icknicknot Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 parts list: 1. usb to cigarette lighter charger adapter 2. cigarette lighter well plug 3. 2.5" external laptop hard drive (must be powered via a usb y-cable and be formatted with the fat32 file system.) 4. wire and terminals. notes: The problem with doing this has always been that the avic's don't supply enough power via the usb to spin up an external hard drive. I over came this problem using a $5 usb charging adapter and a 2.5" external usb hard drive with a y-cable. The head on the usb y-cable with the long wire is for data and the one with the short wire is for drawing power for the drive. The hard drive will have to be unpluged and pluged back in each time you start the car and after the unit has booted. As such, I would mount it some place easy to reach. I mounted mine next to the center console. The hard drive MUST be formatted fat32. Since, the fat32 file system can only recognize up to 127gb i wouldn't waste money on too big of a drive. I bought an 80gb hdd and ended up partitioning it down to 32gb as it was recognized by the avic much faster. my system: f700bt pioneer avic hd radio tuner 80gb 2.5" ext hdd 8gb sd card 4 channel alpine v12 amp 2 6x9" 200 watt rockford fosgate fanatics 2 280 watt pioneer 6.5" Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Tillude Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 fat 32 can be bigger than 127 gb,, in my experience the boot up time of the harddisk deponds more on the file structure ( not to much maps in root ). Also have you overcome the unplug problem ? if noet i've got the solution for you in one of my topics Quote Link to post Share on other sites
icknicknot Posted July 13, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 oh cool! i wondered if that was possible to do with a relay. viewtopic.php?f=34&t=24960&p=171125#p171125 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Ineverfollow Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 I have a 2.5 250gb external. I also have a full size external that runs off of a power inverter. Same music files the 2.5 never wants to work right the full size loads faster and works 100% of the time. Also on the 2.5 sometimes it only loads the first song in every folder anyone else love to hate there d900? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
queensnewbie Posted November 13, 2009 Report Share Posted November 13, 2009 so far no issues with my f700bt. I got a WD passport 250GB off of craigslist, quick formatted it to FAT32, loaded a bunch of music and movies on it. Purchased a DC to USB adapter from Harbor Freight for $5 and a mini-usb to USB Y cable from ebay for $3. The f700bt took a good 3 minutes to scan the harddrive, at the beginning I didn't think the unit was recognizing it. After it scanned It displayed everything as if I had my 8GB usb thumb drive hooked up. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
queensnewbie Posted December 15, 2009 Report Share Posted December 15, 2009 Well I think I figured out how to load all my videos on an external with minimal wait time and no freezes. All the videos should were re-encoded to 640x480, 25fps, 400 bitrate, stereo 64 bit sound. The audio and video sync nicely and playback is pretty sharp, better than when I played videos from a usb pen drive without any re-encoding. The trick (or annoyance) to getting the minimal wait time and without freezes between skipping through files is to just load all of them in a single folder. I was getting freezes everytime I tried to switch folders within my video files, but once I copied all of them to 1 folder, it hasn't freezed at all. Whatever way you want to name your files to make it easier to scroll through would be a good idea if you have tons of videos loaded. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
m5james Posted May 23, 2010 Report Share Posted May 23, 2010 Does this work on an F90BT? I'd love to be able to leave an external HDD in the glovebox, powered by a switched ignition source to avoid having to unplug/replug everytime. Is anyone willing to post ebay and Harbor Freight links to see exactly what someone would need to buy to do this? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
rgarjr Posted May 23, 2010 Report Share Posted May 23, 2010 All u really need is a 5V cig lighter adapter and a mini USB to USB Y- cable. I don't know what the cig lighter adapter does to the 2 data lines though. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
m5james Posted May 31, 2010 Report Share Posted May 31, 2010 So one person said 250GB, while another said don't go over 80GB since FAT32 doesn't read over 127. Also, what seems to work best formatting wise...mutliple partitions of 32GB, just proper file sizing, etc to make it work efficiently. I'm surprised this thread hasn't flourished into a full on writeup of what works best, links of exactly what to buy, etc...not everyone has an iPod, and having 250GB of storage would be awesome!! Anyone wanna revise the parts list, and have we figured out how to avoid the unplug/plug requirement other than finding a switched 12v source? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
rgarjr Posted May 31, 2010 Report Share Posted May 31, 2010 FAT32 can go up to 8 TeraBytes. Anyhow here's something I drew up that might work. I'm not certain but I think you might need to disconnect the 2 data lines off inside of the cig lighter adapter. Also I think you might need to isolate the 5V and ground coming from the AVIC and let the adapter supply the 5V only to the hard drive. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
