Bought an mStation a couple of months back from scoobynet

Subsequently picked the car up I wanted the mStation for and the ride is {b]very[/b] firm (thanks to Trust springs and Nismo dampers ) and causes CD's either in the autochanger or the dash unit to skip on the B roads (which I drive daily).

So the question is, am I asking for trouble installing a hard disk in a car with nearly no suspension? Would I be better to stick with a CD based MP3 system? At least I won't damage (relatively) dear kit...

 

ive just bought neo jukebox which is new mstation,basically it runs as a hard drive,so bak up ya tunes on pc,and if hard drive get knackered just replace it! 20gb will only set u bak £50.

 

Yep, @ £50 its not too bad, I'm just not sure how useful it will be in a car which jumps CD's quite often - does the mStation have a buffer?

 

Yes.

Plus a hard disc's sustained read rate is well in excess of the necessary by several orders of magnitude. The hard disc will likely have it's own cache and the m-station will cache too.

Fit it. It's only losing money and not giving you anything if you don't!

 

Hard disks handle vibrations and shocks pretty well. Don't waste money on a 7,200rpm drive, a slower 5,400 one is fine for in-car MP3. You could always get a even cheaper 2nd-hand one to limit your expense.

I've installed loads of PC's on Frigates and never had problems with disk failures. All we used were "mariners" kits to cut down excess vibrations and some of the movement of the ship. It sounds fancy, but it was just some brackets with plenty of rubber and dampening material. The whole PC was secured, there was nothing fancy done to the hard disk mounts. The MOD supplied the dampening material, so I'm not sure where you could get some

I'd mount the MStation nearer the bulkhead at the back of the rear seats. I had loads of problems when I kept my changer right at the back of the boot or even in the spare wheel bay. Seemed to suffer more from my stiffer suspension and the Scottish country roads.

Stefan