usb drive to stereo?

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cruisermedic

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has any one connected a usb hard drive to their steeo via usb connection? my hu can do this with thumb drives but i thought it would be nice to have 40-50 gigs right in one package. my hu reads folders and subfolders so i can organise things nicely. ive overcome the power draw issues but do harddrives need some type of operating system to allow them to work? if my hu reads thumb drives i would think it would access a hard drive the same. i really want this to work as the cost per gig is much cheaper than thumb drives and i wouldnt need like 20 thumb drives in my console for all my music.....its to hard to tell what is on each thumb drive.

any way thanks for any light anyone can shed on this.


thanks, steve
 
A buddy of mine recently got I think a Kenwood with the USB plug. He bought a 30 GB hard drive and it works great. So far he hasn't had any problems. Make sure the harddrive is USB powered though, that way you don't have to have an external power source. If I were to upgrade headunits, I would probably look for something with the USB plug. They seem to work very well. Hope this helps.
 
USB Drives to Stereo

When I got my new 74, I put in a USB compatible stereo and bought a 4GB mini hard drive type drive. It worked great until it got cold - now the hard drive is in the garbage. The lesson learned was that hard drives will die if operated outside their happy temperature range. Now I'm looking for a large flash drive.
 
cruisermedic said:
has any one connected a usb hard drive to their steeo via usb connection? my hu can do this with thumb drives but i thought it would be nice to have 40-50 gigs right in one package. my hu reads folders and subfolders so i can organise things nicely. ive overcome the power draw issues but do harddrives need some type of operating system to allow them to work? if my hu reads thumb drives i would think it would access a hard drive the same. i really want this to work as the cost per gig is much cheaper than thumb drives and i wouldnt need like 20 thumb drives in my console for all my music.....its to hard to tell what is on each thumb drive.

any way thanks for any light anyone can shed on this.


thanks, steve
Click to expand...

GulfShoresFJ60 said:
A buddy of mine recently got I think a Kenwood with the USB plug. He bought a 30 GB hard drive and it works great. So far he hasn't had any problems. Make sure the harddrive is USB powered though, that way you don't have to have an external power source. If I were to upgrade headunits, I would probably look for something with the USB plug. They seem to work very well. Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

I think as long as you stick to an 80 GB or less laptop hard drive you only need the usb to power it with no external power supply.

That is as long as your h.u. puts out the same power as a standard usb.

I'm not an expert on this, so make sure to talk to a "nerd" before you take my advice...... :grinpimp:
 
Most portable hard drive enclosures require the use of 2 usb ports on laptops (one for data and the other for power) because the laptop usb ports don't supply enough power. They come with dual ended usb cables. You would need to check the power output on the head unit and compare with the requrement for the hard drive. Most enclosures take a universal type ac adapter however.
 
I bought a relatively cheapo JVC head unit with a USB port on the face for the mini. Hooked up a 4GB Compact Flash hard drive and it pretty much eliminates wiring for power and audio- slick! Now if the 12G cards can drop in price...

So far so good on the CF drive, fingers crossed.
 
I recently acquired 300 GB of music (60,000 songs) hooked it through my laptop into my stereo with an analog plug and had great tunes. I too would like to cut out the laptop but the stereo would need to have some feature that allowed you to ID the tunes and skip through them.
 
shinny said:
When I got my new 74, I put in a USB compatible stereo and bought a 4GB mini hard drive type drive. It worked great until it got cold - now the hard drive is in the garbage. The lesson learned was that hard drives will die if operated outside their happy temperature range. Now I'm looking for a large flash drive.
Click to expand...

They also do not like to be shaken up, down, and around (ie - wheeling...) It will eventually kill a hard drive or ipod if its not properly secured or has some cool anti-vibration stuff built into it.

I think they use flash memory drives (ie - thumb drives) for this reason.

Not an expert... just some knowledge by experiance and learning the hard way.
 
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