USB connection

[SmileyDe4th]

I have a WD 320 Passport Essential, I was able to get my F700 recognize it at first but when I took it in the house to add a "little" music to it, and brought it back out to try it, the drive USB light just came on, so yeah, the optional cable is probably a good idea to use it with the navi. On a side note, the other external drive i have (regular 3.5in 160gb hd in a maddog enclosure.) plugged into an external power supply, the unit would not even acknowledge it was there, I am going to check into a 1.8in Toshiba drive tomorrow(I read somewhere on here someone had a ton of success with 1.8"), I'll let ya know the results. On a side note, the unit has no trouble seeing the 16gb SD card(think the limit is 4?), I just have way more music than that, I am just finding it hard to jump on the iPod boat, though it's beginning to look like that the only way I'm going to be able to have all my music from my pc in the car short of tons of mp3 disks and a couple sd cards.

 

~Sd

[Ramon]

i was about to jump on the ipod bandwagon when I found out that the signal going into my f900 will be analogue instead of digital with an optional cable so I said f*& it.

[wiretap]

i just use the usb wire thats coming from the unit. i was told that's all i needed.

 

Not quite... It should be enough for a "real" computer that puts out more power on USB port. As WD notes on their product page, if you are using it with something that has low-power USB, there is an optional cable to bring more power to the drive.

Yup, the cable should look similar to the pic below. One is data+power, and the other runs parallel with power only to bring more current to the drive to help it spin up. I'm going to fiddle around with my 100GB 2.5'' drive when I finally get done with my final exams. I'm pretty good with computers, almost done with my computer engineering degree at Univ of Mich. But, I have a feeling it won't work, because I don't think Windows CE can address that much physical space on an attached medium. I'm pretty sure the limit is 32GB. The only work-around I know if is to attach an iPod with a zif-->ide/sata adapter, then plugin whatever size hard drive the maximum an iPod can support.

 

EDIT: Here's a good read about Windows CE disk volume sizes.

http://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/h/0044.asp