I have a prblem whit my empeg. When i use it inside it works perfekt. But when i try to use it in my car this messege appears: "No harddisk found. Pleace contact support". What can be the problem??

A variety of things which are listed in this FAQ.

However, the fact that it works at home but not in car makes me think that it's not getting enough electricity to spin up the hard drive. Try inserting the empeg into the sled after you start your car. Does it still not work? Try checking your battery and alternator voltage. Do you ever see a battery icon on the empeg's screen?

Thanks for the tip but its not a power problem. Have messured the volt and it was 13.4 volts. Any other suggestions??

Are you certain it is 100 percent as you described: works on AC and doesn't work on DC?

Or is it just intermittent in both cases?

Or is it just that it doesn't like booting up when it's cold (i.e., in the car)? Cold temperatures make metal contacts shrink and thus increase failure rates for intermittent connections.

I believe it's probably an intermittent case based on a bad connection as described in the FAQ link you were just given. I'll bet the car/home thing is a red herring.

Mounting angle in dash possibly causing the drive tray to move/shift and put stress on the drive cable and connectors, while layng flat indoors?

I once had this same problem. I agree that when it is cold it tends not to find the hard disk. It didnt really take much either. Even about 50degrees F was cold enough. Somehow after I installed hijack It seems like I had more success with detection. That doesnt really make sense since supposedly its a hardware issue but just wanted to put it out there.

Ri-ON

Quote:
Are you certain it is 100 percent as you described: works on AC and doesn't work on DC?

Or is it just intermittent in both cases?

Or is it just that it doesn't like booting up when it's cold (i.e., in the car)? Cold temperatures make metal contacts shrink and thus increase failure rates for intermittent connections.

I believe it's probably an intermittent case based on a bad connection as described in the FAQ link you were just given. I'll bet the car/home thing is a red herring.

Good cable or bad, regardless, if the disk is an IBM or Fujitsu, the later disks had cold-start protection build in. Although the control board is powered up, when it tries to start the spindle motor it first checks the ambient, and will not start if it's out of the disk's spec.

This normally means that the device driver gets an error code back when it tries to spin up the disk (from the kernel). However, in this case, it's the boot loader trying to start the disk up and load the OS, so that's before any "intelligence" in the Linux device drivers kicks in.

What would always have been useful is if the bootloader could print up a message stating the error code returned by the drive controller, if the drive is detected as present but not functioning (in the bad cable case, the drive is not even seen as present).

What I would suggest is that you:

- install HiJack
- record the temperature at startup time by looking at HiJack's "Vital Signs" info and post it here
- post the disk type here, or go find the PDF of the data sheet for the drive
- post a serial log of the boot in the car

Then we can probably help you a bit more.

With Hijack, couldn't he force DC/car mode while in the house, too?
Booting that way might yield something useful as well.

Good catch, that man! If it behaves the same way in the sled in Forced AC mode, then it's the disk protection mechanism stopping it spinning up. If we know what disk he has, we get the spec sheet, look at minimum operating temperature, ask him what HiJack says, bingo.