How big of a flash will Pioneer front USB accept?

[Databyter 10+ year member]

I have a Pioneer DEH-P7200HD with a front end usb port.

It's pretty nice but I am using half a dozen 1 gig flash drives I already had. I'd prefer to use a bigger stick or possibly even a massive flash drive but I can't find any spec's on what the unit will handle.

It has to have the memory to list the files and organize them onto the display etc.

If any of you have used bigger drives with success or know more about this please toss me your experience.

I think it should do well with at least a 30 gig stick, but it would be awesome if I could even put a 80 gig flash drive on shuffle.

I'm holding off buying any new media till I find out about this.

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[blazeplacid 10+ year member]

most of my fiends will read my 8gb fine

I wanna say ive seen a JVC use a 16gb

 

[Databyter 10+ year member]

This might be a worthy email question to Pioneer support. I'll post their response here.

 

[SkyLegend 10+ year member]

I think any headunit that has a USB port can take up to any size, just the bigger the storage the longer it takes to load, but I have used 100GB Ipods on my kenwood unit without a problem

 

[1rockford1 5,000+ posts]

i just got a new pioneer deck a few weeks ago with the usb on the front and i to was not sure , i was gona get a 4GB

 

[I Like Waffle]

I have used up to a 16g on my DEH-5200ub. Its the 2009 model with dual usb input, now its just front usb. Not sure if itd be any different.

 

[Databyter 10+ year member]

Pioneer Support basically told me that there is no limit, that it didn't work that way, and that the specs point to USB 2.0 compatability.

However I am still skeptical that this is accurate in real life usage. It's not just the ability for the head unit to list all the files, but also the startup drain in power consumption since some of the memory I am looking at is actually a usb powered HDD that needs several watts of power to run.

Also I've heard that the HDD's need to be formatted in the FAT32 (or less) configuration, not ntfs to be read, which isn't a big problem as long as I could find an HDD that was compact, and had low power requirments.

Ideally I'd like to have it powered seperately and just use the USB for DATA only, but so far I'm not seeing the right set of components.

I should probably just use flash sticks, and probably will, but now I just HAVE to try this just for the experimental purpose.

I'm looking at the 160 GB range at the moment, that would satisfy me, especially if I could make it operate on random within selected folders.

 

[wickedwitt 10+ year member]

Pioneer Support basically told me that there is no limit, that it didn't work that way, and that the specs point to USB 2.0 compatability.
However I am still skeptical that this is accurate in real life usage. It's not just the ability for the head unit to list all the files, but also the startup drain in power consumption since some of the memory I am looking at is actually a usb powered HDD that needs several watts of power to run.

Also I've heard that the HDD's need to be formatted in the FAT32 (or less) configuration, not ntfs to be read, which isn't a big problem as long as I could find an HDD that was compact, and had low power requirments.

Laptop or "Portable" drives that are charged through a USB2.0 config would work fine, just as well as an i-Pod. From what I read from my 7200, and what my shop that has done all my work has told me; they will only effectively read up to 750 GB. Any drive larger than that you would have to partition it so that it looked like 2 separate drives to the deck. Trust me though a 500 GB or 750 GB drive would hold all of your music, videos and even have space left over to back up most people's PCs. Just make sure your music is in Artist-Album-Song folders like the way i-Tunes manages it and you can easily search for and use a large drive with the Pioneer decks.

 

[TT2ENT 10+ year member]

Check out Newegg for some flash drives with a fast WRITE speed. I got a Mushkin and love it. Ive went through several of the cheap Best Buy brands. They are the same price or more for a fraction of the write speed and they seem to take a **** if you use em enough lol

 

[matt_bennett05 10+ year member]

I have the AVHP5000DVD and a 100 Gig Ext. Hard Drive and can plug and unplug it until it works.... aggrevating though!!!