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Written by Kostas Tzounopoulos
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Thursday, 11 January 2007 |
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A member of the ZuneRama forum has read the Zune disk drive in a raw way so both partitions of Zune are visible (boot and data). Do you want to take a look inside ? ...
Zune uses the MTP protocol to store data. Its a combination of a filesystem and a database used by Microsoft. This is the way Zune shows you its content by artist or by genre for example. "ZunePet" is the one who read in raw mode the Zune's disk drive: The so-called "Zune Hard Drive Hack" that everyone is talking about does *NOT* give you direct access to the hard drive !!!!
In reality the true hard drive looks a lot different than what you see in Windows Explorer. What you are seeing in Windows Explorer is a filtered (fake) view.
For most casual Zune owners, the difference doesn't matter. For people seriously trying to access/hack the Zune, it is very significant.
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If you want direct access to your Zune hard drive, you need to take out the Zune hard drive and connected it to other hardware like an iPod or special adapter
Then it will appear as TWO different partitions. The system partition (~150MB) which contains the real NK.BIN firmware and other stuff, and the data partition.
The data partition contains the media content.
The actual media info and data is stored in a database on the Zune hard drive (Microsoft SQL Mobile) and in other non-obviously named files.
"\Hard Disk\" (152MB partition, only 9% of space used)
02/03/2003 10:21 PM 262,315 eboot.bin
02/03/2003 10:21 PM 11,154,839 nk.bin
02/03/2003 10:22 PM 80 pmcver.dat
02/03/2003 10:22 PM 1,373,735 recovery.bin
[current date/time] 57,344 pmcstore.edb
The 3 BIN files are exactly the same as the ones on your computer. Typically "C:\Program Files\Zune\Firmware\Zune01010322.cab". Don't trust the dates in the listings (2003?)
The pmcver.dat file is a short file. The pmcstore.edb is a little database ("EDB" SQL mobile format). This stores user specific settings (many string values like "SyncPartner" and "EnableWifi").
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The media partion, "\Hard Disk2\" contains raw media data, with fake names and a big database. It is a little under 30GB in size.
[------------------] <DIR> Content
02/03/2003 10:23 PM 5,656 devcert.dat
[current date/time ] 1,347,584 drmstore.dat
[current date/time ] 160 MediaItems.dat
[current date/time ] 167,772,160 MediaLibrary.edb
[current date/time ] 131,072 MediaLibrary_thumbs.edb
Under 'Content' are the media files with synthetic names you aren't supposed to see, examples:
\Content\0100\00\0b.wma
\Content\0100\00\c3.wma
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\Content\0600\00\0f.jpg
\Content\0600\00\12.jpg
Files sizes and layout under Content will be different on your Zune.
The Windows Explorer (using the MTP) formats the file names into a more user friendly format (eg: "\Storage\Music\blahblahblah) using info in the database. As mentioned, this is fake filtered view.
Visit the thread on ZuneRama for more.
[via ZuneMediaPlayer ]
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