Hard Drive Location for 09 iDrive

[aaaron]

Does anyone have access to drawings or schematics showing the location of the hard drive for the new iDrive? I'm interested in swapping out my drive to add more music storage space.

Thanks.

[Technic]

Originally Posted by aaaron

Does anyone have access to drawings or schematics showing the location of the hard drive for the new iDrive? I'm interested in swapping out my drive to add more music storage space.

Thanks.

The HDD is inside the CIC unit, which is the unit with the CD/DVD player below the climate controls:

[808MGuy]

Not worth the effort IMO. Just get a large USB flash drive and call it a day. Take it out and plug it into your computer to reload stuff. Much easier than trying to do USB transfers or CD-HDD transfers in the car. Plus if you do CD-HDD transfers it gets converted to 128 WMA which pretty much sucks in terms of sound quality.

I have a 32GB OCZ drive and I'm fine with that. Fits right in the USB port under the armrest with no problems. 64GB drives are on the market but still very expensive. Do you really need 500GB of stuff at your fingertips in a car?

[808MGuy]

Originally Posted by Technic

The HDD is inside the CIC unit, which is the unit with the CD/DVD player below the climate controls:

What is that metal cover looking thing under the CD/DVD unit. Is it just a blank cover or is that actually a piece of equipment. I was hoping it was a blank cover so I could take it out and mount something there. Maybe a laser shifter display or a DSP display.

How did you take off the trim around the unit? Just pry from the bottom or sides?

[Technic]

Originally Posted by HIS4

What is that metal cover looking thing under the CD/DVD unit. Is it just a blank cover or is that actually a piece of equipment. I was hoping it was a blank cover so I could take it out and mount something there. Maybe a laser shifter display or a DSP display.

How did you take off the trim around the unit? Just pry from the bottom or sides?

The whole CCC/CIC is from the CD/DVD player down, that metal is half the chassis; it is a double din unit.

The trim is removed using that plastic tool shown to pry that cover.

[Zed]

Originally Posted by HIS4

Not worth the effort IMO. Just get a large USB flash drive and call it a day. Take it out and plug it into your computer to reload stuff. Much easier than trying to do USB transfers or CD-HDD transfers in the car. Plus if you do CD-HDD transfers it gets converted to 128 WMA which pretty much sucks in terms of sound quality.

I have a 32GB OCZ drive and I'm fine with that. Fits right in the USB port under the armrest with no problems. 64GB drives are on the market but still very expensive. Do you really need 500GB of stuff at your fingertips in a car?

If you need a lot of space, the USB LaCie 60Gb Little Disk works (Amazon Link). Not many USB hard drives do however because the power on the cars usb seems too weak for them.

Be aware that it takes several minutes (after starting the car each time) for the iDrive to parse all your music's metadata (ID3 tags) before it shows up for selection/playing. This delay is annoying, I now only use that big drive for long trips. I keep intending on investigating it further to see if I can do something to improve the startup, but haven't gotten around to it. This isn't an issue with the iPhone or flash drive incidentally.

You may ask, why on earth would you need that much music? It isn't an incredible amount of music... it is just that I tend to encode my music at a high bit-rate, and those files can get large (but sounds better imho).

[808MGuy]

Originally Posted by Zed

If you need a lot of space, the USB LaCie 60Gb Little Disk works (Amazon Link). Not many USB hard drives do however because the power on the cars usb seems too weak for them.

Be aware that it takes several minutes (after starting the car each time) for the iDrive to parse all your music's metadata (ID3 tags) before it shows up for selection/playing. This delay is annoying, I now only use that big drive for long trips. I keep intending on investigating it further to see if I can do something to improve the startup, but haven't gotten around to it. This isn't an issue with the iPhone or flash drive incidentally.

You may ask, why on earth would you need that much music? It isn't an incredible amount of music... it is just that I tend to encode my music at a high bit-rate, and those files can get large (but sounds better imho).

All my stuff is at least 256kbps CBR or VBR so the files are large. I still can't get enough stuff on there to fill up even 10GB.

[Zed]

Originally Posted by HIS4

All my stuff is at least 256kbps CBR or VBR so the files are large. I still can't get enough stuff on there to fill up even 10GB.

Go get you some more tunes.

My library (which includes bits of my kids' & wife's music) has about 3500 items, mostly music, some audio books in there too. Most are 256 VBR. Runs a bit over 20g. Not an obscene amount. But I'm old and have had lots of time to collect it. All legal incidentally.

[kmarei]

Originally Posted by Zed

All legal incidentally.

what does that mean
there is such a thing?

[jml]

A 16GB flashdrive is 25 bucks.......