Columbus Nav question

[K1W1]

A 40GB hard drive is much more logical. Today they are probably a 200GB drive just formatted smaller because you can't buy drives as small as 40GB any more afaik.
I wonder if anybody has tried replacing the drive with a larger unit? I assume it's just a standard 2.5" drive.

[Ryan_R]

Normal HDDs wouldn't last very long in a car if they're operating with all the bumps and G forces. The extra protection makes them slower and more expensive, hence the smaller size. The exception to this rule are SSDs which would be an idea replacement.

[The Speedfighter]

After doing this update (4024) I got a lot of problems:
- My navigation didn't show up in the MFD
- My steeringwheel controls were all over the place
- My Nav started working in the MFD again, but I kept the problems with the controls not working

So I decided to bring it back to Skoda today and let them sort it out.

Well I got the solution (I hope) of why my steering wheel controls are not working properly.

Skoda advised me today that it's a faulty Clockspring. They've done a full search of any faults in my car, and they came back with this solution that it needs to be replaced. They started off with the software diagnoses and then pulled my dash apart to investigate further as the software showed up there was no issue what so ever.

I'm pretty p****d off about it since my car is only 4 days old. So they gave me the car back today and I need to bring it back on Monday once the new clockspring has arrived from the warehouse.

So yeah this was the bad news for now

[K1W1]

Normal HDDs wouldn't last very long in a car if they're operating with all the bumps and G forces. The extra protection makes them slower and more expensive, hence the smaller size. The exception to this rule are SSDs which would be an idea replacement.

A normal hard drive will work perfectly fine in the dash board area of a car which is the most stable area. A little bit of silicon based foam or similar around it to protect against shock and it will last as long as the car itself. If you think that there is some sort of magic special hard drive in your Columbus think again.
There are countless hard drives mounted into all sort of vehicles everything from data recorders to media players to computers and they all generally work perfectly well. The hard drive in a school kids notebook in their school bag will suffer more shock stress than a hard drive in a car radio system.
My mark 2 iPod circa 2004 with its 40GB hard drive has been in the dash and centre console of cars almost it's entire life and it still works perfectly ( except the battery).

[Mysticality]

The 40GB HD is more shock-resistant than your average 2.5" HD. Smaller capacity, but built for automotive.
More tolerance towards temperature and vibration.
I wouldn't run a normal HD in the Columbus unit, no way in hell.

The HD in school kids netbooks aren't running whilst they're being thrown around, AND they're not designed to last the life of the vehicle...

Imagine if they just used consumer grade stuff??
6 months after you buy the car, the HD dies. Rinse, repeat.

[Ryan_R]

You can wear out a normal HDD just by operating it on an uneven (not flat) surface. Inside are 1-3 platters with a needle (think similar to a record player, but smaller and spinning much faster). Large enough bumps while the disk is in use will cause the needle to scratch the platter. Just as a scratched record ruins a song or more a scratched platter at the very least will prevent the system reading files in those locations (and remember files are often fragmented across the entire disk).

If the school laptop is off when the dropped the needle is in a safe location away from the platters so the risk of HDD damage is less in that instance (could still cause damage in other ways though). A crude comparison to comparing HDD shock resistance might be a watch/timepiece. The genuine expensive articles are going to generally last longer than the cheap knock-offs.

An SSD has no moving parts so any old one will do the job as far as shock resistance goes, however you should research reliability of certain brands/models as some are better than others. I wouldn't touch an early-generation model.