Experimenting with the USB

D

DsFX

Member
Has anyone experimented with the USB port in the center console to see what types of media it will read? So far I've only been able to use the thumbdrives. I've worked with the 2.5" passport hard drives but haven't been able to read them. However, the hard drives do spin and detect as in any normal detection. Is there possibly a size limitation?
 
Rolastro said:
You probably need to reformat the hard drive - I think it needs to be FAT32
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Thanks for the reply. You are right, I forgot to mention that it was already formatted FAT32, so far FAT32 is the only thing that works with thumbdrives that I have tried. The hard drive that I tried was formatted FAT32 with a few mp3s on it and it failed to recognize any USB media. I still think it might be a size limitation issue, unfortunately I don't have any flash drives that are larger than 4gb laying around.
 
Hard drive

I tried a hard drive also. It is formatted FAT32 but the car does not detect the media. Or maybe I didnt leave it connected long enough. The drive I used is a little awkward though. its a card reader enclosure that I put my old 80 laptop drive into. When I connect it to my laptop it detects all of the card readers on it as extra drives so that may be throwing the car off.

The car also doesnt read my Droid via usb either but I think the 16gb card inside is probably NTSF.

I read through the manual and the only thing it mentions is FAT32 formatting and that multiple partitions probably wont work.
 
yeah, there are external drive enclosures that have a seperate power input, 5v for 2.5's & 12v for 3.5's. I'd try that with external power to the drive & also try it with the media at the root of the drive & see if it see's it then... I would think it should really...
 
rijc99 said:
It's possible the USB port does not provide enough power to allow a hard drive to spin up properly.
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Exactly , I think the USB port in the car is comparable to a USB port on a non powered USB hub, it does not have anough juice to power things like hdd's. I finally reformatted my 32GB Flash USB drive into FAT32 and it works fine , it did not work before for some reason even though it was FAT32.
 
Good to hear. Sometimes thumb drives come with files that a car may not know what to do with. A format will get rid of those files.

I wish my car had an USB. I'm switching over to WP7 and was thinking of getting a Zune to replace my old nano. May have to forego the iPod connector and just go Bluetooth.
 
so i try this myself and it work with a 2gb flash drive.
I also tried 2gb microsd plug into a usb adapter flash drive, work as well. These two method work fine with fat32 and music files.

And I tried with usb cable to my phone to see if i could mount it as storage, not enough power i guess to get it up.
 
rijc99 said:
I wish my car had an USB. I'm switching over to WP7 and was thinking of getting a Zune to replace my old nano. May have to forego the iPod connector and just go Bluetooth.
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Did you get a Zune to work? I have one, too, and just got an FX37, but the Zune isn't playing.
 
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