smartshah

@kirvedx

Do you mind posting a link of the hard drive, and is it as simple as cloning and then refitting it?
I occasionally get a reboot on mine, with the red screen.

Cheers pal

kirvedx

On my E70 the issue was on the drive sectors where the maps and media were installed. I managed to pull a clone and then apply it to my E60's drive, and luckily the bad sectors weren't where any of the IDrive's install were located. I reinstalled maps, reloaded media - and everything works perfectly now with the replacement drive with no rebooting whatsoever. I did eventually hash out going solid state on my E60 using an m.2; but I use bluetooth (youtube premium) over my loaded media anyways - so all that effort to expand media size and go solid state and the gain was extremely minimal. Hardly worth the effort if you ask me.

It is otherwise as simple as restoring the image to a new drive and reinstalling it into the CIC. The README.md gives instruction. The image for an E60 with C1A and the Software Patcher applied is on my Google Drive

smartshah

​​​​​​@kirvedx sorry buddy, I meant what type of hard drive we require and do we require any adaptors etc for this. Ideally I would actually go down the SSD route, not for performance gains, but for reliability and less moving parts.

kirvedx

Factory equips an automotive class (Toshiba, 80GB I believe) mechanical PATA (which is IDE + Power, fairly common in older laptops - its a 2.5"). If you want to go SSD (an with whatever drive type), you can use whatever you want, any size too - you'll just need to expand the partition for larger drives or you'll simply have a bunch of space not utilized (which is completely fine), but this requires you to have either purchased, or to be leveraging a feature packed trial, of QNX (the linux OS used for the CIC, NBT, most automotive infotainment systems, etc). So if you don't have lots of money or the ability to write your own kernel module for the QNX filesystem, you'll want to try to stick as close to (but not below) 80GB where its not simply more cost effective to go larger (and sometimes it is).

To go mechanical, but not go automotive class - is pretty much suicide; Automotive class is designed to handle to shock and vibration of being inside of a vehicle. So keep that in mind.

There's a million and 1 enclosures for converting m.2, msata, flash, SSD 2.5" Sata, etc to 2.5" PATA - just be sure you're getting one with a Marvell chipset. There's a chipset used by most of the 10$ China enclosures that starts with a "J" - this will not work, the CIC will not detect the drive. The issue seems to stem with the Marvell chipset properly handling the ancient Master/Slave jumper, where others do not. You have the option of sourcing an automotive class 2.5" PATA drive, which will just work. You can find the drive that's in them (the CIC) too - they're just pricier (as expected), and probably coming from Lithuania (so shipping time).

On your PC, you can plug whatever the underlying drive is directly into a dock, or a converter. If it's M.2 you'll need an m.2 to USB, if its Sata you'll need a doc or a Sata to usb adapter. When you search for this stuff on Amazon or Ebay, just keep in mind power requirements. m.2 to usb sticks don't need a separate power cord. Sata to USB does. PATA to usb does and Pata to Sata (to then plug into a dock you already have, for instance) does - and you'll see on the converter interface there's a place to plug in either a 4-pin molex or sata power connector, then the interface just plugs right into the PATA drive - the other side to your Sata dock or to a USB port. I have a 4-pin molex power supply, that also has a sata plug too; I use it for any conversion that requires power. Its a good choice to get one separate and not specific to a single converter if you think you'll be doing stuff like this again in the future.

