MP3's on External Hard Drive in Car?

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use WD media player or Amkette Flash TV n connect ur 500 gb hard disk and there after connect it to car media receiver
 
The problem with using HDD is that most decks will not take more than 255 folders, some take 512 but that is the most i have found. It is a big problem if you want to store all your music and have it sorted into artists and albums... If anyones knows a deck that doesnt have this limitation please let me know!
 
Metallifux is correct but it is even on a larger scale. Keep in mind that music players / decks including ones that comes with cars have computer circuitry but they are not personal style computers like desktops, laptops, netbooks and smartphones. They have pre-designed limitations and normally can and will never be upgraded - you need to buy a newer unit / car for newer functionality.

Case in point - just bought a brand new 2011 Toyota Prius last week. I expected it to be technology friendly and had a bunch of audio surprises when it came. The package I purchased it with came with an upgraded audio system which included a "USB" port.

Now keep in mind certain USB ports in some cars or the ones you purchase that go into the lighter port, are purely for power. However, this one is designed to play music. Four types of music devices can go into - a memory stick, an MP3 player which is acts like a USB device (like my old Sandisk Sansa MP3 player), an external hard disk or an iPod (or Apple device with iPod software like an iPhone or iPad). For all but the last (for which it has more intelligence), the device is mainly looked at as an external device with folders. It will recognize some ID tag information in the music files such as Title (which it significantly truncates) and Artist. It ignores other information such as Album.

So here is how the USB works in the car which you find very similar if not identical to other cars and the decks mentioned here above:

1. The device must be FAT32 (or FAT16) formatted (incl. the MP3 player)
2. It will only recognize the basic file structure of folder names and file names. You will not be able to browse or search any other ID tag information. If you want to play your music based on the album, you will need to create a folder with that name which contains just the album tracks as files.
3. Folders are limited to 255 files.
4. There is no pause button so if you want to make changes you need to turn off the volume and let the track play since by hitting the off button, not only does the track stop but the display goes away as well.
5. Here is something VERY important that has not been discussed here (I think), when the tracks are played, they are played in the order the files were physically written to the stick, hard disk, MP3 player. You may think it is sorted someway, but it may not turn out to be that way. To get the music to play in the order you want it to, you will have to physically have to sort the folders on the media. There are lots of software to do this. The one I am currently using is called "DriveSort" and it can sort physically in various ways and also has a "playlist" function to allow you to physically put the files in an exact order you want. It does not do sorting based on any of the ID tags.

Luckily for me, the Prius also supports "Bluetooth Audio Players" which allows me to play my music from my iPhone 4 directly through the car speakers in a lot more flexible and intuitive way - though I may still use a 4 GB memory stick to play music sometimes so I don't have to clutter my iPhone with temporary music. It's a shame that iPhones do not have a USB port so I can attach one of my external hard disks and circumvent some of the issues and limitations above.

Hope this helps explain and enhance the above discussion.

Joel
 
if there is a folder limit..
i think it would have everything to do with the amount of memory inside the radio.

picture browsing through a computer hard drive with an operating system.
you start with the drive letter.
c:/
then move forward deeper and deeper into the folder structure.
c:/documents and settings/all users/desktop

above there are 4 dives into the folder structure.
every time you go in a layer deeper, the car radio has to remember the layer before it.
so if you are browsing the 'desktop' area.. you would have to save 3 layers, while browsing in the 4th layer.

if there isnt enough memory available.. you wont be able to dive into the folders.
and if the car radio counts the folders to see if there are more than it can handle..
-the folder might not show up
-the entire drive might be rejected


but
it really depends on how the car radio uses the memory it has.
you could store only the layers you have gone inside of.
or
you could store all of the subfolders within each layer.

for example..
you start at c:/
then you look inside of c:/ and you see 'documents and settings' .. 'program files' .. 'windows' .. and whatever else is there.
if the radio is trying to store all of that in its memory.. you are going to use the memory up faster.


there is always some conclusion as to how many folders the car 'computer' will read.
and it is supposed to have everything to do with the amount of memory the car radio's computer has.
some might call it memory.. some might call it a buffer.


maybe... just maybe...
the tiny operating system to browse the folders has been written short and small.
so it cant handle all of the folder diving because the operating system wasnt programmed to dive that deep.


say you start with genre/year/artist/album
and maybe you could go 60 folders deep.
but
if you have ANOTHER genre/year/artist/album..
maybe then the operating system says you can only go 30 albums deep, because that is how the operating system is programmed inside the radio's little computer.


maybe the information isnt really necessary for most average people.
but
in that case.. you simply hunt down a radio that will do what you want.
or
throw a computer in the trunk and connect the soundcard to the radio's auxilery inputs.
 
