External Hard Drive

Radon · October 28, 2007

Currently I have my iPod running through my pioneer head unit, and all that is fine. But here recently my music collection has surpassed my 30 gig limit and I want to know how to put an external hard drive in my truck. I know it's been done I just cant seem to find any help online. Can anyone here help?

thecraft · October 29, 2007

Somebody posted a topic about this not too long ago, let me see if I can find it. They used a Pioneer DEH-P6900UB with a USB hard drive.

defragme · October 29, 2007

If you dont have one of the pioneer head units with the dedicated usb hook ups built in, I read somewhere that the add-on usb module from pioneer sucks. Not sure if it is slow or what the problem is, but people say that the ipod hookup is alot better. I personally dont own an ipod, but am thinking about getting one for the sole purpose of adding it to a pioneer nav when i get it.

Don't they make an ipod that is like 80 gig now? that might be your best bet to sell your ipod and buy a bigger one, unless I just totally made up the 80 gig thing. Thought I read that somewhere though.

aurubio · October 29, 2007

They now have a 160 gig ipod.>link<

Wingnut · October 29, 2007

Who made that music "keg" thing?

gothoe? · October 29, 2007

here you go

Music Keg

Rosedog · November 3, 2007

Somebody posted a topic about this not too long ago, let me see if I can find it. They used a Pioneer DEH-P6900UB with a USB hard drive.

That would be me

Why is it better to go with a HDD than a DAP? Because you can load it, install it under the seat and nobody will ever know its there and I don't have to worry about forgetting it at home/work or worry about taking it out of the truck. I'll post pics of my install later.

Check the offical Pioneer Vids:

Connecting a Hard Drive to the DEH-P6900UB/ DEH-P690UB

USB Compatibility on the DEH-P6900UB

That HDD he's using in the video is the same one I have in my wife's blazer. I was using it until I bought her radio, then I gave it to her and got newer one for myself.

I have the Premier DEH-690UB, my wife has Pioneer DEH-6900UB.

I love it, the only thing that gets me is why Pioneer did not include the USB as a standard function on some of the higher-er Premier units?!?! I'd much rather have this feature than BT but that's just me. And yes, you can add BT to the 6900.

iknow · November 3, 2007

+1 for the USB to HDD. You can have 30gigs at your fingertips, and no cds. One thing I heard is that take a External HD and format it for FAT32, which only gives you 30G storage max. My theory would be to take a USB Hub and wire in the power for it, if needed, and run multiple $40 drives at once, it should separate them out, maybe, I don't have the deck or HDs to try it with, worth a shot if your in need of more space, and don't want the 160G iPod. One would definately be enough for me though.

Rosedog · November 4, 2007

+1 for the USB to HDD. You can have 30gigs at your fingertips, and no cds. One thing I heard is that take a External HD and format it for FAT32, which only gives you 30G storage max. My theory would be to take a USB Hub and wire in the power for it, if needed, and run multiple $40 drives at once, it should separate them out, maybe, I don't have the deck or HDs to try it with, worth a shot if your in need of more space, and don't want the 160G iPod. One would definately be enough for me though.

I was under that impression too that it had to be formated to Fat32 but the HDD I have now is a 40gig unformatted. I'm starting to believe it maybe based off of the HDD RPM. The two HDD's I have are 4,200, it probably has something to do with the power needed to supply them. I have yet to try a 100gig. Another thing I noticed is that when I tried a 10ft. usb extension, my drive wouldn't read (again not enough power) so I went back to a 6'ft. cable.

xante · May 16, 2008

+1 for the USB to HDD. You can have 30gigs at your fingertips, and no cds. One thing I heard is that take a External HD and format it for FAT32, which only gives you 30G storage max. My theory would be to take a USB Hub and wire in the power for it, if needed, and run multiple $40 drives at once, it should separate them out, maybe, I don't have the deck or HDs to try it with, worth a shot if your in need of more space, and don't want the 160G iPod. One would definately be enough for me though.

I was under that impression too that it had to be formated to Fat32 but the HDD I have now is a 40gig unformatted. I'm starting to believe it maybe based off of the HDD RPM. The two HDD's I have are 4,200, it probably has something to do with the power needed to supply them. I have yet to try a 100gig. Another thing I noticed is that when I tried a 10ft. usb extension, my drive wouldn't read (again not enough power) so I went back to a 6'ft. cable.