The enclosure you get for anything other than a 2.5" PATA needs to simply convert whatever drive you have to a 2.5" PATA interface. That enclosure will fit same as the original drive in the CIC. It can be a PITA; You can clone the image to any drive type via the right interface directly to that drive, put it in an enclosure, and it won't work. This would be because the enclosure is likely not detected properly by the CIC. Successfully cloning to the drive through the enclosure on your PC won't mean it'll work in the CIC either - because you're using a PC with drivers you control; the CIC really needs to think its talking to a 2.5" PATA drive - this is why I'm stressing to save yourself the trouble and source a Marvell controller on Amazon or Ebay; They'll run 25-50 instead of 10, but you won't pull your hair out. A quick search on Google and you'll find some people have laid out an all encompassing path to going SSD (in very specific ways) - but if you're not super tech saavy, or simply want to avoid the pitfalls of going your own route, it's a way to go.

smartshah

@kirvedx thank you very much for spending the time to be incredibly informative, i could buy you a jug of drink. There is a detailed post by someone from the E90 forum on going down this route.

https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1426773

I suppose you are a 100% right regarding the use of an automotive drive, due to vibrations and shocks.
My intention is just to back it up, and use a new drive of the same capacity etc, not to worried about disc space as I utilise the USB port more than anything, Bluetooth here and there.
I have been having a little issue with cic it reboots here and there, and radio in particular DAB is playing up a little. Read this guy's post and he highlights that the hard drive contributes to radio issues and reboots.

I suppose I need to seek another 80GB PATA automotive drive. Clone the one I have and use it.

I shall spend some time going through the documentation the other guy has written and figure it out myself.

I am pretty tech savvy, IT is my background, but unlike many IT personnel, I tend to research as much as I can, before getting practical incase there are any hiccups lol

kirvedx

You can go SSD, that'll be fine. The issue is with making that route work. The CIC, like any computer, is only able to use hardware it knows how to use. It's configured pretty specifically. So many of the cheap china enclosures for - for instance - m.2 sata to PATA, leverage a PCB that is missing the master/slave jumper pins - that's a problem, it's feeding back to the CIC I think the generic (cable select) fallback where I'm suspicious the CIC expects something specific, maybe even 'master'; I think that causes the CIC not to see the drive. When you use a marvell controller with an MSATA or m.2 sata they tend to have the full 44 pins and the jumper pins, and they just work with the CIC. Going SSD using a marvell would be fine, the solid states won't suffer the same from automotive shock that a mechanical does. If you do go mechanical though, def rock the automotive class; It's worth it.

When using an enclosure, you may find it won't plug in after you've seated it back onto the CIC's drive caddy and attempt putting it back into the CIC. Sometimes the enclosures "wrap" around to the pin location, and the CIC has a couple of plastic nubs that go into the pin area (likely to provide reinforcement to the connection) - so you may need to cut away (I did) at the enclosure to provide the space needed for the CIC drive to seat fully into the CIC. I went with a 120GB sata, m.2, for 18$; I couldn't find one in that form factor at 80GB. There's also plenty of "PATA" 2.5" drives for sale on ebay that are made using flash memory. I didn't try one - but reckon that the interface they chose is going to play a part in whether they'd work or not. That's why I think it's better to build it yourself with parts/components you know will work. Just keep in mind "Marvell" when you go for an enclosure, with regards to the controller's chipset.

My image is for an E60 CIC that has C1A installed and has had the software patcher applied. So you'll need to follow the guide for installing your own certs. You _COULD_ backup the certs on your existing CIC before applying the image, and then go the official route if you happen to have legit certs; The official BMW root cert I believe can be reinstalled using the same software. I'm sure you could find a C1A unpatched image though if you need it. I took my image after I had already done it, because it was to backup my E60 so I could use the drive for my E70.

It's otherwise straight forward - the guides for successful ssd conversion simply spec the exact enclsure they used. Which is a plus if you just want to grab what you know works, and if the process is unfamiliar to you. So if that guide provides that for you - then it's certainly not a bad route; I'd be very suspicious of the drive if you're getting intermittent reboots - definitely seems like the issue.

smartshah

Ideally I just want to use the SSD with the compatible enclosure.
I already have everything working on my CIC. I did have a few hiccups along the way.
I have all the caddys to mount the drives to a PC, pretty efficient with Linux also lol.
But from experience there is always something you possibly can miss out.
Just want to literally clone the drive, if it is 80GB and I go with 128GB, and this upsets the tables that CIC reads on the drive, then I will investigate it. Atleast I currently have a working drive, apart from the intermittent reboot here and there.
I shall have a look at the Marvell caddy, question is how long and how reliable are these caddys? I will most likely go down the Msata route also.

