Navman S30 Satnav device

I have seen a number of different Navman models now. All of them have subtle variations on how to process them. Although the underlying OS is Microsoft WinCE.NET 5.0 Core Version I did not have to access this device via Mobile Device Centre. After applying some write blocking to my USB port this device was accessible as a mass storage device allowing me to image it with Encase. I ended up with 114,759 sectors being imaged.

The next step I took was to track down and consult a manual for the device in order to establish its capabilities. I expect all devices to have saved Home, Favourites and Recent destinations and this device was no exception.

In addition however this device can save trip logs, pre-planned itineraries, pictures and be paired with a mobile phone.

Almost all the relevant data is stored within xml formatted files. Microsoft Excel 2007 is an excellent tool for examining these files and subsequently reporting on them. I use the Get External Data / From Other Sources / From XML Data Import option via the data tab and allow Excel to sort out the formatting.

A good place to start is the file paths.xml stored at the root of the partition. This file details the location of some of the relevant files.

This is a more definitive list:

• MyFavouriteLocations.xml - used to store the home location and favourites
• MyRecentLocations.xml - used to store Recents and also Journey Starts
  
• MyMultiStopLocations.xml - used to store saved multi stop journeys
• MyRoute.xml - used to store the current journey which is in effect the last journey -on the device I examined this file was deleted but recoverable
  
• UserSettings.xml – used to store device settings including where the unit was turned off
  

When a user enters a new address the menu shows previously entered towns or cities, road names and postcodes. This data is stored in the following files:

• DWRecentPocode.xml – Previously entered postcodes, most recent first
  
• DWRecentRoad.xml – Previously entered road names, most recent first
  
• DWRecentPlace.xml – Previously entered towns or cities, most recent first
  

There are a number of presumably back up files also containing the same (as far as I could see) xml formatted data:

• MyFavouriteLocations_bak.xml
• MyRecentLocations_bak.xml
  
• MyMultiStopLocations_bak.xml
  

There are also two files that appear to be temporary files which were deleted but recoverable, containing xml formatted data:

• MyRecentLocations_New.xml
  
• MyMultiStopLocations_New.xml
  

All of the above mentioned xml files are parsed very tidily using Microsoft Excel 2007. I use the same program to create an html version of the worksheet after a little tidying up. The longitude and latitude values need to be divided by 100,000. I populate a new column using the formula:

=HYPERLINK("http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q="&(K3/100000)&"+"&(L3/100000)&"","Click here to view in Google Maps")
The cell K3 contains the Latitude and L3 the Longitude. The formula creates a clickable hyperlink to the Lat/Long in google maps.

There are one or two other files of interest:

• destdata.dat - which contains the address used for the last navigated journey
  
• gpslog.ini - detailing the location of trip log data
  
• default_settings.xml -which in the FAVOURITES/ RECENTS/ MULTI-STOP section appears to detail the maximum number of favourites and recents
  
• .pcd - on the unit I examined I could not locate a .pcd file however I understand from Andy Sayers that this file if it exists contains the phonebook from a paired mobile phone
  
• Log001.log - again I did not see this file but if it exists it contains GPS track logs
  

Because we have physical access there is also a possibility of recovering relevant data from unallocated clusters. I located records in unallocated using the keyword <lat> .

References
Sat Nav Examination Guidance Notes (Andy Sayers)
Navman S-Series (S30, S50, S70 & S90i) User Manual