With the new Prius Tspirit having the HDD, the SatNav data is preloaded presumably from DVD, but the original DVD isn't supplied to the owner. Looking ahead, if say the HDD failed or became corrupted and had to be replaced outside the warranty period, would the owner also have to pay for a new copy of the SatNav data which I understand is over £200.

As an ex IT engineer, I know very well that hard disks do fail, and I do wonder what the constant vibration and shock will do to an in car HDD and what will be the failure rate. It would be good if it was possible to back up the HDD to a laptop.

Has anyone tried connecting a laptop to the firewire socket?

Hi,

Some people on the French prius forum have tried without luck (nothing under Windows but one unrecognised item under OS X) so it's clearly a Firewire but probably needs specific drivers. I haven't received my Prius yet so I can't comment further :-(
They plan to make some tests under diag mode (which is, I think, keeping your finger on the "display" button and turning lights on/off 5 times) to see if the HDD magically appears.

Do you have a link for the French Prius forum ?

For the Prius III:
http://prius-touring-club.com/vbf/forumdisplay.php?f=127

Thanks StephRG