HDD support with technology pack

[balsaq]

Just wondering if anyone is successfully running HDDs greater than 500gb (preferably 2.5 inch) for their music files with the tech pack.

From what I've seen most are running max 500gb and wondering if that's some sort of limit or if 3.5 inch drives were used which required a greater power input from usb.

Cheers

 

[The Challinor]

Can't see anyone wanting to use a 3.5" drive really as will mean you have to use a external power supply.n
You running 2.5" 500GB drive now then? Meant to support upto 2TB

 

[balsaq]

Can't see anyone wanting to use a 3.5" drive really as will mean you have to use a external power supply.n
You running 2.5" 500GB drive now then? Meant to support upto 2TB

Nor me. I just wanted to know if anyone has been successful with a larger capacity HD, regardless of size.

Nah, car is at dealers, arranging pick up soon. Trying to figure if I just go for it and order a 1tb 2.5 drive and caddy and hope it works. I'll post up my results anyway for anyone else who wishes to know.

If it wasn't for my use of flacs (and stubborness against transcoding to mp3s) I'd be fine

I've got a 250 i can try, but since I know 500s work from previous threads, then that doesn't really answer the question.

 

[The Challinor]

Mine is due November so not much help there lol

 

[Foshiznik]

Look forward to hearing your results Balsaq. Mine isn't ready 'til september, so would be good to know whether it is worth a purchase.

 

[balsaq]

Just got car today. Had a quick play with some rather interesting results. I'll do some more "tests" to have a more comprehensive post, but as a teaser, it appears I have a 1tb drive working fine playing flacs.

Will post more info soon

 

[The Challinor]

Be interesting to see how a 2.5" performs with bad bumps etc although they are designed for "mobile" use

 

[monopole]

Be interesting to see how a 2.5" performs with bad bumps etc although they are designed for "mobile" use

i would suspect they would fair well, having a large cache giving no skips in the music and like you say, designed for "mobile" use so fairly resilient to g loads

 

[Vertigo1]

Never really considered using a hard drive - do you just connect via the AMI-USB cable? What kind of interface does it give you - do you just see the folder structure on the drive or can you browse by metadata, so artist, album, genre etc etc?

Might be an interesting option if you can use lossless formats like WAV or FLAC.

As for resilience, 250/500GB SSDs are coming down in price quite significantly now.

 

[The Challinor]

Presume so yer, just the same as SD card. Got loads of 2.5" drives lying around so may just chuck my music onto one and some videos, etc

 

[pat15312]

SSD would be your best bet, not that expensive anymore.

 

[balsaq]

Bah, don't be so soft. If hard drives were that weak people's laptops and old school ipods would be failing left right and centre (they live in cars as much as a dedicated drive would).

SSDs are great, I've got a few in some of my machines at home, but completely overkill for a few media files. It's great they're coming down in price, but I'd rather pay £40 for 1tb for my music than £350 for the same capacity ssd...

Never really considered using a hard drive - do you just connect via the AMI-USB cable? What kind of interface does it give you - do you just see the folder structure on the drive or can you browse by metadata, so artist, album, genre etc etc?

Yup, that's what I've done, all the interface is there, folder structure, album "swipe" view. As above, I'll try and get a more comprehensive post up soon with a few more tests (album art sizes, possible file number limits etc).

 

[cemerson]

I'll consider a hard drive when I fill my 64GB SD card and still need more!

 

[glospete]

I'll try and get a more comprehensive post up soon with a few more tests (album art sizes, possible file number limits etc).

That will be very interesting - thanks.

 

[veeeight]

Previous SSD discussion and experiences here:

http://www.audi-sport.net/vb/new-a3...end-brand-ssd-hard-drive-use-audi-system.html

 

[Vertigo1]

Yup, that's what I've done, all the interface is there, folder structure, album "swipe" view. As above, I'll try and get a more comprehensive post up soon with a few more tests (album art sizes, possible file number limits etc).

That'd be most appreciated!

 

[The Challinor]

Agreed a SSD would be over kill TBH

 

[Vertigo1]

Agreed a SSD would be over kill TBH

Does the MMI have to scan/index the contents of the drive though in order to allow searching by artist, genre, etc etc?

If so then I'd imagine scanning several hundred gigabytes of data would be significantly faster on an SSD.

Then again, the USB interface speed would be the limiting factor unless it's USB3 compatible (yeah right!)

 

[The Challinor]

Does the MMI have to scan/index the contents of the drive though in order to allow searching by artist, genre, etc etc?

If so then I'd imagine scanning several hundred gigabytes of data would be significantly faster on an SSD.

Then again, the USB interface speed would be the limiting factor unless it's USB3 compatible (yeah right!)

Yer, presume it's USB2

 

[Foshiznik]

So... Did the HDD work ok?!

 

[balsaq]

So... Did the HDD work ok?!

Sorry I haven't forgotten this thread, haven't had much time to play with the car much recently. This is what I've found so far though:

I can say that I've had no troubles with running a 1tb hard disk (this one). I chose this one as it had a relatively low power draw. It is snappy with the interface and I notice no skipping or issues of any kind (even on the most bumpy of roads).

I currently use this "caddy": (linky). This was purely to give a level of cushioning and grip, rather than crashing around and sliding in the usual plastic/metal caddies. It does get a little warm, as you'd expect, but nothing concerning.

Artwork wise, in the tech pack, I can confirm that 800x800 appears to be the limit, going above displays no artwork.

And the biggest disappointment I've found is that there appears to be a 10,000 file limit. I'm currently trying various ways of getting around this.

As mentioned above, flacs work natively with full tag support which I'm very happy about.

