Ramon Posted April 23, 2009 Report Share Posted April 23, 2009 Well I tried very hard to get my lacie 500 gig to work with my f900, but to no avail. I tried the fat32formatter and thanks by the way, but that didnt work either. So I just had a question to the guys that power their drives in the car. Can put a full description of what you have because most likely not all drives will work with the F series. Also a question to boris, does u r hardrive come with some sort of split usb cable where u can plug into a car invertor for more power or do u do something else. I would be greatfull for this info cause I am trying to decide what kind of drive to buy and how to power it. thanks Quote Link to post Share on other sites
BorisM Posted April 23, 2009 Report Share Posted April 23, 2009 Well I tried very hard to get my lacie 500 gig to work with my f900, but to no avail. I tried the fat32formatter and thanks by the way, but that didnt work either. So I just had a question to the guys that power their drives in the car. Can put a full description of what you have because most likely not all drives will work with the F series. Also a question to boris, does u r hardrive come with some sort of split usb cable where u can plug into a car invertor for more power or do u do something else. I would be greatfull for this info cause I am trying to decide what kind of drive to buy and how to power it. thanks Mine has a second port for power only (looks like a regular DC jack) and a USB to round jack adapter cable. I routed some switched power to the glovebox, wired it to a lighter USB adapter, and plugged the cable there. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Dixiedog Posted April 23, 2009 Report Share Posted April 23, 2009 So I just had a question to the guys that power their drives in the car. Can put a full description of what you have because most likely not all drives will work with the F series. Also a question to boris, does u r hardrive come with some sort of split usb cable where u can plug into a car invertor for more power or do u do something else. I would be greatfull for this info cause I am trying to decide what kind of drive to buy and how to power it. thanks If you are having a power problem get a USB cable that has 2 USB 2.0 and a mini USB for Data. One USB is for Data and Power extra USB pigtail is just for extra power. F700 does not put out enough power for most portable hard drives that I have tried. Get an adapter that plugs into your car lighter or power plug that you can plug a USB into. It will solve your power issues. [attachment=0]USBCable1.jpg[/attachment] Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Ramon Posted April 23, 2009 Report Share Posted April 23, 2009 Thanks for the explanations. I am thinking of going with seagate free agent go hd. Their power usage seems really low max 2.0 watts which rounds to around 400-440 miliamps. I am gonna go for a 250 since I dont wanna risk any problems then their already are. Also I am gonna look for the usb y cables as they seem to be called and see how it goes. thanks Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Dixiedog Posted April 23, 2009 Report Share Posted April 23, 2009 Thanks for the explanations. I am thinking of going with seagate free agent go hd. Their power usage seems really low max 2.0 watts which rounds to around 400-440 miliamps. I am gonna go for a 250 since I dont wanna risk any problems then their already are. Also I am gonna look for the usb y cables as they seem to be called and see how it goes. thanks I have a Seagate Free Agent go HD 250GB. Still have to use the "y" cable to power up. You have to re-fomat the HD. And the F700 does not recognize partioning. I tried that to shrink the drives it saw and it only recognizes the first partition. I have about 80GB of music i'm try to get the F700 to read and it just doesn't seem to want to work. I have tried a number of things... file sizes less then 2GB, single files... nothing has worked yet. I do have a 16GB Verbatim Flash Drive that I've got working so I'm about ready to just get a few more of those. I have a 32GB Flash but have not had a chance to work with it yet. Power is not a problem though once you have the "Y" USB or with the Seagate the docking station works if both USB ends are used, works the same way the "y" cable does. If you figure out how to get the full capacity (or even half) of a HD to work I would like to hear how. Good Luck! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Ramon Posted April 23, 2009 Report Share Posted April 23, 2009 By any chance when u pluged u r seagate with just one cable did it make this beeping noise and the light rapidly flashed? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Dixiedog Posted April 24, 2009 Report Share Posted April 24, 2009 By any chance when u pluged u r seagate with just one cable did it make this beeping noise and the light rapidly flashed? Yes, It squeeled like a stuck pig! Do the "Y" thing... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Ramon Posted April 24, 2009 Report Share Posted April 24, 2009 LMAO yah it does squel like a stuck pig. I just put my order in for y cable from ebay. I live in toronto and non of the stores here had it. Some didnt even know what it was. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
bego Posted April 28, 2009 Report Share Posted April 28, 2009 I bought a 250GB portable Hard drive, formatted it with fat32 and a allocation size of 32kb but it didnt work the lights on it come on but it just makes a click type noise, i know its not screwed coz it works fine on the computer. Anyway i had a good think about and i now have atm a working 120GB WD 3.5" hard drive connected once again formatted with fat32 and allocation size of 32kb. The actual drive is 640GB capacaty but i have partitioned it to 120GB also its one of these house hold external hard drives but becuase the output voltage on the plug/adaptor is 12V DC i hard wired it to a 12V output in my car and it works great!!! Im next going to try and format it to 250GB and see if that works, i wont go any higher than this though as i know the F900BT is only compatible with up to 250GB. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
BorisM Posted April 28, 2009 Report Share Posted April 28, 2009 Im next going to try and format it to 250GB and see if that works, i wont go any higher than this though as i know the F900BT is only compatible with up to 250GB. 250GB would be a very strange number to set a limit at... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
bego Posted April 28, 2009 Report Share Posted April 28, 2009 Im next going to try and format it to 250GB and see if that works, i wont go any higher than this though as i know the F900BT is only compatible with up to 250GB. 250GB would be a very strange number to set a limit at... how come? i thought that was the max capacity that the f900bt supports correct me if im wrong Quote Link to post Share on other sites
pj134 Posted April 28, 2009 Report Share Posted April 28, 2009 I contacted pioneer customer support and their limit as they told me is 250 gigs. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
BorisM Posted April 28, 2009 Report Share Posted April 28, 2009 Im next going to try and format it to 250GB and see if that works, i wont go any higher than this though as i know the F900BT is only compatible with up to 250GB. 250GB would be a very strange number to set a limit at... how come? i thought that was the max capacity that the f900bt supports correct me if im wrong My 320 works, although I haven't tried filling it to capacity yet. In any case, 250 would be a stranbge number to pick, programmatically. Although 256 might be a real cutoff... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
bego Posted April 28, 2009 Report Share Posted April 28, 2009 ok no worries, any thoughts on how i can get it to automatically recognise the hard drive is there after switching it off? i have got it on a 32kb cluster/allocation size but sill wont automatically recognise it and i still have to unplug and plug back in again on the usb Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Ramon Posted April 29, 2009 Report Share Posted April 29, 2009 Hi bego I was just wondering what software you use to format. I used fat32format and fat32formatter. Not too sure if they set 32 kb clust sizes. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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