USB Hard Drive for Eclipse MK II

[Justintoxicated 10+ year member]

Nice, I'll be looking into that and let you know how it goes. Appreciate the help. If I ever get this thing going it should be pretty sweet, first BUS powered 7200rpm manufactured. Now if i can put it to use im expecting to be real happy

Yea I'm not sue you will benefit from the higher RPM's with a HU though. Of course it will be quick when using it on the PC, but you will be limited by the USB 2.0 speeds more than the hard drive anyways. To tak advantage of the 7200RPM you should really try using esata instead of USB which requires an additional power source.

Update:

Hard drive works perfect on my Eclipse CD 3200

The Hard Drive does NOT work my my CD 7200MKII //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif

The enclosure beeps at me to notify me that there is not enough power to properly utilize the hard drive.

I sent an email to eclipse and will follow up with them monday. It should work on both HU's as they are both supposed to provide 500ma of power. If anything I would think it would work on the 7200MKII and not the CD 3200 . Also this hard drive works on 4 PC's and my laptop powered only off USB. It is only a 54000 RPM drive.

 

[macq32 10+ year member]

USB2.0>7200rpm

if anything i think the rpms are limited and the usb has plenty of "headroom" to handle either speed

Even if so, Not sure that I could throw a eSATA between HU and the storage device.

anyway do you think something like this would have a better chance of working? Just trying to get it to read for now, then I can decide if I need to improve the speed

http://www.pccables.com/cgi-bin/orders6.cgi?action=Showitem&partno=70578&rsite=f.70578

 

[Justintoxicated 10+ year member]

USB2.0>7200rpm
if anything i think the rpms are limited and the usb has plenty of "headroom" to handle either speed

Even if so, Not sure that I could throw a eSATA between HU and the storage device.

anyway do you think something like this would have a better chance of working? Just trying to get it to read for now, then I can decide if I need to improve the speed

http://www.pccables.com/cgi-bin/orders6.cgi?action=Showitem&partno=70578&rsite=f.70578

For transfering data USB 2.0 is mjuch slower than SATA or Esata. It takes about 6 or so hours to backup my external 1T drive via USB, and only about 1-2 through esata. I dont remember the exact numbers but it was several time faster and that was using a 5400 RPM drive. USB theoretical maximum speed is no where nears its sustained transfer speeds. For my Compact flash 266x card its about twice as fast using firewire over USB2.0, ESATA is even faster.

USB should be plenty fast for playing music, but my point is, so is a slower 4300 or 5400rpm hard drive would be fast enough as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA Theres a chart on that page, however USB is slower when it is not peaking. Here is a sustained data transfer speed for USB 2.0

http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html

Notice it is only around 18 meg/sec when sustained which is slow as shit. USB 2.0 is way overhyped it is actualy quite slow. Even firewire is twice as fast in actual use.

 

[macq32 10+ year member]

yea firmwire and esata would be faster with a computer, but i dont know if that would even work with my HU. So if the link above might be sufficient to you, if I could get a similar attachment but USB2.0 to esata your suggesting i might get even better results?

 

[Justintoxicated 10+ year member]

yea firmwire and esata would be faster with a computer, but i dont know if that would even work with my HU. So if the link above might be sufficient to you, if I could get a similar attachment but USB2.0 to esata your suggesting i might get even better results?

Nah your stuick with USB 2.0. My point is that 5400 or 7200 RPM isnt going to make any difference for the enclosure because your limited by USB speeds anyways..

Eclipse responded to me saying that the hard drive should not work on either CD player. it works fine on the 3200 though. Also they said its not in their specs to work with a hard drive. Well there specs don't say that it will not either.

Honestly so long as the HU is putting out 500ma via USB port the HU should not be able to tell if it is a portable hard drive or USB flash drive. What difference would it make? I guess they are lying on their published specifications.

So I guess the lesson learned is that

CD3200 > CD7200MKII, that and I just wasted another $100 on that hard drive. So I guess I will need to downgrade from my CD7200 MKII to the CD3200 because CD3200's actualy meet the published specs while the CD 7200's specs are lies.

 

[macq32 10+ year member]

yea I'm thinking I might be in the same boat, but I'll try and figure it out til the death. My buddy who's pretty knowledgeable in general suggested that a FLASH would work but an external HD wont work, and that my best bet is to install my HU's OS onto the drive. Will probably **** around with that at some point, as well as a smaller connector (like the one linked above).

Man that sucks, I hate hearing shit like this go wrong

 

[Justintoxicated 10+ year member]

yea I'm thinking I might be in the same boat, but I'll try and figure it out til the death. My buddy who's pretty knowledgeable in general suggested that a FLASH would work but an external HD wont work, and that my best bet is to install my HU's OS onto the drive. Will probably **** around with that at some point, as well as a smaller connector (like the one linked above).

