Hey everyone!

I know there have been several posts about it, but trying to get a clarified answer on what to do next based on my unique PCM situation.

I noticed a couple weeks ago that my HDD was rebooting every few minutes in cold weather, so I took the dive on buying a new 250GB PNY SSD, a drive reader/cloner.

Got the drive out, did an offline clone with the device (Sabrent cloner from Amazon), put the new SSD in, but now, the system does not load maps/navi, and reboots every few minutes but with a HARD reset, clearing all of my settings.

I suspected that something might have gone wrong with the clone, or that an offline clone just made an exact copy of my old drive, errors and all, but I can't be sure.

So, I swapped back in the old drive. Maps and Navi now work, phone bluetooth works, but I have no access to bluetooth music or iPod/USB playback.

At this point, I'm not sure what I want to do, but here's what I'm thinking:

1. Try to get BT music and USB playback working with the old drive. It's not rebooting anymore and seems to be working just fine, so could potentially keep using this until it truly fails.
2. Try to get my SSD to actually work. I've seen folks talking about using Clonezilla, which I want to try, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be wasting my time by trying this route for the same rebooting, no nav/maps issue coming back

Also, do I need to insert an upgrade disk to clear old errors/issues once the new drive is in?

Tagging @jslo and @ozzythething for any insights, since I've read about you guys successfully navigating these issues!!

Car Specs:
2014 Cayman Base
PCM software version 4.76

Thanks so much,

-ccambrid

 

Maps and navigation may not work instantly, because the system apparently rebuilds an index of some sort when it sees that a new hard drive has been installed. In my case, all the songs in my Jukebox folder were gone at first, but reappeared after 10-20 minutes or so.

No update disks are needed, ordinarily it just works. Apart from the delay mentioned above, which not everybody seems to have experienced.

If you have an unrelated rebooting problem it's possible that the index never finishes building. I didn't have to contend with that when I backed up my drive, fortunately.

I'd guess it's unlikely that Clonezilla will behave any differently than the cloning dock you used, but it doesn't cost anything to try. I used Clonezilla on my 981BS but have also used the docks to back up other embedded hard drives with success.

 

Thanks so much for getting back to me on this! Hearing you on all of that, and I almost want to try re-cloning post factory reset on my original HDD to see if that fixed anything with those weird reboots.

If that still doesn't alleviate the rebooting issue, what route would you then take if you were in my shoes?

 

No experience with the rebooting issue, but hopefully someone else will shed some light on it.

If you can't solve the problem with another backup approach, then the options are to send the PCM off to repair (Becker Autosound works on them, I believe, but I have no experience with them either) or swap in a Chstek or similar replacement head unit. If you leave it up to the dealer's tender mercies, the bill will go well into four digits.

Personally, I'd probably switch to Chstek. I already have a Mr12Volt adapter in my PCM, and am no longer interested in living without wireless CarPlay support.

 

Really appreciate the help!

 

I would try cloning the drive again. It sounds like it just got an error in it while cloning the first time. If your original drive was acting up while cloning, then that copy might not work. You may need to try a few times.
If you still can’t get anything to work then the Chstek is a great option. I currently have one in my car and love it.

 

Giving this a shot right now!

 

Not all SSDs will work properly either. When I first attempted this, I used Clonezilla to clone the drive onto a Netac SSD. With this drive, the maps would take about 10-15 minutes before they'd load. When the car is turned off and on, same thing.
I returned it to Amazon and bought a Kingston SSD instead. Repeated the same cloning procedure, and the maps would load as normal after that.

 

Just attempted the clone again via Clonezilla, and still no go, unfortunately. The first two sectors the program tried to copy over were bad, so it just skipped them. It still completed the process though, so I installed the newly cloned SSD. It brought all of my presets over and connected to BT just fine, but maps wouldn't load, and after 5 minutes, it reboots.

I just installed the original drive back in, and maps now load and there's no 5 minute rebooting cycle.

I wonder if it's the SSD, or if I need to run an update disc on the SSD to clear errors? May just get a CHSTEK at this point

 

I missed that at first -- you only get spontaneous rebooting in cold weather, but not at all in hotter weather? That sounds like a different issue from the hard drive. If it were on my workbench, I'd warm the unit up with a heat gun (aka 'hair dryer'), then spray component chiller (aka 'can of air held upside down') in an attempt to localize the problem.

 

Posting some more clarification!

Basically, I first noticed the rebooting during cold and rainy weather the other day, but after doing a factory reset and turning off HD radio, I had no more rebooting issues on the old HDD during cold weather.

That scenario prompted me to get ahead of a failing drive and go the SSD route though, but now I'm getting reboots every 5 minutes with that new SSD installed, regardless of temp. Even after re-cloning the old drive last night and reinstalling the SSD again.

I'm back on my old HDD, and so far it's all good with no reboots, but still don't have access to BT/iPod music. Clonezilla revealed three bad blocks though, so I know for sure that my HDD is a ticking time bomb haha.