I'm looking to get the Clarion NX409 (rear USB port) and was wondering, could I hook up an external hard drive (like a 40, 60GB) to the USB and store all my music on it? Or does it have to be a flash drive?

Thanks for any help!

 

Chances are it has to be a flash drive. I tried to connect a small USB 2.0 80G hard drive (self powered) to my Alpine HU and I got nothing, but my little 256MB thumb drive worked. Unless someone has personal experience, you might want to contact Clarion.

 

Yeah, my ipod just died so I treid hooking up a usb 2.0 harddrive and nothing, but if I plug in a flashdrive it works just like the ipod. I have a kenwood dnx-7120 hu.

 

Wow that sucks! I wonder why that is? Damn I had my mind set on that, would have been so cool to be able to have access to thousands of songs at my fingertips like that.

Ugh. Thanks guys.

 

Most H/U's only support fat32 formatted drives, and even then, they do not supply enough power to properly maintain the external drives which, if you didn't know are commonly just a laptop drive in a plastic shell. If you do get it to recognize you still run the chance of ruining your drive.

 

There is such a thing as 32GB flash drives. I want one. I have a 1GB and 4GB that I use with my P3100, I have close to 18GB of music on my computer though.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-414-_-Product

 

So is there any down sides to flash drives compared to external hard drives? Is the sound quality of the MP3s stored on a flash drive lower?

 

The quality of the file is determined by the type of file whether it be mp3, flac, etc. No quality difference in a flash drive or an external drive. External Drives generally hold more, run at faster speeds, and consume more power. The USB port on the H/U's are not meant to power external drives.

 

In addition the USB drive will hold up a lot longer then the external(no internal bearings or moving parts). I still have a 64mb yes, MB flash drive from 15 years ago that still works.. external drives on the other hand.. Just remember those crappy roads and pot holes can take a toll.

Flash drives are up to 128gb in size now and the 64gb's are below $150 now. Just make sure your head unit can support the size and the power usage of the USB drive you buy.

 

Like I stated earlier, my 30 gb ipod just died two days ago. I have a 4 gb flash drive that I put some music on and plugged it in and it worked just like I had the ipod there. I then tried my 250 gb portable harddrive and no luck, my kenwood did not even recognize it. So now I'm looking at getting a 32 gb flash drive, 70 bucks is a lot cheaper than 250 for a new ipod, besides ipods are notorious for bad batteries and they tend to die after about 4-5 years.

 

Make sure your headunit can support greater than a 4gig flash drive. If I recall correctly, 8G and up flash media compress differently from 4G and lower. This can be seen in video recording devices versus digital cameras, where an SDHC (high compression) card will only work on select devices even though they are physically identical to a basic SD card. Another other option you have for mass storage *might* be an external hard drive that runs off home power, which would involve running a power inverter. Like a flash drive, 3.5" external hard drives only use a USB port for data transfer, unlike the portable EHDD's which require some 1.2A or so @ 5V to operate via USB (which is more power than any USB port on any car audio headunit can supply). Of course there is buying another Ipod. I've always hated Ipods but since my CD reader took a dump in my IVA-W205, I've grown dependent on my Ipod for music so I feel your pain.

 

That's why when i do things again i will go solid state so there are no worries about temperature and vibration.

 

That's cool, I guess I'll just use a 4, 8 or 16gb flash drive. I was just curious if there was a downside to them. It's like, why even make external hard drives when there are flash drives now that hold just as much, and are 1/10th of the size of an external HD?


One more question...I've never listened to music off of an iPod, SD card, or flash drive in a car....is the sound quality just as good as a CD (assuming the MP3 is of high quality)?

 

The reason they make sata drives over USB drives is for the simple reason that they are faster. With Solid State being brought into play though, things are going to change, speeds are drastically increased, and the fact that there are no moving parts is a big improvement. USB 3.0 is also out there now, which offers insane speeds for the USB interface, I can't wait for these two technologies to become more mainstream.

Assuming you use the same quality file, the sound will be essentially the same no matter which device you use, but you can put different file formats that offer better quality on flash drives, sd cards, and cd's as opposed to mp3 players assuming your H/U can handle these formats.