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external harddrives for use with headunits with USB compatibility

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jtomsic

jtomsic
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few questions about external HD and pioneer usb compatible HU's because I am kind of interested in trying this since I have a huge external HD filled with MP3s. I would like to put an external HD in my car pretty much permanently to use as I do 16gb flash drives now.

First off, has anybody done this and had luck using Pioneer source units? If so, how fast was it able to read from the HD? Was it about as fast as a flash drive...or slower? Next question is I've seen Ipod emulators for PCs on the internet, I wonder if you installed something like this on the external HD if a Pioneer unit would possibly read the HD as an IPod? Would be great if it did and allowed you to use the built in Ipod control features. I have other questions concerning this idea but this is sufficient for now.

Any info on this would be great and anything you might have to add or know that I didnt ask would be great to know also. Sorry for the post being so long but I am really interested in seeing this work.

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We tried it with the 980BT and USB adapter interface. Works fine with thumbdrives. Reads 160GB 2.5" but takes forever to index it. Won't spin 3.5" drives. We considered powering the drive separately, but you lose indexing when you turn off the car, so it isn't feasible.

For large HDD's full of music, you use a car PC. .

 
We tried it with the 980BT and USB adapter interface. Works fine with thumbdrives. Reads 160GB 2.5" but takes forever to index it. Won't spin 3.5" drives. We considered powering the drive separately, but you lose indexing when you turn off the car, so it isn't feasible.
For large HDD's full of music, you use a car PC. .
Click to expand...
this

i also tried it and with the same results indexing takes way to long. just use a 32gb thumb drive they can be had pretty cheap these days . lets be honest 32gb of music is a ton of space. if this is not enough on some pioneer hu you can also use a sd card as well as burn a dvd data disk giving you tons of room and none of the indexing issues.

 
I have tried using a portable 3.5 inch USB hard drive with a Kenwood Excelon head unit, and it never worked reliably. Supposedly, the head unit USB interfaces do no provide enough voltage. The thumb drives work fine. I use a 32GB one filled with mp3s encoded at 320 constant bit rate.

 
I picked up a 160gb ipod on CL for $80 bucks in good condition. Its much easier to browse than a hard drive. If i were you i would just keep an eye out for a 160gb ipod with a cracked screen. Seems like a better solution.

 
i have a bunch of flash drives that I already use, I have an external harddrive already loaded with music that I use I was just curious as to the results people have gotten using a HD instead of ipods, flash drives, and all that. I would use a inverter to power the HD and not be relying on USB to power it. Anybody know of a way to use some type of emulator of an ipod on the harddrive and trick the headunit or do you not think this is possible? As far as buying an ipod I would rather not buy anything like that I'm just trying to use thinigs I have

 
ive used a big ole HDD with my 880prs and it would load around 100gs of music in about 1 minute or so.
Click to expand...
I've used a 100gb 2.5in HDD filled to the top on a JVC headunit and it worked fine. The head unit will power the drive,just make sure you use a big enough gauge usb (Mine was in a generic enclosure,had to find a good usb cable)...mine took around 45-1min to load. Also chances are the drive will have to be formatted to FAT32 (same as any flash drive is from factory). unless the headunits now provide NTFS support.

 
the lesson to learn here is that newer Pioneer headunits are better at it than older ones!
you can try it on your existing HU, and see what happens.
Click to expand...
I could find my Fiances old Seagate HD but I was wondering KHA have you or seen any results of using an External HD on an Eclipse 5030? I know if I'm trying to quick scroll it slows down a little sometimes (be it the flash drive or the head unit) just curious.

 
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jtomsic

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