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MP3's on External Hard Drive in Car?

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Gary_Busey   08-15-2006 at 05:39:06 PM

I have an LG 120GB external hard drive. I want to know is there any way to play the MP3's on it in my car. Are there any adapters, cd players, anything that will allow me to do it short of putting a computer in my car?

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chunkymonster   08-16-2006 at 04:34:31 AM
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There are no off the shelf products to do what you want. Not that I've ever heard of or seen. Even if your hard drive was a USB device, the appliance and your car's head unit would still need to be compatible with the file system, let alone read the fiels as mp3's and play them.

Why not just get a DVD and mp3 compatible head unit for your car? I took out the factory radio in my Jetta and upgraded to an Alpine DVA-9860 along with a 6 disk changer in the back...7 disks @ 4.7GB each of door thumping mp3's...

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DiscoDuck   08-16-2006 at 04:14:16 PM
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I saw some car stereos recently at a retail shop that had a front usb port, it might work.

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chunkymonster   08-16-2006 at 05:21:30 PM
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Your question intrigued me and I did some looking around...while I still don't know of any devices that allow for an external hard drive to be hooked up, however there are car stereo head units with built in hard drives specifically to store mp3's, like the Pioneer DEH-P90HDD or the Sony MEX-1HD...availability seems limited...at this point in time, this is prolly the closest you're gonna get to what you want...

Good luck!

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deadeye2021   08-29-2007 at 07:18:13 AM
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I did it successfully. Just tonight in fact. What I done was take a normal 3.5" Hard drive in a external case. My car's stereo has a USB connector on it. But the only way you can get it to work is you have to format the hard drive to FAT32 file system. Its quick and painless and you can do it though windows or MAC. Leaving the drive in the external case makes life easier since you can just hot-swap from your computer to your car. Once formatted to FAT32, put whatever songs you want on it, have a 100 watt DC/AC inverter in your car, plug in, plug USB in, turn it on, and it should read the disk.

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helium65   03-01-2009 at 12:15:53 AM
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How do you format to FAT32?

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motman1531991   07-24-2009 at 02:54:33 PM
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First of all u need to make a 32gb partiotion on your HDD, u don't need any special software (if ur using XPpro like me) u can just go into start control panel then adminstrator tools.Click on computer management then go to disk managment. right click on the volume if there is no unalocated space and click on shrink volume then make the size of partition u want for the unalocated right click on unalocated space click new simple volume follow on screen instructions then its finished, hope this is some help if not let me know set up remote assistance and i will show u through that.

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InTheRightDirection   11-09-2009 at 06:54:51 AM
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This should work, as long as drive is fat32. I have plugged USB Sticks in car stereo just fine. The only thing that I was ever worried about with USB HDD is they have moving parts inside, and your bound to hit bumps etc which could make the internal disks clash and wreck the drive. Solid State Drive takes care of that. That is to expensive right now. I am thinking of using one of those western digital passport USB drives so its not huge loss if it gets wrecked.

How are you planning to power it?


Message edited by InTheRightDirection on 11-09-2009 at 06:56:38 AM
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Anonymous   11-12-2009 at 08:05:32 AM
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Hey, I recently been to a car audio shop and the installer had a 250 GB external drive and plug it into a JVC usb port and it played all the songs read the usb fine.

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BitiK   11-27-2009 at 09:37:56 PM
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I use a 120GB ext Hard Drive in my car connected to a Kenwood Headunit. I have used it for over a year and it runs fine. The only problem is when its cold like now, it doesnt wake up until its reached operating temperature. Has anyone got a solution? Its frustrating driving half the journey to work in the morning with no music.

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