Man that sucks, I hate hearing shit like this go wrong

Yea thats what eclipse is saying however I still feel if they publish the specs for the 2 HU's to be the same then they should both be the same. They are probably thinking of full size hard Drive enclosures. Laptop portable enclosures are designed to run off only USB power, exactly the same as a USB thumb drive. They do however require a bit more power.

I think I will need to remove the Head Unit and send it to Eclipse for RMA repairs. It's prettymuch brand new too....Other option is to Tap into the 12v source and disassemble one of my 12V to USB adapters for the cig lighter. Then buy some kinda Splitter cable that will allow me to provide a secondary power source.

I would have just bought a differnet HU if I would have known all the issues this one was going to have.

 

[macq32 10+ year member]

Yea, it really does ****. The detail the manufacturers give about the USB is really too vague and overlooked. My kenwood doesn't provide a whole lot of information either, and I'm willing to bet their reps don't have much in-depth knowledge for troubleshooting unfortunately. I'll have to give them a call soon

 

[rsbukowski 10+ year member]

the drive might be trying to pull more power than the head unit is providing. I know my Kenwood handles a 40 gb drive with no problems.

Greetings, I am struggling to find sufficient information about wiring usb HD to a HU. I own a Kenwood Excelon KDC-X590. It is a 320gb HD and supposively the HU can go up to 8 folders. However I can't get past the second. It won't recognize all the audio.... I pulled some of the subdirectories and placed them on the main directory to see and now I can't even find those.

For example. Rock > Aerosmith > 5 albums. Took the 5 albums labeled Aerosmith - Title into main directory with "Rock". This doesn't even show the "Aerosmith" Folders anymore.

I am routing power from my cigarette lighter with a USB 2.0 plug and the HU gives out 500mA obvisouly, so the Lacie 320gb portable HD is getting sufficient power.

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

I don't understand why it wont read the folder archive/subfolders and I dont understand why when it recognizes the folders it can't go into it.

Rock>Aerosmith>Album ---but can not access folder with .mp3's

Any suggestions.. It does say something about no more than 15,000 files.. how many in a 40gb HD?

Does this have anything to do the bitrate? Most mp3's have been downloaded via napster days, limewire, or now torrents.

Ref: http://www.kenwood.co.jp/usb/english.html from a previous post as well.

Sorry for all the questions but all this invested it would be nice to get it to work, ya know?

Any HU that will recognize a 320gb drive or is this act of technology not ready yet.

 

[tapout 5,000+ posts]

Greetings, I am struggling to find sufficient information about wiring usb HD to a HU. I own a Kenwood Excelon KDC-X590. It is a 320gb HD and supposively the HU can go up to 8 folders. However I can't get past the second. It won't recognize all the audio.... I pulled some of the subdirectories and placed them on the main directory to see and now I can't even find those.
For example. Rock > Aerosmith > 5 albums. Took the 5 albums labeled Aerosmith - Title into main directory with "Rock". This doesn't even show the "Aerosmith" Folders anymore.

I am routing power from my cigarette lighter with a USB 2.0 plug and the HU gives out 500mA obvisouly, so the Lacie 320gb portable HD is getting sufficient power.

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

I don't understand why it wont read the folder archive/subfolders and I dont understand why when it recognizes the folders it can't go into it.

Rock>Aerosmith>Album ---but can not access folder with .mp3's

Any suggestions.. It does say something about no more than 15,000 files.. how many in a 40gb HD?

Does this have anything to do the bitrate? Most mp3's have been downloaded via napster days, limewire, or now torrents.

Ref: http://www.kenwood.co.jp/usb/english.html from a previous post as well.

Sorry for all the questions but all this invested it would be nice to get it to work, ya know?

Any HU that will recognize a 320gb drive or is this act of technology not ready yet.

You may have better luck starting your own thread. Just copy/paste.

 

[macq32 10+ year member]

Greetings, I am struggling to find sufficient information about wiring usb HD to a HU. I own a Kenwood Excelon KDC-X590. It is a 320gb HD and supposively the HU can go up to 8 folders. However I can't get past the second. It won't recognize all the audio.... I pulled some of the subdirectories and placed them on the main directory to see and now I can't even find those.
For example. Rock > Aerosmith > 5 albums. Took the 5 albums labeled Aerosmith - Title into main directory with "Rock". This doesn't even show the "Aerosmith" Folders anymore.

I am routing power from my cigarette lighter with a USB 2.0 plug and the HU gives out 500mA obvisouly, so the Lacie 320gb portable HD is getting sufficient power.

