Cartman_Sr

Yo. Just a simple question. Can you plug in your 3.5" external hard disk drive, formatted in FAT32 or NTFS and with 320 GB capacity, to one of those newer car stereos with the USB ports on the front? I would think it wouldn't work, and that those ports are only meant to handle usb thumb drives (flash memory). Because if they do work with any old computer hard drive, why don't more people do that? Thanks for any input.

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greatkiller

As far as I know those are specifically for thumb drives, but seeing how you could just have a formatted driver with Mp3s in HD with no folders I dont see why not. But Im sure the Stereos would freak out with so much space lol. I asked sort of the same question to one of the reps at a store but it was specifically an ipod question with connecting to it via USB. He told me it wouldnt work but didnt give me an answer why.

DarquePervert

Someone posted a while ago about a module for some make/model of headunit that could supposedly read any USB storage device. I have no idea as to the truth to that claim.

If you want to know for certain whether a specific headunit will read fromt e USB HDD, take the HDD to the car stereo shop and ask a sales rep to show you some models with USB connectivity, and connect your HDD to it to see if it reads. Then you'll know for certain.

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blkwrx

Its HU specific. I've heard of some that can only use up to 4gb Fat and others that can go to 132gb (or whatever the max is for Fat32 is). I have yet to see one that can read NTFS but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

LaxPlaya8513

a majority of the ones i've encountered can only recognize 4gb of storage

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