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After ~10 years, the hard drive in the audio unit of my '14 RLX has died. I got the dreaded "HDD access error. Please consult your dealer." error when leaving work yesterday.
I'm curious if anyone has attempted to replace the drive, if even remotely possible? Quick research seems that a dealer simply replaces the entire audio/navigation unit when this happens. I know nothing about the construction of the audio/navigation unit but I guess I'm going to find out soon, haha. I don't know what sort of interface the drive is, or if it's even connector-ized/removable.
My initial thinking is, if the drive is connector-ized and is a standard connector, depending on how dead the drive may be I can possibly attempt to image it. I highly doubt anyone has the software, so I suspect other than this my only option would be to replace the entire unit. There is a used one on eBay right now for a not completely terrible price...
The next question is, if I purchase a replacement unit, is that something I can simply install? Or is there VIN shenanigans that need to be dealt with?
Ugh, sorry to hear this. Are you getting the error all the time, or intermittently? Please let us know what ends up happening. I'm sure many people are interested even though no one is rushing forward with a solution...
Ugh, sorry to hear this. Are you getting the error all the time, or intermittently? Please let us know what ends up happening. I'm sure many people are interested even though no one is rushing forward with a solution...
It is intermittent. This is the second time in a few weeks the error has surfaced.
I started to dig into it over the weekend and of course the system booted fine, haha. However, since it is a mechanical hard drive and it has been in service for ~10 years I am a little suspicious it may be starting to fail.
I ended up removing the audio unit Saturday and digging into it. Getting the thing out is not too bad. However, Honda could have given us a little more slack on the ~10 connector wiring harness on the back! Although this video is for the left hand drive version of the car, the process is more-or-less identical:
I was able to pull the drive and, at least for the 2014 model year, it is a Toshiba MK1060GSC 2.5" SATA hard drive.
What I did *not* expect was that the system configures an ATA password on the drive . I threw a few different tools at it without success. I found a thread on a Lexus form where they were in the same situation (the unit in the thread also uses the same drive). It turns out once the system issues the ATA unlock command the drive remains unlocked until a power cycle. Since the SATA protocol supports hot swap, what *they* did was used an extension cable so the drive could be connected to the system externally....let the system boot...then swap the SATA data cable to a PC and grab an image of the drive.
and am going to give it a shot! First step is to grab an image using ddrescue, then restore the image to another drive. I happen to have a bunch of 128GB Crucial SATA SSDs and am hoping one will work...but I won't know until I try.
I was concerned that since I cannot ATA lock the drive (since I don't know the password used) that it wouldn't work, but it seems a lot of navigation units will automatically configure the ATA lock if it's not already configured. IN FACT, one of the ways folks have recovered the ATA password is by using a Western Digital 2.5" drive of similar vintage. Stick it in, boot the system, and it will configure the ATA lock. Then there is a utility that'll let you recover the password. Unfortunately I don't have any 2.5" WD drives on hand so I'm not able to try that method, and if I'm gonna have to buy supplies I'm going with the path of most possible success, haha.
I know there's a chance the issue is *not* the hard drive, but given the drive was manufactured in 2012 and has likely been in service since late 2013...may be handy to grab an image either way.
I had it a bit further apart than necessary, but here's a few pictures I snapped when I had it out and on my workbench. I now know that you do not need to separate it from the display (though it's a few screws and a single ribbon cable...so not too bad). The only part that needs to be removed once the unit has been pulled out of the dash is the bracket to the right of the unit (picture 2). 4 bolts that go into the chassis of the unit and two screws that go into the display unit. I plan to get pictures of this when I pull the unit again for the cloning fun.
For now I have reinstalled it sans hard drive so no further automotive environmental wear is put on it and put the dash back together. I learned that when the audio unit is removed, there are enough modules that do not sleep (Bluetooth being one) that my battery was dead the next day, haha.
Cool! Let us know how it goes. Might have potential to be a sticky in the future. If this works and mine goes down, I might try to see if a SSD would potentially work in this system.
Cool! Let us know how it goes. Might have potential to be a sticky in the future. If this works and mine goes down, I might try to see if a SSD would potentially work in this system.
Absolutely! Unless I can skirt away from work I likely won't be able to poke at it more until the weekend.
Well, it does say "Typical Toshiba part number is MK1060GSC" which is the model number, and the images look legit. My hope is to replace it with an SSD, but this would be a good source if the audio unit ends up being picky about drives. Shoot for $15 I am contemplating ordering one just in case! I'll have to see what they charge for shipping. Nice find!
Thanks! Don't really think that there are too many people waiting for results... Hopefully the SSD works. It would quiet things down a little in run mode.
Last edited by 1186KA9; 04-14-2024 at 10:24 PM.
Reason: Word choice
It is intermittent. This is the second time in a few weeks the error has surfaced.
I started to dig into it over the weekend and of course the system booted fine, haha. However, since it is a mechanical hard drive and it has been in service for ~10 years I am a little suspicious it may be starting to fail.
I ended up removing the audio unit Saturday and digging into it. Getting the thing out is not too bad. However, Honda could have given us a little more slack on the ~10 connector wiring harness on the back! Although this video is for the left hand drive version of the car, the process is more-or-less identical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3KEGNhW8mA
I was able to pull the drive and, at least for the 2014 model year, it is a Toshiba MK1060GSC 2.5" SATA hard drive.