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

I don't understand why it wont read the folder archive/subfolders and I dont understand why when it recognizes the folders it can't go into it.

Rock>Aerosmith>Album ---but can not access folder with .mp3's

Any suggestions.. It does say something about no more than 15,000 files.. how many in a 40gb HD?

Does this have anything to do the bitrate? Most mp3's have been downloaded via napster days, limewire, or now torrents.

Ref: http://www.kenwood.co.jp/usb/english.html from a previous post as well.

Sorry for all the questions but all this invested it would be nice to get it to work, ya know?

Any HU that will recognize a 320gb drive or is this act of technology not ready yet.

I cant answer many of your questions, but bitrate has nothing to do with it at all, its simply the quality of the files you have, the higher bitrate, the higher quality, also meaning more space is being used.

I went through a similar thing recently with a excelon 791. Basically, the drive is designed for flash drives, not hard drives and there is a difference. I cant remember specifically what it was, but basically, its not going to work, you need a flash drive, not a hard drive. so sadly I've decided to give into the wrath of the ipod, probably once they design a 160gb+ without any bugs, like the last one they put out

just my personal experience

 

[rsbukowski 10+ year member]

Aright well aside from all the technicallities. If it was designed for Flash Drives it would of never recognized any HD audio. It reads over 240 folders that I have on there.

There must be a way. Whether it is a different head unit or not. I'm going to stop in at an audio shop and test every head unit if I have too

 

[TurdFergueson2 5,000+ posts]

I can't seem to get my USB hard drive to work with my HU.
It's an 80 GB 5400 RPM drive in USB enclosure. What do I need to do to make this device work with my HU?

Also tested on my Eclipse 3200....

Make sure the drive is not formatted to ntfs when it should be fat32 or vice versa. I had a similar issue with my premier 690ub, but I just gave up.

 

[rsbukowski 10+ year member]

As I said I was, I did some testing in an audio store today. Took my laptop and hard drive in and had the owner pull the units from shelfs so I could access USB plugs. Unfortunately their stock of HU have been limited due to the holiday season and meeting consumer demands. Meaning limited on flagship units and middle class units.

I stand corrected with my own unit. It is the 2008 Kenwood BT838u.

So after results show:

KENWOOD:

Kenwood 2008 USB devices can hold a total of 65,025 Files

Configurations are as follows: 255^2 = 65,025. Meaning you would have to archive a maximum of 255 folders with each folder containing a maximum of 255 songs. So... Rock > A > Aerosmith > Pump > 13 Songs Would be 4 folders + the songs towards the 65,025 files. With 255 folders would enable 64,770 songs.

To ipod standards the 120gb = 30K songs. For my 320gb, 298gb after FAT32 format with 240gb for 60K songs. Figure, 4,000 more songs for > 10 gigs, thats 250gb MAX. You are only missing out on 40gb....

This is why people with USB HD LESS then 200GB say everything works perfectly, minus power consumption problems. Kenwood uses their own processor to index HD and this seems to be their limit after consulting a technician. 2009 models will have increased limit he said but not giving any specifics as the CES event in Las Vegas is early Jan (?) and specs will be released then.

ALPINE: Alpine was shit. 80 gigs only, Technician was not helpful either. They are only considering the Ipod functions. Wouldn't reccomend.

JVC: Their two products are significantly larger then Kenwood and Alpine; specifically the JVC KD-SH1000 and KD-PDR80 however I did not get the opportunity to test these head units, I'm only going from what the Technician voiced over phone. Neither unit supports Bluetooth/AD2P unfortunately these units are deprived of expansion options but the SH1000 is a very stellar module.

KD-SH1000: Has both USB/SD functions and the manual is rather confusing when stating playback capability. What I gathered from it anyways:

Can recognize a total of 512 files, of 200 folders, and of 8 hierarchies.

*200 Folders > 500 Files = 102,400 OR For USB Memory (what is the difference in usb memory?) This unit can recognize a total of 2 500 files and 250 folders (999 files per folder). Technician could not clarify this for me. I'm considering this unit can read USB HD of 250 folders @ 999 files per folder...? Giving a total of 249,750 .mp3's

If at 30K is 120gb;

30K = 120gb ; 60K = 240gb ; 90K = 360gb ; 120K = 480gb ; 150K = 600gb ;

180K = 720gb & 210K = 840gb ; 240K = 960gb

960gb of music? I just don't see this possible after companys wont break 65K, these guys go well beyond 200K songs. Obvisouly you wouldn't have these songs organized very well due to the 250 folder limit and having to stack 999 songs in each, Shuffle for Head Units are normally shuffling to a specific folder and in order to randomize a specific folder you would have to either press up or down.

Keep this in mind.

Need a break, will follow up with Clarion, Sony, and Panasonic