MP3's on External Hard Drive in Car?

I saw some car stereos recently at a retail shop that had a front usb port, it might work.

I did it successfully. Just tonight in fact. What I done was take a normal 3.5" Hard drive in a external case. My car's stereo has a USB connector on it. But the only way you can get it to work is you have to format the hard drive to FAT32 file system. Its quick and painless and you can do it though windows or MAC. Leaving the drive in the external case makes life easier since you can just hot-swap from your computer to your car. Once formatted to FAT32, put whatever songs you want on it, have a 100 watt DC/AC inverter in your car, plug in, plug USB in, turn it on, and it should read the disk.

First of all u need to make a 32gb partiotion on your HDD, u don't need any special software (if ur using XPpro like me) u can just go into start control panel then adminstrator tools.Click on computer management then go to disk managment. right click on the volume if there is no unalocated space and click on shrink volume then make the size of partition u want for the unalocated right click on unalocated space click new simple volume follow on screen instructions then its finished, hope this is some help if not let me know set up remote assistance and i will show u through that.

Hey, I recently been to a car audio shop and the installer had a 250 GB external drive and plug it into a JVC usb port and it played all the songs read the usb fine.

Hey I was wondering if u could help me. I think I have tried everything and I cant get my Sony CDX GT54 to work with my hard drive. I have a 120 GB WD Scorpio that I have recently created a 32 GB fat32 volume. It is the only volume on the drive with the rest unallocated. I have the volume set to active and primary and for the life of me I cannot seem to get this head unit to recognize that there is a device plugged in. I have a 150 watt inverter so power isn't the problem, I just don't know if I'm looking too deep and its obvious or if its something minute maybe that's preventing the two units from connecting. Maybe driver issues? Compatibility? Lemme know what you think please.

if you want to use your hard drive at full capacity you can google for "iomega fat32 formatter", and format your hard drive in NTFS and after that run this software it will convert your hard drive to FAT32,

i have a pioneer deh-p4100ub and have an 80gb hard drive hooked up to it. there was a program and some wiring i had to do to get it to work right still have some kinks to work out to hide and to get everything to work right. but i used a hard drive out of a computer and a free downloaded program from the internet. for more details email me at unspokenartist1@yahoo.com

and I just found my answer: my pioneer won't read more than 250 GB, 500 directories and 15000 songs. Make sure that you don't have the same limitation in yours. If so, you will have me same problem.

laptop HDs in an appropriate external enclosure can be powered through the USB cable, and are designed to be more resistant to bumps and exposure (as they're in laptops). Desktop HDs cannot.

did you find out any information...i think im in the same boat

I've been looking into this myself and so far from what i understand this is what needs to be done to get it to work:

1) If you're using a 1.8" HD you only need the USB cable to power it up

2) If you're using a 2.5" HD you need a USB Y cable and a cigarette lighter to usb adapter to get enough power to the HD

3) Format the HD to FAT16 or FAT32

4) The head unit USB option should support a bigger HD..

Ok now I solved all these issues...and this is what I'm planning to buy:

A Kenwood KDC-MP345U and a Cirago CST1000 250GB external HD..

So this should work fine based on what people are saying...but the only problem now is that I hear people saying even after formatting to FAT32 they can only use 32 GB...what's this mean and how do you go around that?...the kenwood I'm planning to buy says it supports up to 250 GB HD...shouldn't this work fine?...why would I be able to only use 32 GB..i don't get it

Any help is greatly appreciated..thanks

You can use a program called Fat32Format

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownl [...] 79375.html

go to one of the mirror links. I used this off windows 7 at 64bit on a 500gb and 1.5gb hard drive and it only worked on the 500gb. So their is a 50% chance I'm wrong. It did format the whole 500gb together and both my computer and ps3 could read the files. Give it a try and tell us if it works cause I wanna do this too. If you need a video on how to use the file go to this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_n1_oXATv0

The problem with using HDD is that most decks will not take more than 255 folders, some take 512 but that is the most i have found. It is a big problem if you want to store all your music and have it sorted into artists and albums... If anyones knows a deck that doesnt have this limitation please let me know!

