External Hard drive to HU?

[Tone415 10+ year member]

Is it possible to connect an external Hard drive to the headunit through usb?

For example: i have an alpine w404. Connected, through usb, is my iphone. Is it possible to, instead, hook up a external hard drive for my music/movies/videos?

something like this Seagate - 250GB External USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive - ST902504EXA101-RK

Click to read more...

 

[bubbagumper6 5,000+ posts]

Read your HU's manual. It will probably have a limit to the number of songs it can read and/or tell you specifically what kind of media it has to read from.

 

[The HACKER 10+ year member]

^This, the box even sometimes will tell you how much power it puts out or what type of Hard drives it can read. More then likely you can buy a nice external/portable HD to match your needs.

 

[Tone415 10+ year member]

ahhh thanks!

 

[Tone415 10+ year member]

Wait this is confusing.. i dont really know what to look for

Connection for iPodA?
* USB Requirements: 1.1/2.0

* Max. Power Consumption: 500 mA

* USB Class: Mass Storage

* File System: FAT 12/16/32

* MP3 Decoding: MPEG-1/2 AUDIO Layer-3

* WMA Decoding: Windows Media' Audio

* AAC Decoding: ACC-LC format ''/m4a'' file

* Number of Channels: 2-Channel (Stereo)

* Frequency Response: 5-20 k A?1 dB (Frequency Response may differ depending on the encoder software/bit rate)

* Total Harmonic Distortion: 0.008% (at 1 kHz)

* Dynamic Range: 95 dB (at 1 kHz)

* Signal-to-Noise Ratio: 105 dB

* Channel Separation: 85 dB (at 1 kHz)

 

[ahole-ic]

Is it possible to connect an external Hard drive to the headunit through usb?
For example: i have an alpine w404. Connected, through usb, is my iphone. Is it possible to, instead, hook up a external hard drive for my music/movies/videos?

something like this Seagate - 250GB External USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive - ST902504EXA101-RK

No. First of all, your head unit reads only fat file systems. Since fat32 only supports up to 4gb you have wasted your time with a hard drive as a 4gb thumb drive can easily be purchased for ~$20.00.

This makes it impossible of course for your head unit to be able to use a 250gigs of storage since it is limited by fat32 and the large hard drive would need to be partitioned with ntfs to take advantage of anything more than 4gb.

Also, most head units do not allow for video to be played from their usb input. I don't really know why this is, but they just don't yet.

 

[DarkScorpion 10+ year member]

Wait this is confusing.. i dont really know what to look for

Your HD will need to be formatted in FAT32 (not NTFS). You can only use an external HD that doesn't draw more than 500mA. You can only play those file types.

 

[DarkScorpion 10+ year member]

No. First of all, your head unit reads only fat file systems. Since fat32 only supports up to 4gb you have wasted your time with a hard drive as a 4gb thumb drive can easily be purchased for ~$20.00. This makes it impossible of course for your head unit to be able to use a 250gigs of storage since it is limited by fat32 and the large hard drive would need to be partitioned with ntfs to take advantage of anything more than 4gb.

Also, most head units do not allow for video to be played from their usb input. I don't really know why this is, but they just don't yet.

No, the 4GB is the maximum FILE size, not volume size. It will work fine, depending on what program he uses to partition and format the drive.

 

[Tone415 10+ year member]

No. First of all, your head unit reads only fat file systems. Since fat32 only supports up to 4gb you have wasted your time with a hard drive as a 4gb thumb drive can easily be purchased for ~$20.00. This makes it impossible of course for your head unit to be able to use a 250gigs of storage since it is limited by fat32 and the large hard drive would need to be partitioned with ntfs to take advantage of anything more than 4gb.

Also, most head units do not allow for video to be played from their usb input. I don't really know why this is, but they just don't yet.

i already have more then 6 gigs of music on my phone... and i know for a fact that a 10g usb flash drive works..

 

[ahole-ic]

i already have more then 6 gigs of music on my phone... and i know for a fact that a 10g usb flash drive works..

Yeah my memory failed me. I wasn't right about that and was corrected above.

 

[LiveAudio911 10+ year member]

I wanted to use a hard drive and mount it.. it would be great but had to settle for a USB flash drive myself.. lol..

Only think i dont like about it is it can only read 1 folder deep.. from the root..

 

[Tone415 10+ year member]

I wanted to use a hard drive and mount it.. it would be great but had to settle for a USB flash drive myself.. lol.. Only think i dont like about it is it can only read 1 folder deep.. from the root..

The one i have can read more than one file. but since it cant read video files then i might as well get a ipod..

 

[stanky1219]

the 500ma draw wont stop him either if he gets an external that uses a stand-alone power plug. like my uncles fantom 500gb has usb for the data transfer but it derives power from a 12v wall adapter. which means he could get a huge HD and just get a lighter socket power adapter from rad-shack to power it.

 

[DarkScorpion 10+ year member]

the 500ma draw wont stop him either if he gets an external that uses a stand-alone power plug. like my uncles fantom 500gb has usb for the data transfer but it derives power from a 12v wall adapter. which means he could get a huge HD and just get a lighter socket power adapter from rad-shack to power it.

True, but I chose to ignore that possibility since most external hard drives that use an external power source are larger in volume, in which case would be pointless due to the FAT32 formatting.

 

[DarkScorpion 10+ year member]

double post