mia305 Posted June 8, 2010 Report Share Posted June 8, 2010 I have a 160GB 2.5" HDD installed as per the previous diagram with a Y cable hooked up to the USB of the AVIC and the other end to power adapter to the cigarette socket yet the AVIC still doesnt seem to recognize the drive. Is there something im doing wrong? The harddrive is formatted to FAT32 and has a single partition which totals up to be about 142 of space - only 40gb or so of which used. Should I reduce the partition size? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
rgarjr Posted June 8, 2010 Report Share Posted June 8, 2010 Did you try and isolate the 2 data lines from the charger? Also try and isolate the 5V and ground coming from the AVIC, so that only charger is supplying power to the hard drive. U can do it on the Y-adapter, just need to strip the cable jacket and cut off the wires u want. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
mia305 Posted June 10, 2010 Report Share Posted June 10, 2010 Did you try and isolate the 2 data lines from the charger? Also try and isolate the 5V and ground coming from the AVIC, so that only charger is supplying power to the hard drive. U can do it on the Y-adapter, just need to strip the cable jacket and cut off the wires u want. That was it actually - had to just switch the usb cables and it worked. I guess the one I was plugging into the AVIC was only suppose to be for power and not data. It recognized my music folder with 450+ sonds and my music video folder with 150+ videos - total harddrive space is 142gb with about 40gb being used. Now my only problem is that while playing videos the whole AVIC system seems to just drop in performance by 100%. The videos are choppy (even though the sound is fine) and the buttons take 5-10 seconds (or sometimes do not respond) to respond. I have my videos encoded in DVIX which plays perfectly (same videos same codec) when burned and played off a DVDR instead of the USB HDD. Ive also tried both a 5400rpm 2.5" HD and a 7200rpm 2.5" with the same performance issues. What could it be? Do I need to reencode it to a different codec (mpeg4?) or lower quality to get it to play properly using a usb hd? Thanks!!! P.S. Attached is a picture showing the specs of the videos I have encoded now. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
m5james Posted June 18, 2010 Report Share Posted June 18, 2010 Bump for a great subject! I've kind of got the same issue where when I play videos from my SD, the reaction time is obnoxiously slow, some movies lag while others are perfectly fine (I think it's a resolution thing then), and I've learned to NEVER use the steering wheel volume controls because one click and it'll go shooting to full blast or all the way down. I'm guessing the machine is reacting slowly for some reason, so it sees one click from the steering wheel, then it's slow reaction sees tons of clicks and it goes wild. The only way to stop it is to use the manual knob. I've got an extra external 2.5HDD case, I'm looking to buy a larger 1 or 2 TB external HDD for the movies hooked up to my laptop, so eventually swapping drives around with different computers will get an me extra drive that I'll throw in that extra case and it'll be dedicated to use with my F90BT. Honestly, I'm still surprised this thread hasn't turned into something obnoxious like 15+ pages of what people have been using. A 32GB iPod is fine and all, but a 250GB dedicated HD would be awesome to just leave stuffed in the glovebox until I needed to add more movies to it. My current external HDD has full size and Palm Treo movies on it, so making and formatting movies into the resolution that AVIC needs would be time consuming, but worth the headache once it's all done. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
m5james Posted June 20, 2010 Report Share Posted June 20, 2010 This is a repost from another thread, but it pertains to this subject of being able to use an external HDD to supply music/videos for those of us w/o iPods. Doesn't the iPod convert movies and and music into it's own specific format? This might sound too easy, but what about loading an external HDD with movies and music in the iPod specific format, folder arrangement, etc...maybe the deck would just default and think it's an iPod. All my computer, external HDD's, cables, etc are in Boise and I'm in Seattle, but I was playing with my little brothers iPod while helping him load music, and when it was plugged into his PC, it opened up just like a thumbdrive with folders for pics, music, etc. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it convert all of it's music to mp4a...what about movies? I was reading this thread, but it still sounds like there are hitches on how quickly it recognizes and plays the files. Maybe it's something as simple as a complete format change of file types and folder structure as to how they're placed onto the hard drive instead of compressing/converting based on resolution only. Am I still way off here then? This post was copied over from this thread. http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 0&e=221650 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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