Planet 9

I connected a USB pen drive with some musics in it and it worked pretty well (PCM3.0). Is it possible to connect a small hard drive (with 120 GB or even more...)? If it is, what kind of file system is supported? (FAT32, NFS, ext3...).

Thank you

It would shock me if there was anything besides FAT support.

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Brett

2008 Cayman S Arctic Silver, Carrera Red full leather, Carbon Fiber package +, 19" Carrera Sport wheels, short shifter, Quaife TBD, GT3RS steering wheel

Some interior carbon fiber pics: ClickMe!

Pretty much all flash drives are FAT32 and that includes the small USB hard drives unless you reformated it to another format.

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VIDS
Cayman Turbo 520HP

The only potential issue I can think of is power. The hard drives take more power to run than the USB flash drives. I had a portable 40G hard drive a few years ago that was so badly designed that it needed 2 USB ports (one for data and one for drawing extra power) to spin the drive.

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2006 Porsche Cayman S, Lapis Blue, Tiptronics, 997TT-style wheels, Sprint Booster, HIP clear engine cover, Schild trunk liner, Milltek catback exhaust

I tried a Western Digital Passport 320GB portable external USB drive in my '09 Cayman S. It sat there with its blue light on but just clicking and not spinning up. It usually works flawlessly when connected to any desktop or laptop. So it means that the USB port on the Cayman does not provide enough power even for this lower-power device.

Researching other iPod interfaces (e.g. on BMW 3 series) told a story that it is pretty hit and miss to find hard disk devices that work with these USB interfaces.

So I went out an bought a new 120GB iPod Classic which has worked pretty flawlessly. What is interesting is that the new iPod lead provided in the car has a flying USB lead which is attached to the DIN port end (i.e. the opposite end from the iPod). You need to insert this USB plug into the USB socket at the same time as the DIN plug for the iPod to charge. I guess this is Porsche's solution to the newer iPods and iPhones that only charge via USB. But it also looks like firewire charging through the DIN port has been turned off.

But having said all that, 128GB USB flash drives are now on sale. A bit expensive (i.e. more than my iPod classic) but they will be pretty robust (even if you cannot plug headphones into them) !

I tried a small hard drive (a 250 GB 5000rpm drive + a case) and didn't work. Maybe it's because of power. I would love to have a 500 GB drive connected to the PCM . I would like to avoid an Ipod. I heard that some hard drives work very well (low power consumption) on just 1 USB port, you know some that might work?

By the way, the USB port in the PCM is USB2.0?

Couldn't you just get a 12v socket adapter for the external HD? I know the one I use can be powered soley via the USB but it did come with a wall socket pwoersupply
shouldn't be too hard to hook up.

You could get a USB power supply and use the 12V power socket in the ashtray. But the advantage of the pure USB solution is that everything is hidden and you don't have to replug things in every time you use the car.

The USB disk would be a good solution if it worked - cheaper and more capacity. Except it has some quirkyness when searching for tracks. It seems to use the file name as the sorting criteria rather than the ID3 tags. So if you search for all albums by one artist, and that artist has multiple albums, you get all the #1 tracks followed by all the #2 tracks. On the iPod, it plays all the albums in the correct track order (and chronologically too - nice).

However, once the selected set of tracks is finished (e.g. one album) the USB disk continues with the next set of files (e.g. the next album in alphabetical order if you name your folders correctly) whilst the iPod just replays the tracks from the start (i.e. repeats the album). Depends what you prefer, but I prefer the USB disk behaviour.

The iPod has the advantage of syncing seamlessly with iTunes (which is really useful for podcasts updates). You can sync with a USB drive/stick but it is not as straight forward on the PC.

But the USB drive/stick has a better sound quality as the digital files are decoded in the PCM (or amps ?). The iPod outputs line level analogue signals which may even be re-digitised inside the PCM to perform signal processing. As a result, the USB drive/stick has a more defined treble and more solid soundstage. You can hear the difference when stationary, but not really when moving (the tyre roar overwhelms the difference easily). And if you turn on Bose/Surround then it messes so much with the music that there is no advantage even with the engine switched off (I turned off Surround and turned-on Linear within about 5 mins as they sounded so artificial).

But I'm not willing to buy USB disks at random until I find one that actually works with USB socket power alone. Anyone own a PC/electronic shop and can test out multiple brands of disk ?

Yeah, I would love to know if there are USB disks that work with only one USB socket power alone. Please people, if you can, test a USB HDD in your porsche .
I used some USB sticks and in therms of music organization I found no difference from Ipod. You are right about the sound quality, I notice the difference.
If there are no USB disks that work alone, maybe a custom hidden 12V power supply near the USB/AUX/ipod ports might be a good solution?

see this:

BMW 3-Series (E90 E92) Forum - View Single Post - USB hard drives that work with 6FL

hdd works on USB port

just got a 64GB stick in the mail and if you can get 128GB sticks of flash memory then no need to care about the hard drives. Seriously who has time while driving to browse through 30,000 songs. May need that in a beamer though ....

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VIDS
Cayman Turbo 520HP

Just bought this:

http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...=431&ppmi=1176

Works very well and I can tell you that the quality against the Ipod is much better.
I downloaded a program to put all the files from the ipod in folders by author and Album into this hard disk. The only problem is that on starting the car it takes about 8 minutes to organize the list, but while it's organizing, I can access by folder(artist), album and then the track. After the 8 minutes, I can search by ID3 tags and works exactly like the ipod.

Maybe if I put all the files without folders will be faster? Is there a better way to organize the files so it will take less time to have the list ready?