RNS-510 HDD replacement/SSD swap DIY

[benny82]

hi do you need the radio code if you unplug the unit for this upgrade because I have lost my code??

[kamold]

No, only if the radio goes into a different car.

[fronty]

Evening all, thanks for this thread, I am going to try this so have ordered a KingSpec 64Gb SSD from Amazon (64GB KingSpec 2.5-inch PATA/IDE SSD Solid State Disk (MLC Flash) SM2236 Controller: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories) but it sounds like some people have had issues. Does anyone have any updates on whether this works or not?

I might try and clone the HDD first and see how I get on. I'll post back here.

I'm not bothered about partition sizes, the problem I've got is that I can't access the maps or media on the HDD when the unit is cold. If I go on a drive and let it warm up, then come back 15-30 mins later, it'll work, it's almost like it needs to warm up a bit first else the HDD tab in the media menu is greyed out and the satnav asks me to insert the navigation DVD.

I don't actually know if it's the HDD at fault or whether there are some other electronics playing up (maybe a bad capacitor?). But this SSD was only £40 so thought I'd give it a go.

Cheers,

Fronty

[VW Central]

We do 64GB SSD upgrades to any RNS510 stock is strictly limited at present - $200 installed with 3 year warranty.

[fronty]

So my KingSpec SSD turned up today, came all the way from China. There's a jumper installed setting it as IDE master, pretty sure I read on here that the jumper needs to be taken off for it all to work, which puts the drive into slave mode, so does the RNS expect to find an IDE slave then? Maybe the DVD drive is configured as the IDE master.

Now I just need to find a few hours to give this a go.

[fronty]

My RNS is now in bits all over the dining room table, the display panel came off a bit unexpectedly and pulled the ribbon cable out before I could release the catch, hopefully it's okay. Now just waiting for a couple 44 pin to 40 pin IDE converters to arrive from Amazon so I can attempt to clone the HDD to the SSD using my old steam driven PC. But these converters all seem to have to come from China, so more delays!

[kamold]

There is no need to clone the drive.
Just install the new blank drive and do a full firmware load.
If you are loading the same firmware version that is already on there, you need to enable firmware downgrade, which will be a case of letting it fail, then doing a three finger reboot to kick it off.

[fronty]

Well my IDE converters actually arrived today so I've been having fun with these drives plugged into my PC. The SSD actually had an NTFS partition on it already, so I have removed that so that it is totally blank - I wonder if this is the cause of other peoples problems?

As for the HDD, well my PC BIOS is struggling to detect it, it seems to recognise it as a 30GB IDE HDD but when booting up the BIOS does it's auto detection thing and then says "hard disk error, hit f1 to continue" so I'm guessing the HDD is really hosed, this may explain why I was having so much trouble with it in the car (it only ever seemed to work when it was warm). I'm going to leave it on a radiator for 15 mins (it's getting cold here in the UK so the central heating has come on!) and see if that warms it up enough to get it working.

I wanted to try and clone it and if it didn't work then load on the f/w and maps, but I may not have a choice now anyway!

[fronty]

I've had some success here now, leaving the old HDD on the radiator for 15 mins to warm up actually worked! My PC was able to access it and I used Acronis to save a disk image, I loaded the image onto the SSD, put it all back together and it's working a treat. I didn't have to reload the firmware or maps but obviously I am stuck with the tiny partitions and about 30MB of wasted space.

I did try to re-size the partitions using a couple of different partitioning programs but they only seemed to want to change (actually increase) the size of the middle (maps?) partition, this was formatted FAT32 whereas the others were unknown, maybe that's why they couldn't be resized.

I looked at the re-partitioning post but that seemed to be for quite an old version of firmware, I am running 5238 at the moment, is there a later firmware with better partition sizes? Or has anyone done it with later firmware (i.e. preserving the checksum or come up with some other hack?).

Cheers,

Fronty

[enigma101]

Has anyone else had any success in cloning the original drive? I have a 'Zheino Classic A' PATA 64GB SSD that i'm planning to transplant very soon. I like the idea of cloning, as it potentially saves a lot of time. I would appreciate any tips anyone has.......thanks