Solid State USB hard drive

[Earlsays]

I was thinking about (if possible) adding a solid state usb powered hard drive to replace my ipod in the car - I would like more storage than the ipod offers...has anyone done this? Is there any reason why the car won't see the hard drive just like a USB thumb drive or an IPOD?

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[DrDing.Muscle]

It probably depends on how much power if any the usb port provides to the device. An ipod or phone provides its own power so the port doesn't have to provide any. A hard drive like you are talking has to be provided some power through the usb port.

 

[DraXxus1549]

I don't see any reason it wouldn't work. An SSD is going to be much lower power than a HDD so I don't think power would be an issue.

I'm not sure how much storage you need, but an SSD for music seems a bit overkill. I would pick up a flash drive instead. I got a 64GB flash drive for like $10-$15 on amazon.

 

[Fenix]

I think it will work as long as it is formatted same as a USB stick. The USB port in the car provides enough current to charge a phone which is more than enough to power an SSD.

 

[Old Guard]

I have a western digital Passport with 30,000-plus songs. I had to first format the drive to FAT32. The initial connection required maybe 20 minutes for the SYNC3 software to index the drive and build commands. After that, it has started right up every time. Amazon cost was about $55. Just leave it always plugged into the USB port in the center console compartment.

 

[Old Guard]

It is a 500G capacity drive.

 

[Xantom]

I was thinking about (if possible) adding a solid state usb powered hard drive to replace my ipod in the car - I would like more storage than the ipod offers...has anyone done this? Is there any reason why the car won't see the hard drive just like a USB thumb drive or an IPOD?

How much space do you need?

I can't find any facts to back this up, but I am willing to bet that any "off the shelf" USB flash drive(including USB 2.0 drives) is going to give you the same performance as the fastest SSD or M.2 drive you can get. The bottleneck will be the port or the head unit themselves. You can through all the data you want to your port but if the infrastructure can't manage it you will never see any performance increases. I use this 32GB USB 3.0 drive. Again just making assumptions here. I have about 700 songs and 20 playlists, roughly 5GB of data and it takes the head unit about 10 minutes to index the drive and build the commands. Be it the port or the head unit, it is not able to utilize high speed media devices.

 

[ForTehNguyen]

they make even 128gb sized USB fit drives that hardly stick out past the plug now for $30-35. If you have to externally power a drive, you can use a USB charger in the 12V port in the glove box to power it

 

[bobinnj]

they make even 128gb sized USB fit drives that hardly stick out past the plug now for $30-35. If you have to externally power a drive, you can use a USB charger in the 12V port in the glove box to power it

I'm currently using one of these plugged into the Center console USB.

 

[Redraven571]

HI use this 32GB USB 3.0 drive. Again just making assumptions here. I have about 700 songs and 20 playlists, roughly 5GB of data and it takes the head unit about 10 minutes to index the drive and build the commands. Be it the port or the head unit, it is not able to utilize high speed media devices.

I have the same drive and have used about 12 GB of space and I have I think about 1400 songs on there. You're right, it takes a few minutes to index the first time but is OK thereafter.

I can't imagine how long it would take for my unit to index 30K songs.... :eyebulge:

 

[DrDing.Muscle]

There is a program that you can run on your media library for sync that checks tags and file info and will fix your files to make indexing faster. It is on the sync troubleshooting site.

 

[tsunami]

USB power for a phone...

On my EB premium, the arm rest USB port does not have enough amperage to begin a charge on my phone. I thought it did until I plugged in my phone which had been left on and was down to 3% charge. The dash screen displayed an error message: "USB device not compatible". The phone had worked fine with the system up till then. I charged the phone using a wall charger and then replaced it in the EB. The system accepted the phone!
I went out and purchased a 12v socket USB power port to keep in the EB for the times when the arm rest port can't supply enough power to initially charge the phone.

 

[RoninRed]

What other uses would a USB drive have beyond songs? I have spotify on my iphone. Wish I could put that app permanently on my Sync 3 platform lol

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