After a couple of years searching apparently Soundstream's new ingenix series will support NTFS which should mean more folders! Apparently they will be out within the next 2 months. I have no idea about the brand as its not common in Australia any USA guys got opinions on Soundstream?
 
I'll keep an eye out for Soundstream's stuff.

I used to (well, still have) an empeg. Originally a british company, the unit came with one or two laptop hard drives, ran a customized linux kernel on an ARM processor. MSRP was around $1200 at the time, they just couldn't compete. SonicBlue (now Rio) bought them, decided to EOL it, liquidated their stock of empegs, and I bought one for $500. Absolutely gorgeous machine: the unit was fully removable to move between vehicles, play music in your house, had interfaces to sync your music on your computer, do play lists, all kinds of awesome things, and a great interface to boot. Very easy to navigate your music, very straight forward, but it was a single purpose device: to play music from a hard drive. That's it. But that's all I wanted.

Unfortunately, they were EOL'd quite some time ago, close to 10 years at this point. I should've bought two, as mine's no longer working.

So I've been trying to find a worthy replacement, and candidates are lacking.

Everything I've been able to find has already been talked about in this thread: Sure, connect your iP[hone|od] to pretty much any modern receiver and it'll work - if you have one of said devices, and are willing to deal with the otherwise crap interface for managing play lists, rewinding, go to next song, etc. Okay, so pretty much every modern receiver also has a USB port where you can connect an external hard drive - but everyone I've seen is limited to a single partition of FAT32 with all the limitations listed in this thread. Oh, and if you want to specify an order of play, you have to name your files in alphabetical order, and creating directories as your play lists and navigating through them is tedious at best. Not a great option. It works, sure, but if I were to deal with something as archaic as that, I'd get an iPod - if they made one that would hold my entire music collection.

Why it's so hard to read m3u files? I couldn't tell you. If they did, I might actually give the USB option a try.

There are some manufacturer options (Lexus?) where it comes with a hard drive that you can put your music on, and seems to work reasonable well (though I haven't actually seen one.) But I have yet to find a useable aftermarket unit that'll do something .. useable.

I'm even going to begin the search for threads on how to build you own linux based car stereo, because the sheer lack of options is astounding for something I consider an obvious next step in car stereo evolution.
 
The only way any of this works really well is with a laptop PC porting your audio into your stereo. Now you have the world, and not just MP3, but the possibility of playing FLAC (a lossless audio file format) too! I have done this, it' works great!
My hard drive has over 70, 000 MP3 and FLAC files, all played through a MediaMonkey database. You don't even need a nice car
stereo, just a good amp and speakers. I never listen to AM or play A CD anymore. And FM? What would be the point if you have it all on your drive? It's WAY more fun for your friends too.
 



Hey Gary,

I'm looking to do the same thing and did find a site that may have exactly what you need. Search for my thread. Here's the link: http://www.gromaudio.com/
 
I just got it to work. I've got a 250GB Western Digital external HD. I used EaseUS's Partition Master to create a 40GB partition in the drive (since I only have 37GB of music anyway), and had it formatted as FAT32. You can use windows to create the partition, but it was giving me some problems so I just used EaseUS's program. The download link I used is here:

http://download.cnet.com/EaseUS-Partition-Master-Home-Edition/3000-2248_4-10863346.html

I made the 40GB partition the only active partition on the drive (the rest is just unallocated space). I think this may cut down on load times since the stereo is only looking at 40GB for information instead of 250, but that's just a guess.

My stereo is a JVC, Model KW-XR810. I think this will work with any stereo that supports USB, as long as it gives enough power for your hard drive. Luckily, my little portable drive doesn't need much power to run. I just tested it with about 12 songs on the drive just to see if it would work, and it did. It loaded very quickly, probably faster than it takes to read my mp3 CDs I've been using. I imagine after I put close to 40GB of music on there, the load time will increase, but for now I'm pretty happy with it.
 
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