Although this is an old topic, just wanted to post my findings, I used a DC->AC power adapter to install an external 250gb hard drive, filled this hard drive with a 100gb's of music (about 18000 songs) using gentoo linux's fdisk to format the hard drive with a fat partition (not fat32), this allows for a higher than 32gb limit, but then I hit the next limitation, songs per directory, the Deck will only read the first 999 songs in a directory, after that it doesnt show the songs title but still plays them, so fixed that by creating directories ( later found that scrolling through 999 songs was to much so bumped it down to about 300 per directory), ok cool works again, i should mention that my very first run of this contained a format like this: DirectoryA -> SubDirectory A -> Songs and this took over 2 hours for the music to load, ( i do alot of highway driving), so by having a single layer of directories, the songs load in approximatly 45-90 seconds. The limitation ive hit now is that the deck itself stops registering any songs after about 60-70% of the directories so about A-T in an alphabetical list, it displays the directories U-Z but does not let you traverse beneath them, I know having 100gbs (now closer to 200gbs) of music is excessive and an outrageous task to load that many songs for a deck that can now be bought for less than 200 bucks now but i just wanted to show that you can by pass the 32gb limit on hard drives and hit the next one with me.

Rosedog · May 16, 2008

+1 for the USB to HDD. You can have 30gigs at your fingertips, and no cds. One thing I heard is that take a External HD and format it for FAT32, which only gives you 30G storage max. My theory would be to take a USB Hub and wire in the power for it, if needed, and run multiple $40 drives at once, it should separate them out, maybe, I don't have the deck or HDs to try it with, worth a shot if your in need of more space, and don't want the 160G iPod. One would definately be enough for me though.

I was under that impression too that it had to be formated to Fat32 but the HDD I have now is a 40gig unformatted. I'm starting to believe it maybe based off of the HDD RPM. The two HDD's I have are 4,200, it probably has something to do with the power needed to supply them. I have yet to try a 100gig. Another thing I noticed is that when I tried a 10ft. usb extension, my drive wouldn't read (again not enough power) so I went back to a 6'ft. cable.

Although this is an old topic, just wanted to post my findings, I used a DC->AC power adapter to install an external 250gb hard drive, filled this hard drive with a 100gb's of music (about 18000 songs) using gentoo linux's fdisk to format the hard drive with a fat partition (not fat32), this allows for a higher than 32gb limit, but then I hit the next limitation, songs per directory, the Deck will only read the first 999 songs in a directory, after that it doesnt show the songs title but still plays them, so fixed that by creating directories ( later found that scrolling through 999 songs was to much so bumped it down to about 300 per directory), ok cool works again, i should mention that my very first run of this contained a format like this: DirectoryA -> SubDirectory A -> Songs and this took over 2 hours for the music to load, ( i do alot of highway driving), so by having a single layer of directories, the songs load in approximatly 45-90 seconds. The limitation ive hit now is that the deck itself stops registering any songs after about 60-70% of the directories so about A-T in an alphabetical list, it displays the directories U-Z but does not let you traverse beneath them, I know having 100gbs (now closer to 200gbs) of music is excessive and an outrageous task to load that many songs for a deck that can now be bought for less than 200 bucks now but i just wanted to show that you can by pass the 32gb limit on hard drives and hit the next one with me.

What deck are you using? I know the Kenwood Nav units are limited to Fat32 (says so in the instructions) and they absolutly (sp?) suck in response time with a loaded 30gig HDD.

xante · May 16, 2008

I apologize Im using the Pioneer DEH-P6900UB and I made an error, I am using a FAT32 partition, but FAT32 is not limited to 32gb's, according to wikipedia, its limited to 8tb's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#FAT32

but the results remain as posted previous

OUMike · May 17, 2008

Anyone had a problem with the drive bouncing around and writing bad sectors?

omegafiler · May 17, 2008

Anyone had a problem with the drive bouncing around and writing bad sectors?

Depends on how secure the drive, how it was mounted, and how rough of a ride it has to endure. Personally, I would only use a flash or solid state drive if it's going to be in a vehicle.

A standard notebook drive would work, but you'd need to make sure it was in a good enclosure with rubber or some other type of shock resistant material. Then make sure it's not just sitting in a glove box to bounce around either.

Rosedog · May 17, 2008

Anyone had a problem with the drive bouncing around and writing bad sectors?

Depends on how secure the drive, how it was mounted, and how rough of a ride it has to endure. Personally, I would only use a flash or solid state drive if it's going to be in a vehicle.

Either you're going to be limited in your capacity or you have lots of money to spend. SSD drives are not cheap, if they were I'd go this route in no time flat.

A standard notebook drive would work, but you'd need to make sure it was in a good enclosure with rubber or some other type of shock resistant material. Then make sure it's not just sitting in a glove box to bounce around either.

I've had my HDD drive in my truck since I bought the deck (1.5-2yrs ago I believe) no problems yet but then again I don't run baja either. If you decide to place you HDD in the glove box, use some velcro if you want it will be enough. Me, I bought some hard foam from a fabric store to place my HDD on then I took my cup holder off my jumpseat, cut out the inside channels of the u-beams (length of HDD) and cut slots into the outside channel for some elastic banding to hold the HDD against the bottom of the cup holder.