I did follow your write up on the retrofit for the CIC and found it extremely useful.
​​​​​​
​​​​So I shall have a look at this.

kirvedx

You'll be fine with a larger drive. If you were to boot into the bios of the CIC, it could give basic drive info, and what you could do with that drive with basic utilities could certainly leverage the extent of the drives capabilities; It is a computer after all. However, the CIC is going to boot into the partition, once its loaded; The Idrive system doesn't care about the drive's underlying details. It leaves that to the hardware. That partition says it lives on sector x to sector y; and it's so legitimately strict that even though there will be Xgb of unallocated space - when it reaches the limit of the partition it will say the drive is out of space. So you won't experience issues in that regard. You can take an image of a smaller drive and apply it to the larger drive. The result is that the larger drive has whatever partition scheme was on the smaller drive, with the remaining sectors left out in "unallocated" space. When you apply a larger image to a smaller drive (with 'dd' on linux) it'll fail and quit when it hits the physical drives last usable sector. However, what partitions did manage to overlay entirely will in fact still be there and be entirely usable. If you have a smaller drive and apply a larger image to it, where most of the data were on the leading sectors, you could find that after sizing the outer partitions properly (or creating and sizing them) - you have a fully working system, because no important data was actually present where your drive didn't meet the size of the larger previous drive. That's how I solved my issue. Map data is in later sectors, when you install maps it just overwrites; So, bad sectors were present on the older drive, and on the newer drive the corrupted data could have been cloned over. However, when I installed the new maps those sectors ended up with valid data and all is resolved.

And with the media partition. It does't say look for music from sector x to sector y. It says look for music in partition 'x'; and the partition table gives the definition of its bounds; The OS layer doesn't track that stuff, it is given it. You're totally safe there.

Marvell controllers are pretty top notch - I'd expect it'll far out-live even the drive itself. Quirks do happen though.

Cloning your drive is a legitimate way to start. If the issue is with failing sectors, depending on the success rate of your clone, what's actually on the bad sectors - you could entirely alleviate your issue by cloning the drive to a new one. That's exactly what I did with mine. Let us know if the path you take does indeed resolve your issue - good luck!



* Sorry for the many edits, I needed what I wrote to make sense to me too lol.

smartshah

I think I will go down the compact flash route. As the CF costs £60 quid and the adaptor costs £30. Plus the extreme one is -20c to 80c. And the automotive grade is -40c. We don't often see temps below -5c here in London lol.

This will negate the route of looking for a marvell chipset based adaptor.
Msata SSD is cheaper to buy, probably half the price but it kinda works out the same at the end, as the CF route. But the again the compact flash is significantly slower than the SSD.

I will have a deep dive into this before I decide. Is there a tell tale, between Marvell adaptors which have the jmicron chipset and the ones without it?

kirvedx

Yea compact flash is what those PATA drives are made with that you can find on Ebay. Perhaps its tangible - I just don't know myself how well they perform or whether those drives have issues in the CIC. As far as a tell for the marvell controllers; most sellers will list whether they are marvell based or not. It does suck when you see 100's of listings and you have to ask the seller and wait for responses (and even worse when they don't know). I tried a couple that seemed right from what I found, but ended up a bust. I think the big tell is whether the PCB contains a full array of jumper settings for master/slave/cable select. Even if it does, it may not be marvell - but it may work because of it.

So I did confirm that what the CIC expects is that the drive is set to 'slave'. Most jumper-less interfaces are automatically (or statically) set to CS or master (but more than likely CS) and it needs it to be slave. Your CIC will still function without the drive in it, for basic things, it uses the drive for authorizations, advanced features, etc. Makes a lot more sense - I felt wrong writing 'I suspect it expects master'.