USB Audio Tip

[Zac]

Hey guys something i recently worked out and thought i would share with you, If you love listening to your tunes whilst driving, chances are that you do then like me you want to take advantage of the USB in the glove box, i have quite a collection of music i listen to and thought i would be smart and purchase a 500GB harddrive, massive overkill but none the less i was slightly disappointed to find it would not read my audio files. at first i thought it was because of the USB 3.0 connection on the hard drive and made it incompatible with the cars usb. However when i spoke to my mate who studies computer programming and all the jazz at uni he informed me that i probably need to format the harddrive to FAT32 as most harddrives are NTIS theese days it honestly means nothing to me but he said download a FAT32 converter and it should be pretty simple.

So basically if you have a harddrive or usb that doesnt work in your car plug it into your pc use a converter convert it from whatever to FAT32 add your audio and go crusing hope this helps anyone that might be wondering out

 

[Liom the Chef]

You don't need a third party converter just format the drive in windows. I must also warn against using a mechanical portable hard drive in a car that will go over a lot of bumps, have killed hard drives doing that

 

[cesario]

hey mate,
when it comes to stuff like car USB or even my xbox, those devices wont read NTFS file formats due to the added security on the devices, now altho FAT32 is an old format, its still used pretty commonly with todays devices,

now if your running windows (just about any version will do) you can re-format the drive in question from NTFS to FAT32 without downloading shady 3rd party software as windows has all the built in tool required.

easiest way is to open "my computer", right click on the selected drive and select "Format" and then from there you can choose what file format you want selected (FAT, FAT32, NTFS...)
its a nice quick and easy way to convert it to a more 'retro' format to be more compatible with other devices, just be warned that in a FAT32 format, it will require to wipe the drive to format it and the max single file size for FAT32 partitions is 2GB i believe (i could be wrong, could be 4GB). so if you put a movie on there that is 3GB, it wont work

sounds like you have it all sorted tho,
Gj

 

[lancer1993]

Good tip, but I just use my old 80GB iPod classic, enough music on it to travel around the whole country and not repeat the same song.

Apart from that I have a 32GB micro USB flash drive, sticks out just a few mm so you don't knock it. Loads of music and less chance of it being stolen or getting damaged with bumps on the road.

I guess you only need a 3rd party FAT32 converter for an external HDD if you can't copy the music off the HDD to reformat it. But it's always advisable to make a copy just in case the converting software screws things up.

 

[Ryan]

You don't need a third party converter just format the drive in windows. I must also warn against using a mechanical portable hard drive in a car that will go over a lot of bumps, have killed hard drives doing that

I have a feeling that atleast some versions of Windows have a limitation in the size of the FAT32 device/partitions they can format and that for a large HDD you did need a third party program... SSDs are also around $100 for 120GB and an external case for less than $20 on eBay is always an option if you frequently travel on rough roads and want something better than a USB stick.

hey mate,
the max single file size for FAT32 partitions is 2GB i believe (i could be wrong, could be 4GB). so if you put a movie on there that is 3GB, it wont work

:thumbup: 4GB is the limit.