[TommyL]

Originally Posted by Neil McRae

hmm just noticed that the byte size of the format is different - now formatting the same allocation.

Any results yet Neil? I'm planning to buy a Samsung S1 Mini 250GB 1.8" drive...and I'm really interested in any tricks that can make the drive work faster.

Regards

Tommy

[BLOWNCO]

Originally Posted by Sirrus

What did you connect the second USB connector to? If it's connected to a USB charger, then it belongs in the "with supplemental power" category.

oh sorry im using this for power on the second usb

http://www.frys.com/product/6169799?...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

[DeFKnoL]

I tried the following drive:

Cirago 200GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive CST1200
- Did not work in center console or glove compartment
- Secondary power source made no difference
- 2010 335i X with iDrive and 6FL (iDrive last upgraded March 2010)
- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822242018
- When plugged in, the busy light on the drive blinked constantly but was never detected by the iDrive system. I left it in for about 1 half hour with no results.

[lesliew]

Originally Posted by philmcgee

I am *thrilled* to confirm that the Samsung S1 Mini 160GB works in my 2007 E92 without any extra power supply. It's a 1.8" drive and apparently low-power enough.

Just bought the Samsung S1 250gb 1.8" drive from Newegg for $69. Works perfectly no additional power needed.

[Sirrus]

Originally Posted by lesliew

Just bought the Samsung S1 250gb 1.8" drive from Newegg for $69. Works perfectly no additional power needed.

I can't find it on Newegg

[E92murdered]

nice will it fit in center console? and what extension does music files have to be?

Originally Posted by Sirrus

I can't find it on Newegg

[s.myrr]

I have the S1 250 as well, and it's great, fits in the center console perfectly. It's noticeably slower than my Lacie HD that I used to use... this might be due to the fact that it's got over 90GB of music on it.... who knows? It would be nice to find a way to speed things up.

[TommyL]

Originally Posted by s.myrr

I have the S1 250 as well, and it's great, fits in the center console perfectly. It's noticeably slower than my Lacie HD that I used to use... this might be due to the fact that it's got over 90GB of music on it.... who knows? It would be nice to find a way to speed things up.

I also have about 90GB of music on my 250GB S1...and I agree about it being somewhat slow. It takes quite a long time for it to start playing the last track after I start the car...so if anyone have any tips on how to speed it up would be appreciated.

Other than that it works flawlessly. I converted all my FLAC's to Lossless WMA with dbpoweramp, and the sound is much better than MP3, even 320kbs fixed rate, IMHO. Have about 5000 Lossless WMA tracks on it now...and still room for many more

Regards

Tommy

[s.myrr]

I have 2 directories labeled as A-M and N-Z, with sub directories of artists by album. It seems that it takes about 1 minute before music playback starts, and there is also the occasional delay when initially browsing into the directories. After that, things seem to work pretty quickly. I'm sure this can be sped up though. Possilbe formatting issue maybe?

[rpmoore]

I have a new F10 5 series, but think the USB setup is the same as the e90.

I got an Iomega Prestige 320Gb drive which works fine and doesnt need the additional USB plug connected. Very small device too.

This is the model I purchased in the UK - http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/iomega...68768-pdt.html

[Taylormade]

The above Iomega Prestige 320gb drive does not work in a 2009 550i using only 1 usb connection. Apparently the F10 supplies more power to its USB port. I'm sure the drive will work if I plug the 2nd usb connector into a cigarette lighter.

I may try the Samsung S1 referenced above because I'd rather minimize the cabling. The slowness of the S1 may be due to its lower power requirements.

[ruthlessbmw]

Originally Posted by TommyL

I also have about 90GB of music on my 250GB S1...and I agree about it being somewhat slow. It takes quite a long time for it to start playing the last track after I start the car...so if anyone have any tips on how to speed it up would be appreciated.

Other than that it works flawlessly. I converted all my FLAC's to Lossless WMA with dbpoweramp, and the sound is much better than MP3, even 320kbs fixed rate, IMHO. Have about 5000 Lossless WMA tracks on it now...and still room for many more

Regards

Tommy

From my experience on my 08 335i, the lesser the amount of folders the quicker it will read the files.

[kaigoss69]

The Samsung S1 seems to be discontinued. Anyone know whether the new model, the S2 works just the same? How does RPM affect power consumption? The new drives have 5400 and even 7200 rpm spin rates.

Thanks!

