Head Units and External Hard Drives

[jblayz1 10+ year member]

would i be able to use the Alpine KCA-620M to connect a mobile HD to my 9887 ??

 

[jblayz1 10+ year member]

what about this for you bluetooth users...

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/consumer_electronics/DAVE/

 

[jayhoe]

I have a Kenwood DDX8019 and just bought a WD passport 120gb to hook up to it. I can feel the unit start to power up but then stops and starts over, it does this continually. My HU just says No Device connected. Since I have 2 usb ports will this cable give me enough power to use my hd?:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/accessories.asp?prodid=170

 

[jayhoe]

bump

 

[lillitnn92 10+ year member]

I have a Kenwood DDX8019 and just bought a WD passport 120gb to hook up to it. I can feel the unit start to power up but then stops and starts over, it does this continually. My HU just says No Device connected. Since I have 2 usb ports will this cable give me enough power to use my hd?:http://www.wdc.com/en/products/accessories.asp?prodid=170

like a lot of people on here, including myself, you're Passport power requirements are more than the HU can deliver. a few posts back someone links to a y-cable that will provide the additional power needed. don't have time to look for you, on my way to work. i have the Kenwood KDC X591 and a Soyo hard drive. i was hoping to get around the additional power source because the hard drive Soyo uses in the Onyx USB drive is basically the same they use in iPods, but alas, hard drive needs 550ma and the HU only gives 500ma. after holidays i'm going to try the y-cable. for now i have a 1gig thumb drive.

got mine working, see post below

 

[CrossFired 10+ year member]

I have been reading what I can on this but am still a little confused. I'm looking for a HU to satisfy my MP3 needs but I'd really like to avoid using an Ipod. The option that seems most attractive to me is buying a HU w/ USB and getting me a little WD Passport (or similar) 120G HDD to tote my music around on. The HU in particular I'm liking is the Pioneer 6900ub, I do have some concerns though. Any answers about this HU in particular would be great, but I'd even love to hear answers about USB HU's in general, too.
1. How is the navigation on the HU using a portable hdd?

2. Size limitations? I've heard of limits from 1G-4G on other models

3. Power- I've heard the Kenwoods can't power an external HDD, how about Pioneer's?

4. Durability of the HDD in a car environment- Has anyone done this with an external? How did it fair with extreme temps?

Thanks,

Jason

I've installed that unit in a couple of cars and it works great with flash drives and will play aac. I've never tried any hard drives thoe?//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

 

[lillitnn92 10+ year member]

just want to add a success story to help out anybody that needs it.

i have the Kenwood KDC-X591 and a Soyo 40gig SlimEx Onyx drive and it's working without additional power source. Soyo uses the same Toshiba hard drives found in iPods btw. case comes apart so you can upgrade to more storage if you need it. it's 1.8" form factor and they currently have drives up to 120GB. i can't vouch for the larger drives, but i would assume it would work fine.

i think the problem some people might be experiencing is that you may need to reformat the drive to FAT32. i had thought that i read NTFS or FAT32 was fine, so i left it NTFS. turns out no, after going to FAT32 it worked.

 

[Kil4Thril 10+ year member]

Have you found any limit as to the size the Kenwoods can read? I'm looking at doing a 250GB with uncompressed .wav files, so I need some space for them.

 

[lillitnn92 10+ year member]

Have you found any limit as to the size the Kenwoods can read? I'm looking at doing a 250GB with uncompressed .wav files, so I need some space for them.

only have a 40GB drive for now,but it will be full in a few months. when that happens i'm just going to replace the drive with a 100GB version, and keep the case, untill then, i don't know. i think there were some people who had bigger drives back in some other posts of this thread. if you haven't done so, cruise back and look.

 

[myownsake26]

I just posted this in another forum.. but I've found the solution to Western Digital hookups into head units. I hate to keep it long, but I'm so excited that after almost a month of stressing out over it, it finally works.

I've gone through 2 brand new receivers to find this out, but my problem started with a kenwood excelon 891. From my 160gb Western Digital Passport Hard Drive, I kept hearing this clicking noise (also known as the "click of death") which basically means the hard drive kept rebooting and would never successfully start up.

the solution to the problem lies in the cables that are connected between the HU and your hard drive.

