So, i went to my local car stereo shop today to check out the AVIC-D3. I brought along with me a USB 2.0 hard drive enclosure with a 250GB SATA drive inside already formatted with FAT32 with some music and movies on it. My thinking on this was... How cool would it be if I could hook this to the D3 unit with my ripped DVD's and mp3's? No dice. The D3 would recognize my thumb drive instantly but just give power to the external enclosure. (The external drive works off USB power, no AC adapter)

I find it hard to believe that a device with all this tech can't simply read an external USB drive. Please tell me I'm missing something. In the searches I've done on this site, it seems that the D3 should be able to read what's on an external hard drive with the USB module. The store was using a CD-UB100 adapter. Does this sound right?

The answer I got at the shop was "Buy an ipod". The ipod is a waste of money for me. I got this external drive for $150 and it holds 250GB. I don't need the screen on it, hell I don't even need a mobile media player. I simply need a drive to hold everything I want to play in the car and a head unit with NAV to interface with it. Is technology still not there yet?

Looking forward to your comments.

Unfortunately, no. CES is just around the corner, so we may be able to say "yes" in a few more weeks. But right now, the software loaded into most (if not all) car USB interfaces won't support a file structure larger than what a thumb drive will hold. And movies are just plain out.

Kenwood had a "music Keg" afew years ago that was basicly a hard drive for your trunk and a dock for your computer. Didn't sell really well considering Ipods just hit the market. You know who won that war.

Come middle of January, there might be a different answer.

I was able to get a 120G external drive to work with the usb adapter, but even though the drive was preformatted with fat32, I had to reformat it before it would work. Unfortunately neither windows xp or vista allow you to format a drive that large in fat32, so I just had to google to find a free 3rd party app that worked. The interface still sucked, and according to the user manual of the usb adapter, there is a limit of 500 folders, which negates the benefits of a large drive for me anyway.

Oh, and this is for audio only. The usb adapter, and I believe even the p-bus itself, isn't capable of carrying video.

They have a 120 gig external drive that works pretty good with the D3. It's called an ipod.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Guess I'll be waiting for more diverse products. I look forward to January to see what's around the corner.