Playlists from a USB flash drive?

[DesertDog]

Does connecting a portable USB hard drive to the USB port work ok?

[wimorrison]

Originally Posted by DesertDog

Does connecting a portable USB hard drive to the USB port work ok?

Yep, 100%

[fte_mike]

I tried this with a small USB powered Iomega hard drive and the drive was "unreadable". It was properly formatted to FAT32. I read on other forums that a problem is due to the limited USB power available at the USB port in the car. Some hard drives apparently require more power to run than is available - apparently a solution is to use a USB "Y" cable and a 12V USB power adaptor to provide more power from the 12V socket. Not a very appealing fix.

Winmorrison, what type of HD are you successfully using? Maybe I'll just buy the same one!

Thanks,

Mike

[wimorrison]

Originally Posted by fte_mike

I tried this with a small USB powered Iomega hard drive and the drive was "unreadable". It was properly formatted to FAT32. I read on other forums that a problem is due to the limited USB power available at the USB port in the car. Some hard drives apparently require more power to run than is available - apparently a solution is to use a USB "Y" cable and a 12V USB power adaptor to provide more power from the 12V socket. Not a very appealing fix.

Winmorrison, what type of HD are you successfully using? Maybe I'll just buy the same one!

Thanks,

Mike

I am using an old 30gb laptop drive that I mounted into an enclosure e.g.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/USB-2-5-Hard-D...ht_2401wt_1139

you will get a second hand drive (if you don't have one) for a few pounds e.g.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Hitachi-30GB-I...#ht_1216wt_905

I use it as a backup drive for all sorts of bits and have a folder with music in it. This has the advantage that I have the music in the car and a backup that is nowhere near the computer

works a treat - your problem may be that the iomega is a 3.5" drive, they use a lot more power

[darbs]

Originally Posted by fte_mike

Winmorrison, what type of HD are you successfully using? Maybe I'll just buy the same one!

Thanks,

Mike

is there any way you could consider a USB stick? they're not too expensive, they're readily available from anywhere that sells computer accessories and can hold quite a bit of data - i've seen them up to 64gb, but i guess they could hold more. i use one without problem - only 8gb though.

[fte_mike]

I currently use a 16 gb stick, and it works very well indeed. But, I'm using .wav files and they are lossless and therefore pretty large so i was hoping to get a lot more space on the cheap. Large size memory sticks are pretty expensive, but usb powered HDDs are actually very cheap right now. My 320 Gb iomega cost 59 Euros; a 64 Gb memory stick costs twice that.

Thanks,

Mike

[DesertDog]

I've just tried a 500Gb Seagate portable USB HDD and get the "Unreadable" error message. I then tried with my 16Gb iPhone4 and get the same "Unreadable" error message.

Both of these storage devices were originally configured for Mac OSX, but I can still read the music files when connected to a Win 7 laptop.

Is there something about Apple which the system doesn't like? The files were recorded in 320Kbps Apple Lossless format, M4A

[darbs]

Originally Posted by DesertDog

Is there something about Apple which the system doesn't like? The files were recorded in 320Kbps Apple Lossless format, M4A

from a fat32 filesystem, eg. on a usb stick or hdd, the system will only play the wav or mp3 format. via your iphone it should play the apple format, but there is a problem with a certain ios version. if you're on 4.2 the system doesn't work. you have to regress to 4.1 or wait for 4.3.

i don't have any apple devices myself, solely because i don't like being tied down to a single provider, but there are a few threads in a lot of the forums on this site on this subject. you'll just need to search them out.

i do buy from itunes though. i just convert anything i do to mp3 via a cd burn.

[fte_mike]

I have a 320 Gb portable HDD with a FAT32 file system and .wav music files. I've tried boosting the USB power with another usb power supply from the 12V socket as has been suggested, and still get the "unreadable" message. My 16 Gb stick works fine, so I suspect that the usb system in the car will not read a memory stick or HDD that is larger than (perhaps) 32 Gb...Has anyone had any luck in using a memory stick or HDD larger than 32 Gb?

Any assistance appreciated...

[DesertDog]

I'm also able to play MP3 files on an OSX formatted 16Gb USB flash drive. Tomorrow I'm off down the discount electronic store to get a 32Gb USB flash to try.