All Western Digitals come with a puny little 3"-4" cable. I've never understood why it was so short until recently.. Western Digital hard drives won't work with long cables! Even hooking it up to a desktop computer, it will not boot (I just tried to use a 10' cable to my computer and it was unsuccessful).

Kenwood receivers unfortunately have a 5' (approx) USB connection that comes out of the back of the unit. No way, no how, can you replace this cable. Therefore, Western Digital hard drives will never work on Kenwoods.

However! If you do what I did and get a Pioneer Premiere with a USB connection, Pioneer selfishly only extended the cable about 6" from the unit. Thank God! .... Why is this a good thing, you ask?

Since Car Toys installed my system with a 4' USB extension into my glove box, I first plugged the WD (A to MINI B) short cable into the extension cable. So, this means I had 3 cables in total connecting to my hard drive. Of course, like many of you, the drive will either not boot at all or will continue to make the "click of death".

SOLUTION:

Removing the extension cable and only plugging in my 3"-4" WD Passport into the cable that comes out of the back of the head unit, the unit successfully connects.

So this means if you want to successfully hook up a WD hard drive, you have to use less than 2' of total cabling starting from the HU to the HD. Sure, it ***** that it most likely wont reach your glove box... but surely you can think of somewhere else to set the unit. And it sure beats using only a 2 gig thumb drive.

For example, I have a Ford F-150... I had to ghetto rig the cable to come out of my front panel into a little cubby hole underneath my steering wheel.

If you use USB converters, extension cables, or Y-cables, it will not work! Overall, my guess is that if you are formatting your drives to fat32 and still unable to connect, you are simply unable to power your hard drive up because of the length of cabling.

 

[packy 10+ year member]

I emailed Kenwood since Im waiting for mine to show up. I asked them what HDD can be used incase . They emailed me back this link

http://www.kenwood.com/usb/english.html

 

[Phreakshow 10+ year member]

Re: Kenwood X591

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just got the X591 myself. i have a 40gig drive with 7gigs of free space, drive powers up with no problems. only thing you have to pay attentin to is that the HU only handles Fat16 and Fat32 file system. if you get a hard drive, you'll have to reformat to FAT32.

This was posted by lillitnn92 in response to packys Question in another thread. When they give you a list of stuff that just means what they have felt like testing it with and not the end all.

 

[myownsake26]

i have been directed to that link as well. im not much of a tech guru, but if the hard drive works... i like it.. what really bugs me is i probably used up over a tank of gas driving back and forth from the installer (car toys) to the computer store trying to troubleshoot my problem since christmas.

i actually just hooked my WD hard drive back up tonight and put my full 40 gig collection on random. its like the radio station you always wanted without commercials.. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

i guess all that is left to say is... this entire process was extremely difficult and i hope that technology makes this a lot more forgiving in the future (usb cables, hard drives, formatting issues, etc..)

 

[lillitnn92 10+ year member]

Re: Kenwood X591
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just got the X591 myself. i have a 40gig drive with 7gigs of free space, drive powers up with no problems. only thing you have to pay attentin to is that the HU only handles Fat16 and Fat32 file system. if you get a hard drive, you'll have to reformat to FAT32.

This was posted by lillitnn92 in response to packys Question in another thread. When they give you a list of stuff that just means what they have felt like testing it with and not the end all.

also, if you have a drive that is 40+ gigs, you can't (in XP) format in FAT32 more than 32GB. there are many ways around this, but i found the easiest way was to download and install this app CompuApps Swissknife. when i first tried Xp only allowed me to format 32GB of my 40GB drive. after using this app i was able to get all of my 40GB back. the physical limitation is supposed to be 2TB, so if anyone using large drives can format a whole drive to FAT32 for use in HU situations.

 

[dwc 10+ year member]

I just wanted to bump this thread with the news that I just replaced my stolen head unit with the Pioneer Premier DEH-P690U (bought from Amazon/6th Ave to get the 2yr warranty). I also ordered a 120 GB 4500rpm Iomega Silver drive. I think this is the way of the future. Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread. I haven't gotten the stuff yet, but will update with my progress later on.