly cost effective.

I don't know what you are talking about.

Only $150? That's only double the cost.
Also, harddrives can't take punishment. How does an iPod solve that?