Solid State Hard Drive for media playback.

My update

I was looking little wile ago at the head units and some now do have NTFS format capabilities. But seams as if they are most of the hi-line units.
My Pioneer i said i have uses Fat 32 format. Fat 32 is still fine.

I also looked on Amazon and found a Western Digital Passport Go SSD 500G for $53.98. A WD passport Go is a rugged SSD drive for drops and vibration and so on It is a Amazon Warehouse used unit. Meaning it is new hard drive but package may have been somewhat damaged or something like that. Still a new SSD for $53.98 dam cheep if you ask me.


I was going to buy it but I already have two WD drives here i use in the truck.And one more not even opened yet brand new. I really don't need one more. And my regular WD drive i said i have has been great no skipping or shut downs wile driving in my Toyota Tacoma Xcab truck even.
 
Well great question. I have this somewhat exact system in my vehicle now. I played around with this few years back and this is what i found that works for me. I use a portable hard drive Western Digital 1TB, not a SSD drive but a standard small WD portable hard drive. I had installed last year a
Pioneer FH-S701BS it will play FLAC files (high def files) and Wave files and MP3 and so on. it was under $150 Crutchfield. My old HU was a Clarion and it too ran the WD Hard Drive but only played MP3. Being that i believe most HU will run a USB port but from what i have found out is most will play only Fat 32 format. As you know Fat 32 is an older format but most HU USB ports except only Fat 32. That is what most
flash drive or memory stick have on them is a Fat 32 format. So if you know this, past many years Windows come with NTSB format and most all of the new Hard Drives are pre-formated in NTSB from factory. So i did the test few yeas back on my old Clarion HU and installed some music in mp3 and hard drive was in the original NTSB format and it will not play or recognize it. Also tried it in my new Pioneer HU, NO GO also. In the specs of the HU it will say what format the USB port will recognize. Most say Fat 32 being that almost all flash drive come in Fat 32. So what i did was find a free or cheep software program that will reformat the HD into Fat 32 format. Like CNET.com, they have cheep or free basic programs you can download. So i did that and then installed the music in MP3 and it worked fine. So last year when i decided to go High Def car audio in my vehicle i looked for a HU that would play High Def FLAC files and Wave files. The Pioneer HU i have recognizes a lot of folders and files way over 1000 or so something like that. Look for my Pioneer HU model and see the specs on it. Crutchfield has all the specs. I have a High Def sound system in my vehicle now. High Def certified Kenwood amps and Pioneer component speakers and so on.

I have over 6000 songs(over 250 G on drive) do to i have professional music editing software WavLab on my home computer and edit and save all kinds of music. So on my WD hard Drive 1TB i have the individual folders listed, like Rock, Pop, Rap, Soft Rock, Techno, Dance, and so on. And in each of the folders i have sub-folders. Example in Rock folder i have say Judas Priest or AC/DC and then in that sub-folder i have all the music in Wave format. In the same main folder like Rock i have the single songs that may not have enough songs to be put in there own sub-folder. Same in say Pop folder i have sub-folder Michael Jackson with all his songs in there. I have not had time to download any FLAC High Def music yet do to, I have a Job and am busy and get tired. But the Pioneer HU will play the high def FLAC files. So with my Pioneer HU i can scan the main music folders and then push the buttom and it will stop on that main folder like rock folder and then i can scan the sub-folders or the single songs by turning the main knob in HU.

