RS6 C7 FL - HDD over USB

[LukasPukas]

I have been trying unsuccessfully to get the car to recognise a USB-power 1TB HDD (WD Elements) in the hope of having all my music available (even the HiRes FLAC files I have). I have tried reformatting from NTFS to FAT32, but still no joy.

Has anyone got this working? I seem to remember a couple of people were using this setup for the same reason, but couldn't find the thread.

[MikeFish]

I had trouble with a few hard drives (mainly USB3) that wouldn't work. All the USB2 drives I have seem to work and I found 1 USB3 that works too. I assumed it was a power issue as the larger drives seem to need more current.

[MikeFish]

Note I can't recall the size of all the USB2 drives but I think I found a 1tb usb2 and it worked and a 1tb usb3 that worked too. I will go and confirm in a minute.

[LukasPukas]

Note I can't recall the size of all the USB2 drives but I think I found a 1tb usb2 and it worked and a 1tb usb3 that worked too. I will go and confirm in a minute.

Cheers Mike, appreciate it.
The WD one doesn't work, but not a massive issue, they are fairly cheap these days and I am sure I can fill it up with photos quick enough.

[MikeFish]

Just checked;
I have a WD My Passport Ultra 1tb which works and is USB3. I tried my other WD My Passports and they didn't work so might only be the Ultra version that works.
I also have another drive I bought off ebay which isn't branded but is a USB2 1tb drive (also has a mini USB socket rather than micro USB). That works too.

[Bit_evl]

Guys, if you are intending to keep the drive attached all the time I would recommend using one of the SSD hard discs instead of an old traditional spinning drive. These are solid state and so not prone to becoming unreliable in a bumpy car over time. They also suck less power, run cooler and are more easily handled in harsh environments. Whilst they used to be highly expensive they have now come down in price whilst going up in capacity. Still not as cheap but if you have a BIG library it is a lot more difficult to re-constitute it from basics so it is worth protecting. I lost one a year or so back and it took months to recover it all again.

Examples.
http://www.ebuyer.com/761166-wd-blue-50 ... ds500g1b0a (disc-raw) (drive)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tool-free-Inat ... 00IJNDBM4/ (case for it)

Just a comment in case you have a decent library to protect in a car set to dynamic on 30 profiles !

[MikeFish]

Agreed they are better if for no other reason than the lower current. But I've never had a disc skip on me yet even in dynamic all the time, more likely to bend a wheel! And a disc failure for me is no bother, all my songs are on my PC at home so it's just a case of copying them on to a new drive if anything went wrong. But they have come down in price a lot since I last looked and are up to usable sizes now.

Incidentally, I found that I had too many songs on 1 drive and it wouldnt see all the files.
I have 2 physical drives connected; one holding my collection of FLACs which I mainly listen to for its superior quality. I have a 2nd disc attached which holds my MP3 collection as it is much larger than my FLAC collection so sometimes I fancy listening to songs or albums that I only have as MP3. However my entire MP3 collection was too big (in terms of number of files rather than storage space). So when looking at the specs of the MMI I noticed that each physical USB connection will accept a drive with up to 2 partitions and it treats these as separate drives. So I split my MP3 collection in 2 (basically single artist albums and compilations) and put them on separate partitions of the same drive. Now I can see all my MP3s.