Has anyone actually done it themselves or is it still just things people heard from salesman or other people?

 

This has been confirmed by owners.
Play only, no transfer

 

No transfer.
You can't even transfer music from a data mp3 cd to the harddrive.

The only music you can transfer is if you're have an audio cd in there...to the harddrive.

 

No doubt to discourage piracy, but it still sucks.

 

Yeah. It makes the hard drive useless to me. I'd rather use the aux jacks with my iPod then encode all my MP3s to CD.

 

It think it is just a matter of time for someone to figure out a hack to allow rippign from the CF card and also to rip MP3s.

 

If the hard drive is in an easy location to access then it would be easiest to just remove it, put it in a USB case for $15 and attach it to you PC. It is a Seagate 30 gig drive with 20gigs alloted to the car and navigation system and 9.5 gigs allotted to music. They are likely using a standard Fat32 or NTFS file system. You could then just load the songs into the appropriate directories. If they are using SATA drives you could get a Y cable and bring one end out under the dash and attach it to a laptop to load data on it as needed...

 

Wow, that's a mouthful.

Sounds like you could help me stop my VCR from flashing 12:00! J/K

 

Deane as I was reading this thread, I said to myself WOW !!, what does all of this mean. Heck I just graduated from my abacus to the slide rule .
Oh well it just takes a little longer to teach this old fart new things, but I'm tryin .

 

While I agree in practice, I doubt they're using Fat32 or NTFS.

 

I would think they would implement NTFS and not FAT32, but who knows. Also, since it is only a 30GB drive, I can only assume that it is IDE and not SATA. I haven't seen too many SATA hard drives that small.

 

ROFLMAO I can relate. I am at least 10 years behind in all of this stuff.

I'm trying too but I think I'm leaving this thread behind.

 

unlike a computer a car would require a fairly reliable filesystem so as to prevent crashes etc. They are likely using some type of microkernal as the OS usually an embedded nix variant and an associated filesystem, most of which are easily readable by home pc's. As for IDE vs Sata I agree Shane they are likely going to get a lower price point with ide drives from both the point of view of the drive cost and the controller costs. I cannot see Infiniti creating a custom filesystem and trying to invest in the resources to ensure it is fool proof and reliable. I think there will likely be some type of hack to get music or other info onto that drive for sure and possibly to even upgrade the size of the drive. Toshiba just released a 200gig 2.5 inch laptop drive... That would be impressive!!!

Arun..

 

LMAO, you and Wayne are cracking me up.

 

Probably one of the *nix FS variants (like ext2 or ext3) would be my guess.

In any case, locating the hard drive and mounting it into any recent linux distro would reveal all the details
I can't wait to do that !!!