SmartMAC
Active Member
After a bit or playing around this weekend, I managed to get an external hdd to work on my new c class coupe.
2.5" western digital hdd. 250gb capacity connected on the car standard USB port with the audio 20 stereo.
Hdd must be formatted using Fat32 as the audio 20 doesn't recognise NTFS. I have used a DOS utility to do this as win xp cannot format a partition so big.
Once this was completed, I transferred all the music I have (68Gb)not the hdd. When I connected the hdd to the car first time, it took a few seconds to scan the drive but started to play from the begging inmediatly even though it was still scanning.
My music comes from iTunes where all the cover art work is present. For some reason, not all is present when it plays on the audio 20 but I am investigating this. I believe it has something to do with the way itunes writes the id3 tags on the mp3s. I will update the post when I got this to work.
I have used Velcro to secure the hdd inside the arm rest and it appears to be secure and work well. We went for a long drive today and there were no problems with music skipping or drive reading issues. Once secured, it doesn't take much space as the hdd is very thin and it's mounted vertically inside the arm rest (I'll post some pics as some point).
I am very happy with this solution as it solves the problem of having to keep changing the music on the USB pen. Now, I have it all available at a very reasonable cost and with room to put as much music as I will ever need. Another bonus is the fact that I now have a back up of my whole mp3 collection.
2.5" western digital hdd. 250gb capacity connected on the car standard USB port with the audio 20 stereo.
Hdd must be formatted using Fat32 as the audio 20 doesn't recognise NTFS. I have used a DOS utility to do this as win xp cannot format a partition so big.
Once this was completed, I transferred all the music I have (68Gb)not the hdd. When I connected the hdd to the car first time, it took a few seconds to scan the drive but started to play from the begging inmediatly even though it was still scanning.
My music comes from iTunes where all the cover art work is present. For some reason, not all is present when it plays on the audio 20 but I am investigating this. I believe it has something to do with the way itunes writes the id3 tags on the mp3s. I will update the post when I got this to work.
I have used Velcro to secure the hdd inside the arm rest and it appears to be secure and work well. We went for a long drive today and there were no problems with music skipping or drive reading issues. Once secured, it doesn't take much space as the hdd is very thin and it's mounted vertically inside the arm rest (I'll post some pics as some point).
I am very happy with this solution as it solves the problem of having to keep changing the music on the USB pen. Now, I have it all available at a very reasonable cost and with room to put as much music as I will ever need. Another bonus is the fact that I now have a back up of my whole mp3 collection.