Ok well i can not forget to tell you about some of the special information i have come across when i have been playing around with this Hard drive thing. it may get more complicated. But this is extra on what i found out when experimenting with this. Earlier this year i purchased a brand new Western Digital portable hard drive to re-format to Fat 32 and load with music and so on. The WD portable drives have become way affordable 1TB for $60 or $70 anyway. I did the exact thing i did with my older WD drive and it did not work. Looking into why it did not work and trying new things i looked at the hard drive partitions that were on there. I found out that these new drives have a front partition that has some small info on there. This partition is before the main drives partition that holds all the info or music or what ever you have. All hard drives have this. One of my older drives had the same front partition and i have to go into my disc management on my windows computer and do a expand drive partition and add the front partition to the main partition to make only one main partition. I would guess that when you plug the hard drive into the car stereo HU USB port it will automatically look for the Fat 32 ye,s then any music to play. Well if you have this front part partition on the drive and it has some hard drive info or something with computer info, the HU USB port will see or try to read this part of the drive first and it will see that it has no info it can read and just give an error on HU. Dose this makes sense to all.
So with this older WD drive i had i did the expand the partition and incorporated the front partition to the main partition to make for only one main partition. Then i did the re-format to Fat 32 and loaded some music and it worked. But with my new WD drive i purchased this year i could not get it to work. I think it has some embedded software from WD that runs the drive in front or something on there. So after making one main partition and
re-format to Fat 32 it still don't work and i think it is because the HU USB port tries to read the first part of drive and it sees the embedded WD info and gives an error.

Software i used was, MiniAideFat32Formatte, believe I got if off CNET.com. If was a basic free program.

Now when i looked at the USB stick or flash drive when i was doing my investigations i noticed that flash drives are basic and don't have all this partition stuff and are already in a Fat 32 format. Flash drives have like a one partition the whole stick basically This is how i found out to try to incorporate the front partition into one main partition so the HU USB port will read the main music Fat 32 part first and recognize then play.

For now my system or Pioneer HU plays fine with my Western Digital portable drive in Fat 32 format. No lag times and it changes fast to new songs and so on. So the original poster and others here have said that new car stereo HU are now recognizing NTSB format?? I have not seen this but i will have to look into it, if so that would be much better then Fat 32. If you know or maybe don't know, In fat 32 format it does not alphabetize the songs. As i install more music on my drive it just puts the song in the last place in the list. So i have to go to the end of the file or sub-file to find the song. In NTSB that been now for many years it will alphabetize the files for you and i hope this will be so in new HU units.

This all i just posted sounds like a lot of work but really is wasn't. I just played around with it few years back little by little and got to where i am today. I was just tired of the small flash drives and only 32 g drives. I wanted to have all my music and be able to listen to what ever i felt like at that time.
Now that i have all this info on how to do it, it don't take long to re-format and expand drive and so on.

I have not tried a SSD Drive yet. They still a little pricey for me.

Sorry for the long post reply but hope this helps

Did i just see my error in my post. NTSB format Nation Transportation Safety Board. What a dummy i am. Meant to say NTFS format
 
I just started a flac library on a 1tb hd with ntfs format and my pioneer AVH-2330NEX had no problem. It shouldn't be a problem with a ssd
Hi Ripkon, That is great that your starting a FLAC library. If it sounds good to you and your happy so be it. We seam to have to many haters on here that just want to poke fun and yell and cry and say there system is better then yours. Don't listen to them. But there are many others on here that do care and want the honestly help others and give there experiences and knowledge. learn what you can and educate yourself on car audio. I too have a Pioneer HU that has my hard drive plugged in 1 tb . I to have to start building my FLAC files. I have right now high quality WAVE files that do sound nice with the High Def sound system. I work a lot and am tired so i just have not gotten to downloading any High Def songs. If it sounds good to you and your happy so be it. Thanks :)
 
You're so extra with all of this. You may simply use USB or flash drive.


Speaking of extra....... The thread is extra old... Nice 3 year old bump.

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"laurameida said:
You're so extra with all of this. You may simply use USB or flash drive."





You're so extra with all of this. You may simply use USB or flash drive. It will definitelly be cheaper and safer. You never know what can happen. With all of these manipulations you can use a lot. Once, I've been simply transfering data and lost all of the files from my computer. Thank God SALVAGEDATA exist and they literally saved me. The moral of the story is that you need to be careful. ALWAYS.


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