[MikePT]

I got a new 2011 e92 with idrive navigation pro. Right now I'm using an old ipod connected with USB and it works fine.
However the capacity of the ipod is not great... so I bought a small portable HD (actually a lacie rikiki, the smallest one I could find with 500G) and loaded it with my library, which is aroung 350G in aiff files.

However, I just saw in the manual a recomendation not to connect hard disks to the USB port on the armrest, only flash drives... I thought the difference would not be significant.

Is there any problem? do they mean non-usb powered HD?

I thought I read somewhere that the system would take long to recognise a large library and that I should wait for a longer trip to do it, that's why I waited till today. But then I just saw that in the manual...

[Sirrus]

The USB port does not provide enough power for most drives:

http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96309

[MikePT]

Thanks a lot!

it seems a bit silly, it should be so easy to provide a little more power... up to 160G I can get an ipod, but I wanted more storage room, to use uncompressed files.

[Morpheus]

I remember when the amount of music you had in your car was limited by the size of your CD carrier. Do you really need to haul around ALL of the music you own!? I think most of the 1.8 drives work fine. I have an aegis 80GB which is nowhere near full and has worked great for over a year. BTW I see that aegis now has a 240GB bus powered USB drive.

[apasion]

Your portable HD will not last long due to vibrations while driving. This is the reason they recommend flash drives coz there are no moving parts.

[kaigoss69]

Just pick up an old iPod and put it in "USB disc" mode. Works great!!!

[MikePT]

thanks guys,

I know an ipod works great, I'm using my old one now, which is a 60G model. Only I got 2 HD both of 500G just about the size of the ipod, and my itunes library would fit there... one cannot avoid not thinking about it.

I'll probably get a 160G ipod; using apple lossless files I will probably be able to shrink most of my library there.

[fdriller9]

Do you really need to carry around your whole library? you can try to find a hard drive that has an external power supply via usb and get an adapter for the cigg lighter and power the harddrive that way.

With harddrive being cheap these days, I wouldn't worry about failure. It is a pain to back every up though and restore it.

[Sirrus]

Originally Posted by *********

Do you really need to carry around your whole library? you can try to find a hard drive that has an external power supply via usb and get an adapter for the cigg lighter and power the harddrive that way.

With harddrive being cheap these days, I wouldn't worry about failure. It is a pain to back every up though and restore it.

I tried that but it didn't work very well. The cigg lighter doesn't turn on early like the USB port does and makes for a timing problem getting things up and running. Now I use a 32 GB flash drive with WMA lossless files. I don't think the head unit can read Apple lossless if you put the iPod in disk access mode.

[MikePT]

Sirrus,

All the files in my ipod are in apple lossless, and it works just fine - quite a nice quality sound. The ipod is connected on the armrest.
I think it's the best option to use with an ipod...

[Sirrus]

Are you using a standard iPod USB cable or the one for the car that has a "headphone" connector and a USB cable? If it's the second option, your audio signal is going out via the "headphone" connector.

Granted, your iPod has better signal quality than my iPhone does, but I noticed a HUGE difference switching to pure digital USB.

[MikePT]

I'm using the USB cable, my car is MY2011.

But indeed I suppose the idrive gets an i2s signal from the ipod, so maybe it's the ipod that does the conversion.