As it turns out -20 does not fall into the operating temperature for a Western Digital hard drive. I’m not sure if there is an easy solution to this. Many people praise running the entier system off a compact flash card but that is new terratory to me (booting off such media). I think I may just wait for it to warm up a bit before I get the carputer into full swing. At the very least I have the old stereo hooked back up so I’m no worse for the wear.