Has anyone else had trouble with the harddrive in very cold weather? It has been -20 degrees celcius here for the the past couple of days , and when I first start my car the navigation and music box will not work. After the car warms up if I "reboot" the car the hard drive works. Do you think there is something wrong with my HDD? Should I take it into the dealer?

 

That's my only concern with all the technology that has been shoved into this car: More things to go wrong.

As for your question: I wouldn't be surprised. My Bose headunit kept on skipping CDs in cold weather.

 

Interesting Christian. I could be wrong, but I believe that most HD's have a storage temperature rating down to -40 degrees. So you should be ok I think in that regard. Hopefully the power supply that runs the HD is rated for the same cold temps. One potential problem that I see is that the newer hard drives use liquid bearings, kind of like motor oil in a car. We all know that oil gels in really cold temps so this could be causing your HD to to not boot until it warms up a little. Just a thought.

 

Christian, how long does it take before the HD boots up after your car is started?

 

Once I've let my car warm up for a few minutes I have to turn the car off and back on to get the drive to boot so that I can access the map or the music box.

 

I would bet anything that it is the oil-based liquid bearings in the HD that is causing that.

 

If I was in -20 degree C weather I think I'd need a reboot like the G's harddrive!

 

Disk drives have an Operating range: 2° C to 35° C (41° F to 95° F)

A Nonoperating range:-40° C to 68° C (-40° F to 158° F)

So it doesn't surprise me it doesn't work well at -20.

(yes I work for a computer company)