USB Head Unit with external drive?

Would the eclipse head unit with the usb be able to read from a external Hard drive like a 80gig. Im a computer tech by choice. I know computer systems really well. Have no clue why I picked it up so easy. Just happend. But What I'm wanting to do is build a bracket in my cars glove box and mount the External hard drive enclosure I made for my old 80gig Sata HD, I want to then use USB 2.0 and a nice headunit and have it read from the hard drive all the folders etc so I can navigate with the headunit as you would with an ipod if you were listening to it by artist etc.

I am interested to hear what an Eclipse expert has to say about this.  Judging from the on-line owners manual, the new USB-enabled heads are designed to work with USB memory sticks.  Can they access and control a hard drive?

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I was looking into this about 3 months ago and the answer was no. The problem was that the head units don't feed enough power out of the usb ports. At the time there was only 1 harddrive that was capable of running off the low output usb and it was like 30g and only "sometimes" worked. If anything has changed on the subject I would love to know also .

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~Steve
1973 Plymouth Duster

DYohn: Yes, conditionally.

Many "USB powered" drives simply need higher inrush current to get the platters spinning. Most motherboards have caps in place for JUST this reason. USB must comply with "USB protocols" (whether in a car or in a computer) in order to be CALLED a USB port, meaning (among other things) that they MUST be able to supply 500mA constant. I'd bet that if you take those drives into the house, those drives would not spin up correctly either. (They'd probably just sit there and click...) It's what I have noticed. Most external drives are ALSO provided a power port; and a 5V battery pack, cobbled together from parts from a dead PC with a battery box will power them perfectly - at least to get them spinning.

The primary reason an external drive WILL NOT work on an Eclipse head (or any of them, really) is because Windows can only format partitions up to 32GB in FAT32, which is the only partition that nearly EVERY head I have ever seen can "see". A free, small utility, called Swiss Knife can re-format larger partitions to FAT32 from NTFS (the native 2K, XP, and Vista file system), but ONLY in 2K and XP. It is not compatible with Vista. (But really... what IS compatible with Vista? If you are running Vista, you should SERIOUSLY consider upgrading... to XP! LOL)

I have noticed with this utility however, MANY TIMES when disconnecting from the PC, and especially if you do not do it without using the system try icon to do it correctly, and mostly on drives over 80G, the FAT can become corrupted, causing you to lose everything on the drive, meaning you have to start all over again! I mention this so that you don't rip your files DIRECTLY to your external drive, or move all your files to it (rather than copying them).

Hope this helps!

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It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

Interesting.  Providing separate power to a drive shouldn't be that difficult.  I wonder if the HU could control a 30 gig FAT32 formatted partition?

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Shouldn't be any issue... I plugged 16GB, FAT32 formatted thumb drives in, and no issues there. (I was even able to plug 40G FAT32 formatted hard drives into the Alpine x-001, and it saw and played MP3s. It puked on lossless files, though. I expect the Eclipse would be identical, as long as the drive was properly powered....) As long as the correct file structure is followed, the deck won't know whether it's a thumb drive or a hard drive. The format and file structures are the important issues. Capacity MIGHT be limited to 32bits, which is 132GB, so your practical drive capacity limit would be a 120GB drive.

Agreed on the powering of the drive. 5V @ 500mA can be done with a 69 cent, 3-terminal voltage regulator, and it wouldn't even need a circuit board, or really even a heat sink. Hell... for that matter, screw the VR to the panel behind the deck, and use the car as the heat sink, and get as much as 1500mA. FAR more than a 2.5 inch drive would ever need. All you need is the power cable poking out where your USB cable is. If you were to be REALLY handy with a soldering iron, you could isolate the deck's power output from the VR, and run the VR's power over the USB cable... One shot, one cable, and done!

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Reading back to the OP, I am not certain as to whether his 80G drive is 2½" or 3½". A 3½" SATA drive will require 12V, 5V, and/or 3.3V. It will depend on the drive manufacturer. In that case, obviously one VR won't be enough, and there may be some additional supporting circuitry necessary, as well.

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It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

"Soldering iron" is my middle name...

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