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Car Tech: Car Stereo with USB; portable hard drive questions
Car Stereo with USB; portable hard drive questions
by Steroids - 5/1/06 10:42 AMHey now, I just picked up a new stereo for my car. The Kenwood KD-X590 comes with a USB pigtail in the rear. Ive come to the conclusion that 320k MP3 files while not perfect will be acceptable for the car stereo envoironment. The USB connection works great with a 512 flash drive so far.
My question is, has anyone tried to use one of the 2.5" portable hard drives for a car stereo application? My manual says the stereo will power usb devices up to 500ma. Manufacturers do not list the power requirements for these portable drives other than the simple feature promotion "runs off usb power!" Im not willing to make a $100+ purchase on the chance it might work.
Also, knowing the car is a harsh envoironment, which drives have the best shock absorbtion, which ones run like a tank and which tend to fail etc?
I welcome input from anyone with insight or experience on the subject.
thanks
2.5" drives
by Jutz - 5/9/06 4:47 PM In reply to: Car Stereo with USB; portable hard drive questions by SteroidsI have tried the Pexagon Store-It 2.5" and 1.8" drives. The head unit will not power the 2.5", but will power the 1.8". However, the unit will not read music files from the 1.8". Has anyone been able to find a drive that will work? I'm waiting for another response from Kenwood, but their first response was to review this page - http://www.kenwood.com/usb/english.html. Unless I'm missing something, the 1.8 Store-It drive meets these requirements, and still won't work.
follow up on USB hard drive in the car
by Steroids - 6/20/06 1:02 PM In reply to: 2.5" drives by JutzBefore purchasing I sent an email to all major hard drive manufacturers and the only one to respond was Lacie. He recommended their "mobile" hard drive. 80 gigs, very small and so far it works great. My only complaint would be that it take a few minutes for the Kenwood unit to read the information and begin playing... such is the price to pay. I am diggin' it.
Which LaCie Mobile Model?
by Jutz - 6/23/06 11:54 AM In reply to: follow up on USB hard drive in the car by SteroidsThat's great news!!! I looked for a LaCie Mobile drive, and found several. Which specific model did you end up getting? I can't wait to get this up and running! Thanks for your input.
USB hard drive
by swallen62 - 6/28/06 6:24 AM In reply to: follow up on USB hard drive in the car by SteroidsWhich LaCie portable do you have? And did they recommend a particular one?
LaCie Mobile 80GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive
by Jutz - 7/26/06 10:53 AM In reply to: USB hard drive by swallen62After buying 2 duds, and whole lot of web searching I finally went out and bought the 'LaCie Mobile 80GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive' from Best Buy for $149 (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7625251&type=product&id=1130986104067). IT WORKS!!!! The load time is kind of long (about 65s, and I have a very simple folder structure), but well worth it when I can listen to ALL 20 gigs of my music, with space to add lots more. Just put it on random and you have your own radio station. Hopefully this helps you all out.
Update on Lacie 80gb drive
by Jutz - 9/1/06 3:48 PM In reply to: LaCie Mobile 80GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive by JutzUpdate:
I now have over 40gb of music on my drive. The load times were getting a bit out of hand (about 2 min each time I accessed the USB drive). After a bit of trial and error, I created 4 equal primary partitions on the drive, and split up my MP3 folders alphabetically. The load time is no no more than 30s (not too shabby). Things to watch out for:
1) if the drive is cold, it may not load correctly (just warm it with your hands for a few min)
2) if you set to All Random, it may not pickup where it left off when you turn off the unit or select another source (just turn off All Random and it should be good to go).
After figuring out how to get the load times, it's been a great unit/drive combo. Hopefully this post helps someone out there.
Your post very much helps.
by PizzleDizzle - 9/7/07 12:00 PM In reply to: Update on Lacie 80gb drive by JutzJutz, drop me an email or message on my Myspace. I wanted to discuss the particulars on the file structure and hard drive selection. I'm helping my brother with his newly installed Kenwood 535u (?) receiver that has a USB port with a 500mA max ouput. I'd appreciate it. From what I gather through research any drive that is self powered with a spindle speed of 4200RPMs draws a current load that is less than 500ma.
Pioneer 7000bt with usb
by REDVSTORE - 7/18/08 12:19 PM In reply to: Update on Lacie 80gb drive by JutzEnjoying your discussion on portable hard drives for car stereos. I have a Pioneer 7000bt with USB and a WD 320gb portable drive. I have tried every type of music format(wav,mp3 etc.) I have an external power supply and my drive lights up but the head unit always says that there is no audio. What am I doing wrong? Any help on how to make this work would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Bill
pioneer 7000bt with usb
by joshthsn - 2/25/09 7:55 AM In reply to: Pioneer 7000bt with usb by REDVSTOREBill, I have a pioneer and I have been work on the same problem that you are having. Is what I have found out the last two days is that you radio is only able to read fat32 formate and your hard drive is in ntfs formate. Now I had 80gig hard drive that was fat32 formate that work great and I love It know it broke so I went and bought a 250gig harddrive its in ntfs formate. I brought that harddrive to bestbuy to the geeksquad and they had to divide in to partitions of 30gig in fat32 formate and thats is working great. I use most of the partitions for music then I use couple of the partitions for make play lists.
Kenwood directory loading times
by pea_dids - 7/3/06 3:56 PM In reply to: follow up on USB hard drive in the car by SteroidsHere's some information on speeding up the hard drive loading times from another forum
http://www.talkaudio.co.uk/vbb/showthread.php?p=1962765
I havn't tried it out yet but I hope it works cause I've driven half a mile before the music kicks in.
Made for a purpose
by mediagt - 9/7/07 8:41 PM In reply to: Kenwood directory loading times by pea_didsNormally Portable hdd wont work well on Car USBs. The player cant supply enough power for the HDD. Soon ur hdd will spoil too. The error in files will start to appear. Just use a thumb drive, the best solution. I tried a full 40GB. oso have many errors
Connecting drives to USB car audio
by bill4207 - 5/23/06 7:24 PM In reply to: Car Stereo with USB; portable hard drive questions by SteroidsHey, My Dell DJ is listed as using 5 V, and less than 2.4A. It appears that this unit is likely way over 500 mA. Incidentally this model will only charge from a USB connection if it has over a 25% charge on the battery. If your IT dept at work doesn't have a loaner drive that you can try, consider going to a university help desk. They probably have 2.5'' drives sitting around. A lotof universities have check out programs for these kind of items
What do you think about navigating MP3 folders on the USB drive? Is it straight forward? Have you used the device driver (IPOD) controls to navigate playlists? Does random work on the USB files? Lots of questions but as you have guessed I love the idea of buying this unit, but there are few people to talk to.
usb in car
by Steroids - 6/20/06 1:08 PM In reply to: Connecting drives to USB car audio by bill4207Im not an Ipod person so I dont know about that, but...
I can tell you the Kenwood lets you choose search modes i.e. folder, artist, album, song. It also has voice (when using kenwood phatnoise) so you can watch the road rather than the deck.
Very happy so far.
usb, I'm ready
by xappt - 9/17/06 4:05 PM In reply to: usb in car by SteroidsI have been trying to find a cd player that will support my mobile 40 gig harddrive. I have tryed the ones in store that I could find but have a problem with navigating within the menues.
which ken wood do you have ?
does anyone have any luck with other brands
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