What I did *not* expect was that the system configures an ATA password on the drive . I threw a few different tools at it without success. I found a thread on a Lexus form where they were in the same situation (the unit in the thread also uses the same drive). It turns out once the system issues the ATA unlock command the drive remains unlocked until a power cycle. Since the SATA protocol supports hot swap, what *they* did was used an extension cable so the drive could be connected to the system externally....let the system boot...then swap the SATA data cable to a PC and grab an image of the drive.
Soo, I have ordered:
Really interesting! It sounds like this hard drive decided to mess with the wrong guy (who might actually be enjoying this)!
So, I was able to successfully image the drive. I restored the image to one of the Crucial 128GB SSDs I have and unsurprisingly got the "HDD access error" message. I wonder if there's a way to view some sort of log that may say *why* it failed to access the drive. I'm now attempting to restore it to some random Toshiba 250GB drive I happened to have laying around. I'm just curious if it'll take a different drive. I doubt it'll work, but meh worth a shot I think.
The disk has an interesting layout. It's got 10 partitions of various sizes:
Code:
~/navi_dump$ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda 8:0 0 93.2G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 1K 0 part
├─sda5 8:5 0 44G 0 part
├─sda6 8:6 0 1G 0 part
├─sda7 8:7 0 4G 0 part
├─sda8 8:8 0 4G 0 part
├─sda9 8:9 0 16G 0 part
├─sda10 8:10 0 1G 0 part
├─sda11 8:11 0 1G 0 part
├─sda12 8:12 0 8G 0 part
└─sda13 8:13 0 14G 0 part
fdisk seems to show the partitions are set as type W95 FAT32 but I don't think that they're all actually FAT32.
Code:
$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 93.16 GiB, 100030242816 bytes, 195371568 sectors
Disk model:
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 1008 195371567 195370560 93.2G 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 1071 92275784 92274714 44G b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6 92275848 94373054 2097207 1G b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda7 94373118 102761756 8388639 4G b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda8 102761820 111150458 8388639 4G b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda9 111150522 144705014 33554493 16G b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda10 144705078 146802284 2097207 1G b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda11 146802348 148899554 2097207 1G b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda12 148899618 165676895 16777278 8G b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda13 165676959 195037100 29360142 14G b W95 FAT32
Out of the various partitions, I was able to mount some without doing anything special. sda1, sda9, and sda10 are currently a mystery that I may poke at soon. I haven't poked around too much past this yet, but I plan to peruse at the filesystem a bit.
And of course, a couple of pictures. Oh, don't make the mistake I did and start in accessory mode. About half way through the first imaging it timed out and I had to start over, haha. Run mode is a must. Fortunately my battery charger has a "13.6V 5A supply" mode, so I have it connected so the battery doesn't die.
So, I've been messing with it a bit and I think the ATA security is the only real snag here. Although the system refuses to *boot* from the SSD, if I let it boot from the original HDD and then swap in the SSD, it continues to work just fine. The internal diagnostics are happy with the SSD too. I was able to put in a couple of different audio CDs and it was able to pull track information from the CDDB on the hard drive. I was also able to request directions for a location over 2k miles away and it calculated and started the route no problem. I was able to zoom around to random places on the map too.
I'm not hopeful, but I am still trying to figure out if there is a way (without breaking the bank of course) to "sniff" the ATA security somehow. I've posted on a couple of hard drive forums...we'll see what happens.
Thank you for continuing to sleuth through this process. For those of us that are savy in this technical area, it will save a lot of time and help prevent breaking something and having to start over with a new head unit.
When you started this process, I had already surmised that the security on the drive would be the most difficult item on the obstacle list. There's too much data on these drives that Honda is obligated to secure for it to be easy to just copy the drive image. I have a suspicion that the drive itself pairs its unique ID on its on-board system with the head unit generated password so that it remains secured to the head unit.
Thank you for continuing to sleuth through this process. For those of us that are savy in this technical area, it will save a lot of time and help prevent breaking something and having to start over with a new head unit.
When you started this process, I had already surmised that the security on the drive would be the most difficult item on the obstacle list. There's too much data on these drives that Honda is obligated to secure for it to be easy to just copy the drive image. I have a suspicion that the drive itself pairs its unique ID on its on-board system with the head unit generated password so that it remains secured to the head unit.
Thank you for your dedication.
Ha, you're most welcome. I'm at a point where I feel like it's *so close*, so I really want to see this work! Though it may take some time.
The system seems to simply use standard ATA security most drives support which is simply password based. I have a hunch if I can figure out the ATA security password other drives (with some exceptions of course) will *just work*. I don't think there's any more complexity to it, but I could be wrong. There is a TSB about replacing the audio unit and it states that if the car is still under warranty to move the hard drive from the old unit to the new one. There could be more to the process that the TSB doesn't detail, but I kinda suspect not. If drives can be moved from unit to unit, then they're likely all just using the same hard coded password. I am completely guessing of course.
I do have a complete image of the drive and when I have some time I may try hunting around for any references related to ATA security.
04-11-2024, 09:49 AM
. I threw a few different tools at it without success. I found a thread on a Lexus form where they were in the same situation (the unit in the thread also uses the same drive). It turns out once the system issues the ATA unlock command the drive remains unlocked until a power cycle. Since the SATA protocol supports hot swap, what *they* did was used an extension cable so the drive could be connected to the system externally....let the system boot...then swap the SATA data cable to a PC and grab an image of the drive.
