FYI..
Well i have been using my 16gb thumb drive for playing MP3's off threw the USB port so i tried an external drive. 640gb
NO GO.
I formatted it FAT32 and tried a few different formats of organizing the music but it will not show the list all.
it just show unreadable.
it seems to spin up the drive fine but will not search the drive.

oh well i tried

 

Also i have tried a USB hub to split to charge my iphone and play music form a thumb drive..
no go.

looks like the USB port is very low power output.

Next step is to remove the HDD and image it to a larger drive and see if i can make the available space larger to import music into the system.

 

If you format the external hard drive to 16GB it should work. I don't think it's a power issue, I expect the car's system can't address a drive that large.

 

Keep me posted on this, I'd be interested to know 1) what actual make/model physical size HDD is actually inside this if there is one. 2) If you get it replaced methods.

I am curious though thinking maybe its not a platter based HD inside and just some Flash memory chips so not actually able to swap (unless you get ahold of tsop chips and super solder skills lol.)

Anyways lemme know!

 

I will once i get it taken apart and i can almost guarantee its a spinning HD.
Last OS version was a light windows CE so well see if i can get it done.

Also note you can burn MP3's to a DVD and it will read and play them fine. Even with folders.

 

I'm sure it's a spinning hard drive as well, but I doubt it's something off-the-shelf. I expect it's a more specialized hard drive that's hardened against shock and temperature extremes and probably has some specialized firmware on the drive.

Yes, but no DVD can hold as much as, say, a 16GB USB flash drive, so why not stick with that?

 

No i am also using a 16gb USB thumb drive for other music as well and my 8gb iphone.

I have 420gb of MP3's so i'd like to be able to access as much as possible..

 

I tried a 1 TB drive and it was a no-go. I'm now using a 32 GB USB thumb drive and it seems to be working pretty well.

 

OP, was there enough power for the HD? They demand a huge amount of juice to work.

 

It powered up the drive but did not work. I just ordered a USB powered hub and I will try that next week.