Finally got my z130 installed properly.

Everything works fine from usb stick, but I have a 2 TB external drive in a nice external case with its own power supply that I can plug right in to my 4runner with ac 120 socket.

Only problem is it says it "this usb device is not supported"

I have two partitions, each roughly 1 gig, one is NTFS, the other is FAT32.

I have searched and read the forums here and seen people succefully using an external 160 gb hard drive.

I guess my question is what is the Max Partition size can I use ? Can I go bigger than 160 ?? I am going to wipe the drive and only put one partition of fat32 og 160gb first to see if it gets recognized and work from there, but if anybody has larger then 160gb external hard drive being used please advise.

I wonder how big a partition it can address ?? I think maybe my NTFS partition is first, maybe thats why it can't recognize it?

Thanks.

I think you meant to say "each roughly 1 TB".

But I think you are right, the FAT32 parition must come 1st. I'm not even sure the OS supports multiple partitions. I know it cant access more than the 1st one.

Now, my personal opinion is that having huge storage capacity isn't that great with this user interface and OS. You're still stuck with the limit of 300 folders, 2500 files, and 2GB max file size (for avi,mpg4,wmv). Divx on USB is not supported. Plus the awkward user interface makes finding any particular file (mp3 or vid), when you've got thousands, a huge pain and dangerous to do while driving. You can only use the filename to locate the file and there's no way to search the directory tree. Even with a well organized folder tree, this is a problem.

I gave up long ago any plans on taking my whole personal audio and video collection (about 500GB) with me in the car. I just load a few thousand mp3s and a handful of vids on my 64GB iPod Touch. I haven't felt deprived in the least. VR makes selecting albums or artists very easy and safe while driving. Even without VR, the ipod user interface makes it much easier to locate any particular media file.

Yeah I meant 1 TB.... I am playing divx from usb stick fine.

I am going to wipe the drive and just create one logical fat32 partition and see how that goes. I will start at 160 GB and see if the HU can see it... if it does, then I will just keep increasing the partition size until I find the max supported, then hopefully fill it up.

Yeah I meant 1 TB.... I am playing divx from usb stick fine.

 

I am going to wipe the drive and just create one logical fat32 partition and see how that goes. I will start at 160 GB and see if the HU can see it... if it does, then I will just keep increasing the partition size until I find the max supported, then hopefully fill it up.

Sounds like a good plan. Post your results.

I got the No Divx info from the Z130 manual pg 213. "Divx files on the external storage device (USB, SD) cannot be played." Although it shows it works (with lots of caveats in the Notes) on CD/DVD. However I never tried it. Were the files.avi or .divx? It might be that the actual compression method was something else (like mpeg4). Or maybe they fixed this restriction and never updated the manual.

files where all .avi

Yeah the manual is contradicting, they have two charts, one says you can NOT play divx from usb/sd and only cd/dvd, then the chart below says the exact opposite, that you CAN only play divx from usb/sd and not from cd/dvd.

Anyhow avi extension for divx files on usb stick work fine, I also played a dvd no problem. Once I finish backing up me 200+gigs of ps3 games on my external hard drive, I will wipe it and test the one fat32 partition of 160 gb.

I will also try to play some divx .avi files from a data dvd disc, got a wack of them somewhere, but I am more interested in the usb drive. I tried to play an .mp4 video, it did not like that file format, so far divx works like a champ, and the video quality is amazing.

Update:

Ok so wiped the 2TB drive clean, made one 320 GB partition fat32, cluster size 32kb....

Copied over 20+ GB of mp3s and the z130bt recognized it No Problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so far I have most of my music on it with 300 GB to spare for tv shows and movies..... not bad.

Now I am going to try to double the partition size to 640 GB and see if it still recognizes it, but so far 320 GB partition is working perfect !

Cool. How many files do you think were in those 20GB of MP3s? A very rough guestimate (assuming average MP3 file is 5MB). 20,000,000,000 / 5,000,000 = 4000 files. That is more than the AVIC is supposed to be able to handle. I wonder what happens then? Maybe its internal directory overflows and you cant access the remaining files? Just wondering!

not sure off hand, but there is a crap load of files in the directory..... I hope the voice commands will work... play this artist, genre.... etc..... I will just put it on random shuffle anyways....

Still waiting to test the 640 gb partition, will report back soon.

640 gb recognized no problem..... time to load all my tv shows and movies!!

VR only works for BT phone commands, a few utility commands, and when the A/V source is iPod. So you won't be able to use it for USB file selection. I still don't think you will be able to access more that 2500 files on your HD, no matter how much space you have. I think this came up in another thread a while ago. That is, unless Pioneer (or Microsoft) fixed it.

not sure about song capacity, but as long as I can have every single top gear and family guy episode in the truck, that is mint.

I got a 100gb drive to recognize fine, but not a 1tb or 500gb (all 3 are 2.5" sata)

in each case it can be assumed that I covered the basics using fat32, no files over 2gb, etc.

I am formatting and copying content now to an older 2.5" 250gb pata drive.

not sure how you got a 640gb partition to recognize?

the only difference that immediately comes to mind for my failure and your success is that your hdd has a 120 power supply.  mine I am first trying without any external power, but if needed I can use a usb Y cable, where the power wire can connect to a cigarette/usb power source (at least until a more permanent solution presents itself)

if I can't get the 250gb drive working, I may as well go and get a 160gb ipod classic...

Get the iPod classic. You won't have any of the indexing problems of high capacity hard drives.

I still don't think you will be able to access more that 2500 files on your HD, no matter how much space you have. I think this came up in another thread a while ago. That is, unless Pioneer (or Microsoft) fixed it.

I posted my results of a test where I created 3000 files, and could only see the first 2500 through the head unit.  If someone is able to successfully view more files please describe the folder/file structure that you used.  Thanks.  John