[kaigoss69]

Originally Posted by kaigoss69

The Samsung S1 seems to be discontinued. Anyone know whether the new model, the S2 works just the same? How does RPM affect power consumption? The new drives have 5400 and even 7200 rpm spin rates.

Thanks!

I just read a post earlier in the thread where it was said that an iPod could be used in "USB Disk Mode". I have a 5th gen iPod laying around so I will give it a shot. Should work fine since it already works flawlessly through 6fl. I'll report back.

[kmarei]

Originally Posted by kaigoss69

The Samsung S1 seems to be discontinued. Anyone know whether the new model, the S2 works just the same? How does RPM affect power consumption? The new drives have 5400 and even 7200 rpm spin rates.

Thanks!

i believethe S2 uses 2.5" drives not 1.8"
2.5" drives usualy need more power since they spin much faster

[kmarei]

Originally Posted by kaigoss69

I just read a post earlier in the thread where it was said that an iPod could be used in "USB Disk Mode". I have a 5th gen iPod laying around so I will give it a shot. Should work fine since it already works flawlessly through 6fl. I'll report back.

just hook up your ipod with the original apple white cable it came with
sounds much better than using the bmw cable

[kmarei]

i am using this drive in a USB enclosure
http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0332941
cool thing is, since its SSD, i can slam the arm rest, drive on bumpy roads etc and never worry about the hard drive going bad
it's also the fastest drive i have used when you switch songs
i had a usb 32gb flash drive that took much longer when you skipped songs
only problem with larger drives is it takes ages for the BMW to read the song info
and until it does, you can't pick artist, genre, album or anything

[tomz17]

Confirmed working in 2008 335i :
Western Digital 2.5" 120GB (WDBAAR1200ABK-NESN)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...6606&Tpk=120gb


(they often give these away for free in combos, and were giving these away for free to business owners as a promo a few days ago)

[kriskan]

This forum was very helpful in figuring out the right portable HDD for my bimmer

this is my experience:

None of the new portable drives work because they dont get enough current.
(trust me on this I have tried almost everything from bestbuy)

The other solutions mentioned in this post are kinda outdated and you cannot get some of the products mentioned in stores.

All you need is the usb 'Y' cable (extra usb cable to supply the extra power) and Powerjolt Dual Universal USB Micro (any similar product will work of it is small enough to fit in the arm rest)

http://www.amazon.com/Powerjolt-Dual.../dp/B0042B9U8Q
(10$ at walmart)


and you connect the cable marked as power to the powerjolt usb port and the other to the usb port in the car.

I can confirm these 2 drives worked for me using the above method

both these drives come with the Y cable.

Iomega HDD 2.5" PRESTIGE portable 320gb usb2.0

Iomega HDD 2.5" PRESTIGE portable 500gb usb2.0 1hdx500gb

I'm confident Higher capacity and other brand drives will work too using this method - but the bigger the drive the longer the audio system will take to read all the files. For me while just using few gigs it takes atleast few minutes for the system to show songs.

lastly dont forget to format the drive in fat32 format before testing it. (ntfs and exfat dont work ).

I will update the post with my experience after using it for few days. (I drive atleast 2 hrs each day)

[adrianBMW99]

Don't want to go through and read all 11 pages of posts, but how in the world can using a 60gb drive be practical? The usb is unable to scroll through artists in any way other than one by one (this would take forever to go from an A artist name to an M artist name for example) and I don't think you can create playlists on a hard drive. I recommend only using a small 1 gb or 2gb flash stick at the most to keep it in any way practical. Is there something I am missing here or has someone figured out a way around this?

[Sirrus]

Originally Posted by adrianBMW99

Don't want to go through and read all 11 pages of posts, but how in the world can using a 60gb drive be practical? The usb is unable to scroll through artists in any way other than one by one (this would take forever to go from an A artist name to an M artist name for example) and I don't think you can create playlists on a hard drive. I recommend only using a small 1 gb or 2gb flash stick at the most to keep it in any way practical. Is there something I am missing here or has someone figured out a way around this?

Subfolders and the directory listing. That's how I do it on my 32 GB flash drive anyway.

[e90_guy]

Bought a Western Digital 250GB Elements and it worked without external power source. One observation is that you do need to format the drive to FAT32. Out of the box, the hd is formatted in NTFS and it was reported as an supported device when I plugged it into the car. I reformatted the drive as FAT32 and it worked without any problem. By the way, do not use the format program comes with Windows 7, I wasted 3 hrs trying to format the hd and it failed at the end of the process.