Patent ID: 7991547

Claim:
An in-vehicle information apparatus comprising: a hard disk drive that stores data which is used for performing a predetermined process; a position detection device that detects a present position; a prohibition portion for prohibiting an operation of the hard disk drive when the detected present position is determined to be in a high upland area including a high upland having an altitude equal to or greater than a predetermined altitude; a first storage medium included in the hard disk drive for storing high upland determination area data which indicates whether each of predetermined divisions in a region corresponds to a high-upland division, which includes the high upland, the predetermined divisions being formed by dividing the region on a coordinate plane; a second storage medium for storing a first portion of the high upland determination area data corresponding to a first segmental region including divisions in the region; a determination data recording portion for reading a second portion of the high upland determination area data from the hard disk drive and recording the read second portion in the second storage medium when the present position deviates from the first segmental region, the second portion corresponding to a high upland area as a second segmental region, which includes high-upland divisions existing adjacently starting from a closest high-upland division, which is closest from a division corresponding to the detected present position; and a high upland determination portion for determining whether a present position corresponds to a high-upland division by referring to the second portion of the high upland determination area data recorded in the second storage medium.