I don't have a 2009 yet but I saw something that could be pretty cool.

If you have a 250g hard drive that only uses the USB cable, from what I'm reading, will work, but the question is if you have one of those drives and hit a bump or something, wouldnt that whack out that drive (assuming its sitting in the middle compartment). You wouldnt need an IPOD or Flash drive or any MP3 cd's if you have a 250g or bigger drive which are only 89-99 bucks.

Would this work or will the shock kill the drive? This sounds so cool.

 

It would need to be in a good case that absorbed vibration - maybe wrap the hdd enclosure in a small layer of black foam or something.

In theory it should work fine, make sure it's formatted as FAT and not NTFS, other than that I cannot think of why it would fail

 

or just use a solid state device. ;]

 

The HD has to power itself. I tried to use a 40G HD I had and it didn't work. Not sure why. I bought an 8G flashdisk and it works.

 

strange... most of those external hard drives require a power supply so i guess it makes sense. takes a lot of power to spin it. my maxtor actually has a dual USB cable with no external power supply, but the 2 USBs is what it takes to power it. but a flash drive should work nicely.

 

I just say get a 160 GB ipod and call it a day. I know they're expensive as shit (I have one myself), but 160 GB is more than enough space. The average person can barely fill an 80 GB ipod, so 160 will hold most people over for awhile (depends what bit rate you record your music too, but 128 sounds fine to me). Plus, you can tell the sound system was built with ipods in mind, because you control the system like you would your ipod. Displays all the information your ipod does, the only thing missing is the album artwork. Plus ipods are so small, it really doesn't take up any space compared to an external hard drive. Just stick it in the u-shaped slot in the armrest and you're good to go.

 

I have a 320 western digital portable and it only uses 1 usb for the power and connection. That might work

 

i had a WD like that, and i always had issues with it because of the 1 plug... WD actually sells a 2 USB cable to give it a little extra juice.

 

this is all bs, the extra power cord is for example if u have an older computer it does not give enough amperage to the usb and it won't work, so the 2nd plug is to plug it into another comuper or usb power supply just to help it out...i'm sure that most new computers (with usb 2.0 obviously) will have enough power to supply the HD with enough power just form the 1 usb port (considering it's the small laptop 2.5" ones obviously)...i know because i have a few of them and they all work with 1 port, and i've tried on many desktops and laptops....the only ones that i've observed don't work and need extra power is really old computers.

i'm pretty sure the usb in the new cars has enough amperage to supply 2.5" external hard drivers, i've also witenssed a calrion unit do it with no problem, and the hard drive originally came with 2 usb plugs from the cable, just one works tho (the power+data one, because the other one is just power and only powers up the hd, but cannot communicate with it).

if the hd is formatted correctly (FAT and not NTFS), it should work in the TL.

getting an ipod doesn't solve any problems for me, because the ipod is a horrible drvice...u can't just drag files into it's hd, u have to use the worst program ever...itunes, which is why i've never liked ipods.

 

How about a 32gb compact flash card and usb reader? That should work well. It's like a mini hd and you won't have to worry about power issues or speedbumps. I wonder if sdhc cards work for the usb???

 

I dont know what youre talking about buddy. I've always dragged files straight onto my ipod and my collection is greater than 200GB so I would hate ipod myself if I could manually manipulate those files. Also, to everyone else, How many songs are we talking here, a couple hundred? I mean it would really suck if you had to use the freakin jog wheel to ponder through more songs than that. The interface for the ipod makes it so much easier. You just put the stuff you really like in playlist and that only leaves you to browse occassionally. My ipod has 19,000 songs on it and no way am I gonna browse to the END of a list sorted by song or artist. Jog wheel would probably fall off.

 

Couldn't have said it any better!

 

Take away his Acura! Comments like this will not get you invited to Xmas dinner! LOL. He's probably running his iTunes on a PC... What a dork!

 

If you format the drive with FAT32 it should be fine.