Hard Drive Install

**banded** · 05-15-2008, 05:18 PM

I have a completely stock 95 Jeep Grand Cherokee. I also have a 500gb portable hard drive (mybook) that has a USB output that is competely full of music.

Is there any way (short of running it through a laptop) that I can get a stereo to read and let me navigate through the files? I know Sony makes a head unit with a USB plug in the front, but I don't know if it's just for Ipod type players or what.

Any help would be appreciated.

**2k1Toaster** · 05-15-2008, 05:56 PM

Short answer: no

You need something to navigate the disk and decompress the files. Those HUs you see usually have a limit of 256Mb or 512Mb maximum. Plug a 8Gb flash drive and only the first 512Mb of sectors will ever be read if any at all.

Easy way, get a laptop or more commonly referred to as a CarPC here on these CarPC forums!

THey do make harddrive enclosures with built in decoders like this: http://www.egoodz.com/product.asp?pf_id=3500Tvisto

Actually I think that one above has a HD with it too. But anyways, you can get one of those and output it that way. To navigate you will need a screen and the IR remote. Not very handy when driving. And expensive.

You can get an Intel Little Valley ($70) a used M2-ATX ($50) and a gig of ram ($30) for less than that, and you have yourself a CarPC. Either way you need a screen so $200 there. And with the CarPC you get everything, with the HD Media player, you get... music and divx maybe?!

Bottom line, get a CarPC!!!

Or buy an expensive enclosure and run the audio/video into a HU that supports audio/video input.