Portable Hard Drive Recommendations for HU

[rtbiscuit]

Just fitted the JVC EXAD 7'' KW-AVX810 double din headunit it has a USB cable fitted and the plan is to run a portable harddrive. its cheaper and has more storage than an ipod etc. problem is i know very little about them.

 

i don't want to buy something that won't work or do the job. so some help and recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

 

reading so far seems to be 2 types solid state and ones with moving disks; have no idea which is better/faster etc. guessing the solid state ones are like giat usb pen drives.

 

looking for around 100gb of storage, dont need any more than 250 gb.

needs to be a fast transfer rate,

but a low power consumption.

 

from what i've learnt so far some older style usb connectors don't supply enough power to run harddrives at their best and lead to slow transfer. not sure what my headunit is running so don't want to over push it if possible.

 

from the ones i've looked at so far they talk of pre loaded software that means they are compatible with xp/vista etc straight from the get go. will this make any difference with me plugging it into aheadunit or will i need to do some kind of formatting on it?

 

doesn't need to be major brand as i don't want to spend a fortune.

 

 

what are other running?

cheers in advance

 

reading so far seems to have a variety of rpm speeds for the hard drive.

[Dblock]

Solid state drives SSD's are generally faster but more expensive. Most usb drives need power as well as just usb.

 

If your going for an external hard drive I would say get anyone. An old 5400rpm would be fast enough for your needs. ideally 7200rpm is better as it has better search times.

 

You could get a huge usb pen drive if they exist and you wouldnt need external power.

 

Lastly you could get a caddy or enclosure which takes and ide/sata hdd and turns it into a usb one. If your getting one of those go for a samsung spinpoint f3 but get the 1tb one. Most good hdd start at 500gb.

 

If your going for a sata SSD make sure it has TRIM support. You best bet is the first 2 options IMO.

 

Formatting wise you can do it yourself at home takes 2 mins is super easy. I would say partion it as FAT32.

[Dblock]

also SSD's or pendrives have slower write speeds compared to hdd but have faster read speeds. So it will take longer to put music on there but its faster to play it. Also SSD or pendrives as they have no mechanical parts are better suited to a car IMO bumps and shocks wont effect them and they wont skip.

[Dblock]

sorry 3 posts in a row, why not just use a MP3 player. Most will have the size you need, low power consumption, fast data rate usb2 and you will be able to take it out of the car and use it when you go on holiday etc etc.

[ikarus]

I ran a large memory stick, 16Gb iirc, the head unit took an age to read it each time it turned on. Now i run a selection of 2Gb sticks with a different genre on each, which works much better.

[yokomo]

youve got a jvc so some good news and bad.

bad news is they takes quite a while to read the drive no what what size how much is on it etc

good news is they support pretty much any drive as long as its formatted in FAT32 as it will power any laptop drive unlike some units that only take low power drives

so your choice is pretty big , you could use usb sticks theyr cheap but wont take all your tunes in one go whihc can be good as it means you wont ahve a huuge list like i do OR

get a laptop hard drive (must be less than 320gb i think) and have everything in one place oooorr if you can get by on say 80-100gb get an old ipod and take the 1.8inch dirve out of that and use an ebay case for a fiver which is what i used to have before the drive died

[rtbiscuit]

Thanks guys, all good options. Will look into it today.

[nrenz123]

search for usb hard drive on ebay there are lots of items available!