Hard disk in car question

[leegt5]

I really dont think it will work, im sorry, but i dont, lol.

Well I need the Hard Disk anyway so what i might do is get it. Put a load of music on it and go down the car audio place and ask to plug it into the headunit USB and see if it works !!

[Heyho]

The problem that you may encounter is that the headunit cannot supply enough power via the USB port to satisfy the harddrive.

According to Kenwood, smaller 1.8" drives only pull 500mA, and therefore work no problem.  A larger drive could be powered externally.

[leegt5]

The problem that you may encounter is that the headunit cannot supply enough power via the USB port to satisfy the harddrive.

According to Kenwood, smaller 1.8" drives only pull 500mA, and therefore work no problem.  A larger drive could be powered externally.

From my research it seems you are exactly right !!

[mk2mark]

Exactly as has been said, the only harddrives that will run off the 500mA power supplied by a single usb are 1.8" notebook ones, even 2.5" drives require twice that. After that you're depending on the fact that the headunit has firmware that's able to cope with that many gigabytes, and you have to use their interface to access your library of songs. Sounds to me like 2 substantial hurdles, my advice is for something cheap and effective is to get a hu with an aux. input and work an mp3 player through that.

[leegt5]

It seems that the new kenwodd headunits that have a usb input work with any 1.8 drive (2.5 will work but needs external power) as long as it is formatted in FAT32.. The speed at which the hardrive responds to headunit being powered up to be ready to play depends on you file structure.

For Best Results the file strycture needs to be for example:

G:/Michael Jackson/beatit.mp3

Im looking at the following Head unit: Cheap considering when it came out it was £300

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/KENWOOD-KDC-W7534U-CAR-CD-MP3-USB-3-RCA-NEW_W0QQitemZ330191134328QQihZ014QQcategoryZ3293QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

And im also bidding on a 1.8 80gb Hard disk !!

[bondbill2k2]

my old philips 2gb hdd mp3 player worked with the usb connection from it to a cable on my mates headunit

[T_J_G]

Just get 2 USB sticks. Play were doing 4gb for £15ish. That's a few songs.....

[derdle]

Or get yourself a phatbox. Bit pricey from the stealerships but they often come up on ebay. I have one in the Golf and another in the Audi and swap the dms from one car to the other. No need to look at the screen etc as they have an audio track/album announcement system.

[jv]

Or a Sony Mex-1HD hard drive head unit