if there is a folder limit..
i think it would have everything to do with the amount of memory inside the radio.

picture browsing through a computer hard drive with an operating system.
you start with the drive letter.
c
then move forward deeper and deeper into the folder structure.
cdocuments and settings/all users/desktop

above there are 4 dives into the folder structure.
every time you go in a layer deeper, the car radio has to remember the layer before it.
so if you are browsing the 'desktop' area.. you would have to save 3 layers, while browsing in the 4th layer.

if there isnt enough memory available.. you wont be able to dive into the folders.
and if the car radio counts the folders to see if there are more than it can handle..
-the folder might not show up
-the entire drive might be rejected


but
it really depends on how the car radio uses the memory it has.
you could store only the layers you have gone inside of.
or
you could store all of the subfolders within each layer.

for example..
you start at c
then you look inside of c and you see 'documents and settings' .. 'program files' .. 'windows' .. and whatever else is there.
if the radio is trying to store all of that in its memory.. you are going to use the memory up faster.


there is always some conclusion as to how many folders the car 'computer' will read.
and it is supposed to have everything to do with the amount of memory the car radio's computer has.
some might call it memory.. some might call it a buffer.


maybe... just maybe...
the tiny operating system to browse the folders has been written short and small.
so it cant handle all of the folder diving because the operating system wasnt programmed to dive that deep.


say you start with genre/year/artist/album
and maybe you could go 60 folders deep.
but
if you have ANOTHER genre/year/artist/album..
maybe then the operating system says you can only go 30 albums deep, because that is how the operating system is programmed inside the radio's little computer.


maybe the information isnt really necessary for most average people.
but
in that case.. you simply hunt down a radio that will do what you want.
or
throw a computer in the trunk and connect the soundcard to the radio's auxilery inputs.

I'll keep an eye out for Soundstream's stuff.

I used to (well, still have) an empeg. Originally a british company, the unit came with one or two laptop hard drives, ran a customized linux kernel on an ARM processor. MSRP was around $1200 at the time, they just couldn't compete. SonicBlue (now Rio) bought them, decided to EOL it, liquidated their stock of empegs, and I bought one for $500. Absolutely gorgeous machine: the unit was fully removable to move between vehicles, play music in your house, had interfaces to sync your music on your computer, do play lists, all kinds of awesome things, and a great interface to boot. Very easy to navigate your music, very straight forward, but it was a single purpose device: to play music from a hard drive. That's it. But that's all I wanted.

Unfortunately, they were EOL'd quite some time ago, close to 10 years at this point. I should've bought two, as mine's no longer working.

So I've been trying to find a worthy replacement, and candidates are lacking.

Everything I've been able to find has already been talked about in this thread: Sure, connect your iP[hone|od] to pretty much any modern receiver and it'll work - if you have one of said devices, and are willing to deal with the otherwise crap interface for managing play lists, rewinding, go to next song, etc. Okay, so pretty much every modern receiver also has a USB port where you can connect an external hard drive - but everyone I've seen is limited to a single partition of FAT32 with all the limitations listed in this thread. Oh, and if you want to specify an order of play, you have to name your files in alphabetical order, and creating directories as your play lists and navigating through them is tedious at best. Not a great option. It works, sure, but if I were to deal with something as archaic as that, I'd get an iPod - if they made one that would hold my entire music collection.

Why it's so hard to read m3u files? I couldn't tell you. If they did, I might actually give the USB option a try.

There are some manufacturer options (Lexus?) where it comes with a hard drive that you can put your music on, and seems to work reasonable well (though I haven't actually seen one.) But I have yet to find a useable aftermarket unit that'll do something .. useable.

I'm even going to begin the search for threads on how to build you own linux based car stereo, because the sheer lack of options is astounding for something I consider an obvious next step in car stereo evolution.

Hey Gary,

I'm looking to do the same thing and did find a site that may have exactly what you need. Search for my thread. Here's the link: http://www.gromaudio.com/

all of these decks will connect to ntfs decks


http://www.soundstream.com/Video%2 [...] genix.html

as will the android parrot deck

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746 [...] -hands-on/