External HD + HU

[CrownMe 10+ year member]

I was just wondering if anyone on here was successful in hooking up an external Hard Drive to their Head Unit. If so details please:

What kind of HU:

What Kind of HD:

HD Capacity:

How you set it up:

How it worked out:

I know you can always get an Ipod ready HU and hook up a 160 gb iPod. But buying an external HD would most likely be a more feasible way, annnd you could go anywhere and upload music/files instead of being restricted to you're iTunes account.

Click to read more...

 

[Kai Winters 10+ year member]

I have successfully used a Western Digital Passport 160gb hdd with my Alpine ida-x001 hu.

It worked fine though it took a few seconds longer to load and access my folder list compared to a usb flash drive...which is my preference.

I used it straight out of the box with its' factory format of fat32. Just copied and pasted my music folders list from my computer and off I went.

 

[lvjeffro 10+ year member]

Dp...

 

[lvjeffro 10+ year member]

I have successfully used a Western Digital Passport 160gb hdd with my Alpine ida-x001 hu.It worked fine though it took a few seconds longer to load and access my folder list compared to a usb flash drive...which is my preference.

I used it straight out of the box with its' factory format of fat32. Just copied and pasted my music folders list from my computer and off I went.

Exactly as dude said, 160gb WD passport essentials portable HDD, I bought the maxtor 250gb one touch mini 4 portable HDD, came formatted in NTFS, reformatted into fat 32 using seagate disk wizard, still would not be seen by my HU, bought the WD and worked perfect...

I have the ida-x100, only difference

 

[CrownMe 10+ year member]

how full is the HD that you guys are running, cuz I heard the startup time goes up to like 10 minutes as you start hitting 40-50 gb of music, and is there a lag while switching tracks?

Anyone ever do this with a HU that has CD plus HU capabilities?

 

[lvjeffro 10+ year member]

Yeah, I used a 2 gb thumb drive on my cda-9886 before the knob broke on it 1 week after I bought it...It worked with 2gbs just fine and it worked with my 2gb ipod...

I have on it right now around 20gbs I think, and it takes less then a minute to search the USB for a drive and find it when you first turn on your car, and then for it to switch to a new folder/artist/song takes maybe 2-5 seconds from what I have encountered....I'm gonna dump another 20gigs or so of music on it soon, so I will update when i see how it works with 40+ gigs on it...

 

[Kai Winters 10+ year member]

I had 42gb on the hdd and it took around 20 seconds to load and ready to play. Compared to 5 seconds for my 8gb usb drive 20 seconds really seems like a long time lol.

I find it much easier to search a smaller drive as well.

 

[blazeplacid 10+ year member]

the reason the larger harddrives arent being seen is that you need more power to run them

the smaller hd will run off of the 500ma that the harness puts out

if you want to run a larger one get a 12v cig light to USB and a usb Y cable,some HDD come with this cable for this reason

the larger HDD need 1amp

 

[lvjeffro 10+ year member]

the reason the larger harddrives arent being seen is that you need more power to run them
the smaller hd will run off of the 500ma that the harness puts out

if you want to run a larger one get a 12v cig light to USB and a usb Y cable,some HDD come with this cable for this reason

the larger HDD need 1amp

naw, that wasn't the prob, plugged it into my puter, and it was found, just not my HU...WD was seen by all...

 

[CrownMe 10+ year member]

bump anyone else?