Any advice on level 3 for a BMW iDrive/ satnav HDD?

[Popparumb]

I have a 2016 BMW in which the Nav system (iDrive) is starting to take a while to boot up. It is still working OK, but it feels like the HDD may be having problems.

I would like to run spinrite over it to see if there are any problems that it can address, but I am only really familiar with Windows, FAT and NTFS file systems, so don't want to break anything.
I understand that the HDD is dynamically locked by the OS every time it boots and shuts down, so not sure if Spinrite will be able to address the filesystem if the drive is pulled from the car.

Have you any advice for me before I pull the drive and plug it into a chassis where I can run Spinrite?

 

[DanR]

@Popparumb Welcome to the forums! You've come to the right place!

SpinRite 6.1 (like SR 6/0) is OS and file system agnostic. SpinRite 6.1 is also partition agnostic. SpinRite 6.1 neither knows or cares about OS's, file systems, or partitions. SpinRite 6.1 works at a raw data level where none of those things apply.

That said, I would highly recommend backing up the HDD (after putting it in the chassis) before running SpinRite on it. And: level 3 or 4 is appropriate here. (Level 4 = Level 3 plus a final verification read.) With SpinRite 6.1 you may wish to consider enabling Before and After benchmarking to see the effect SpinRite has on the HDD's performance.

 

[peterblaise]

I'd clone it first, and see if the clone runs the
SatNav.

If yes, they you have a backup and know
BMW has not copy-protected the drive.

If no, then see what BMW's replacement
service covers.

If they copy protected it, and SpinRite writes
to a sector that BMW expects to be blank, or
unformatted, even with 'illegal' contents
according to standard writing, then SpinRite
might overwrite that copy protection and the
software will refuse to run.

A working clone will tell.

 

[PHolder]

I understand that the HDD is dynamically locked by the OS every time it boots and shuts down

If the system uses hardware encryption on the drive, then it may not be willing to interact with ANY SATA command that doesn't provide the correct password first, and in that case you will be out of luck unless you can find a way to learn the necessary password.