 

[Foshiznik]

Sorry I haven't forgotten this thread, haven't had much time to play with the car much recently. This is what I've found so far though:

I can say that I've had no troubles with running a 1tb hard disk (this one). I chose this one as it had a relatively low power draw. It is snappy with the interface and I notice no skipping or issues of any kind (even on the most bumpy of roads).

I currently use this "caddy": (linky). This was purely to give a level of cushioning and grip, rather than crashing around and sliding in the usual plastic/metal caddies. It does get a little warm, as you'd expect, but nothing concerning.

Artwork wise, in the tech pack, I can confirm that 800x800 appears to be the limit, going above displays no artwork.

And the biggest disappointment I've found is that there appears to be a 10,000 file limit. I'm currently trying various ways of getting around this.

As mentioned above, flacs work natively with full tag support which I'm very happy about.

Great work mate!

do you need to buy a USB to MMI/AMI cable to connect it?

 

[balsaq]

You should get it included with your phone compatible cable when you pick your car up. Dealer really shouldn't charge for these, I'm sure most just throw them in on pick up like mine did.

I got a pack with a lightning and usb adapter. I presume usb comes with all packs, but can't say for sure.

 

[marshalld]

Sorry I haven't forgotten this thread, haven't had much time to play with the car much recently. This is what I've found so far though:

....

And the biggest disappointment I've found is that there appears to be a 10,000 file limit. I'm currently trying various ways of getting around this.

It mentions this in the MMI manual (page 33) - "USB mass storage device and memory cards: max. 10000 files per medium"

The "per medium" suggests to me you could have 10000 files on the HDD and then another 10000 files on separate SD card(s).

Gets you to 30000 files - that's a lot of music!

 

[balsaq]

It mentions this in the MMI manual (page 33) - "USB mass storage device and memory cards: max. 10000 files per medium"

The "per medium" suggests to me you could have 10000 files on the HDD and then another 10000 files on separate SD card(s).

Gets you to 30000 files - that's a lot of music!

Blimey, a manual with worthwhile information! Maybe I should've given it a read. I'd have played around the same regardless anyway. Always worth checking to see how far you can push things. I'm still going to try and find various ways around the limit. Doubtful I'll be successful, but we'll see!

It may sound bonkers, but I have over 20k songs in my collection currently, hence why I'm a tad disappointed. ;-)

 

[cemerson]

Wonder how many I've got on mine. Not that many certainly but must be quite a lot... I've got 32GB of music (mixture of albums and radio shows) on my 64gb card at the moment, but have a lot more on my computer I could transfer across.

 

[Foshiznik]

Just got my car and am trying to get my external HDD to work with no luck so far. I have it formatted as NFCS. Should it be FATS32?

Sorry for the noob question!

 

[cuke2u]

That'll work...

 

[The Challinor]

Sorry I haven't forgotten this thread, haven't had much time to play with the car much recently. This is what I've found so far though:

I can say that I've had no troubles with running a 1tb hard disk (this one). I chose this one as it had a relatively low power draw. It is snappy with the interface and I notice no skipping or issues of any kind (even on the most bumpy of roads).

I currently use this "caddy": (linky). This was purely to give a level of cushioning and grip, rather than crashing around and sliding in the usual plastic/metal caddies. It does get a little warm, as you'd expect, but nothing concerning.

Artwork wise, in the tech pack, I can confirm that 800x800 appears to be the limit, going above displays no artwork.

And the biggest disappointment I've found is that there appears to be a 10,000 file limit. I'm currently trying various ways of getting around this.

As mentioned above, flacs work natively with full tag support which I'm very happy about.

That's a good price for USB3 !

 

[The Challinor]

Just got my car and am trying to get my external HDD to work with no luck so far. I have it formatted as NFCS. Should it be FATS32?

Sorry for the noob question!

Should be NTFS I imagine as FAT32 only supports files up to 4GB in size, could also be exFat I guess.

 

[balsaq]

Should be NTFS I imagine as FAT32 only supports drives up to 32GB in size, could also be exFat I guess.

I didn't try NTFS, I read before that it didn't work. exFat threw up an unreadable message when trying to access the drive in the car. FAT32 works perfectly and is what I've been using.

You can format drives larger than 32gb using fat32 fine. The only issue you could come across is a 4gb single file limit if you're looking at large video files I guess

A handy program to use in a latter operating system (since many won't let you format other than exfat and ntfs) is this: Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd

 

[natebrice]

It mentions this in the MMI manual (page 33) - "USB mass storage device and memory cards: max. 10000 files per medium"

The "per medium" suggests to me you could have 10000 files on the HDD and then another 10000 files on separate SD card(s).

Gets you to 30000 files - that's a lot of music!

Old thread, but found something out that is incredibly useful in this regard! If you partition your USB hard drive (or USB SSD) in to four FAT32 partitions, it shows as 4x separate USB drives when selecting a Source! So you can then have 40,000 files on a single drive. Tried and tested over the past 3 weeks and works perfectly. If you then add your 2x SD Cards and factor in the Jukebox, you can have a total of 63,000 files. And then you could put a few on a DVDR too if you want to completely max it out

Also ensure you format each partition in FAT32. The current MMI firmware will read NTFS and exFAT but you'll find that you'll lose your position in your song/mix when you return to your car! So don't be fooled.

To create 4x partitions in Windows, go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management and then Disk Management. You can create your partitions from there but you'll need to delete your existing one first - make sure you back-up all your music.

Baffling that the MMI can detect 4x partitions on a single USB but can't read over 10,000 files on a partition! But, there we go, have fun

 

[glospete]

Great information - can the Mods put this onto the FAQ section Post #29 I think is the best place?

 

[RedTurtle]

Also ensure you format each partition in FAT32. The current MMI firmware will read NTFS and exFAT but you'll find that you'll lose your position in your song/mix when you return to your car! So don't be fooled.

Thats really useful information, thank you.