Last week my PCM (3.1, 2014 Cayman S) was on the fritz. The Nav stopped working, and the unit kept rebooting every 5-10 minutes. I tried "resetting" it by pulling the fuse for 30 minutes or so, but that didn't resolve the issue. I then tried re-applying the 4.76 update via the DVD, but the update would fail about 90% of the way through with an error that it couldn't write files, and then the system just kept rebooting in to emergency update mode.
As a hail marry, I pulled out the drive (it's a 100GB sata 2.5 inch drive located at the top of the unit.) to see if I could get my pc to at least see it. Sure enough I was able to see the partitions, so I ran some diagnostics on it. These came up with bad blocks.
I ran down to Best Buy and grabbed a 120 gb PNY solid state drive off the shelf for $20. Using Clonezilla, I cloned the failing drive to the new SSD. There were a few bad blocks on the old drive, but it was mostly successful. I was primarily trying to get the boot sector anyway. Inserted the cloned SSD into the unit and bench booted it. It did boot into emergency update mode again (I suspected it would), but I popped the update disc in figuring "what's the worst that could happen?"
The update ran completely and successfully! I popped the entire unit back in the car and everything works flawlessly. It didn't copy over my jukebox files, but the nav, saved destinations, phone settings, presets, and even my lap recordings all copied over. Overall the unit seems a little quicker and more responsive - likely as a result of the SSD - and I suspect the SSD will be more reliable as it's less sensitive to vibration and heat than the traditional drive that was in there. If your PCM hasn't failed yet, perhaps this would be a preventative measure? The SSD is $20, and the Software Update disc is another $23 shipped. For under $45 seems like it would be an opportunity to save some cash in the long run vs. a Porsche replacement.
As a hail marry, I pulled out the drive (it's a 100GB sata 2.5 inch drive located at the top of the unit.) to see if I could get my pc to at least see it. Sure enough I was able to see the partitions, so I ran some diagnostics on it. These came up with bad blocks.
I ran down to Best Buy and grabbed a 120 gb PNY solid state drive off the shelf for $20. Using Clonezilla, I cloned the failing drive to the new SSD. There were a few bad blocks on the old drive, but it was mostly successful. I was primarily trying to get the boot sector anyway. Inserted the cloned SSD into the unit and bench booted it. It did boot into emergency update mode again (I suspected it would), but I popped the update disc in figuring "what's the worst that could happen?"
The update ran completely and successfully! I popped the entire unit back in the car and everything works flawlessly. It didn't copy over my jukebox files, but the nav, saved destinations, phone settings, presets, and even my lap recordings all copied over. Overall the unit seems a little quicker and more responsive - likely as a result of the SSD - and I suspect the SSD will be more reliable as it's less sensitive to vibration and heat than the traditional drive that was in there. If your PCM hasn't failed yet, perhaps this would be a preventative measure? The SSD is $20, and the Software Update disc is another $23 shipped. For under $45 seems like it would be an opportunity to save some cash in the long run vs. a Porsche replacement.
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