Recommendations for external cd/dvd drive solution for meshless head unit?

[Ste]

I bought a pioneer sph-da250dab a few months back. I didn't realise meshless meant "we can't be bothered to include a cd/dvd drive anymore" and most good head units with big screens are this way so there wasn't much choice. My unit has an external usb port.

If really like to be able to listen to my cd's in the car and would love to have a go at watching a dvd on the screen too.

Can anyone recommend any reliable external drives please that will definitely work with my unit?

I've seen a couple on Amazon but not sure if they would work. My unit isn't an Android unit (i don't think) but supports Android auto and Apple car play. Some of these drives only do usb 2. For dvd to work well if imagine it needs usb 3 for enough bandwidth through put.

Click to read more...

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

Any USB external hard drive or solid state drive formatted to NTFS in Windows will work. I have attached a picture of your user manual and the specifications it gives for USB and attached devices. I use a WD My Passport 1TB usb drive and it works great. Info highlighted in yellow. Happy hard drive hunting.

 

[Ste]

Any USB external hard drive or solid state drive formatted to NTFS in Windows will work. I have attached a picture of your user manual and the specifications it gives for USB and attached devices. I use a WD My Passport 1TB usb drive and it works great. Info highlighted in yellow. Happy hard drive hunting.

Hi, thanks for the advice. So any external dvd drive would also work? There's nothing quite like being able to grab a cd or dvd and just throw it in. As opposed to having to rip a collection of mp3's the night before lol. Justifies just using Spotify more so. I have Some cd's that definitely aren't on Spotify though.

Is it also possible to buy a compatible hub so that i can connect my phone and a drive?

The usb cables i can use are very limited as most aren't good enough so I'm thinking only specific hubs will work too. I did try one hub but it said it wouldn't work.

 

[ThxOne Premium Member]

Hi, thanks for the advice. So any external dvd drive would also work? There's nothing quite like being able to grab a cd or dvd and just throw it in. As opposed to having to rip a collection of mp3's the night before lol. Justifies just using Spotify more so. I have Some cd's that definitely aren't on Spotify though.

Is it also possible to buy a compatible hub so that i can connect my phone and a drive?

The usb cables i can use are very limited as most aren't good enough so I'm thinking only specific hubs will work too. I did try one hub but it said it wouldn't work.

I don't think it will allow you to hook up optical (DVD/CD) drives via USB. You would have to rip music and movies and load them to a hard drive. The upside is you can use a very large drive so you don't have to keep ripping all the time.