Ok, I got my white 250GB WD passport hooked up to the pioneer 6900UB with the use of an external power supply. My collection is approx 100GB, with 22000 songs. It is organized on my home PC by Artist/Album/Song. First, I loaded only artists starting with A-I, and it took about 5 minutes to read. Then I loaded A-F, and it took 2 mintues to read. I put artists begining with A through P on it, and it just hung at the "reading format" for 15 minutes plug. I didn't bother to see how long it would take. Apparently, the drive is having a hard time sorting though everything. I need for it to read very quickly, like my 30GB ipod. Other than restructuring it so that it's done by Artist-Album/Song rather than artist/album/song (removing a level of folders) is there anything that can be done to make it load quicker? I'm begining to think this has nothing to do with my choice of HD, but rather the file/folder structure. Would reformatting the hard drive into 3 smaller partions be the better route to go, only putting the 100 GB on the last partition? My guess is that in it's current file format, it would take 30 min to scan all 100GB. Anything over 1 minute is not acceptable. The head unit reads 30GB of music on an ipod in under 10 sec, and 30GB of music on this hard drive in 7-10 minutes.
For you guys with 60 GB worth of music or more and your music setup in Artist/Album/Song format, how long is it taking for your head unit to read the external hard drive?