USB hard drives that work with 6FL - Page 20 - BMW 3-Series (E90 E92) Forum

Pseudo Nim · 01-05-2009, 12:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bsd107

I've got a 2009 with iDrive. But on my 16GB USB stick with about 14GB used, indexing does not take long at all. I mean, by the time I get around to firing up the stereo it seems to be working and have finished indexing.

I think it must be an iDrive thing. I swear it takes me a full 30 mins, if not an hour, to get the 'List' menu back (i.e., I guess, to re-index the USB stick).

bsd107 · 01-05-2009, 02:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pseudo Nim

I think it must be an iDrive thing. I swear it takes me a full 30 mins, if not an hour, to get the 'List' menu back (i.e., I guess, to re-index the USB stick).

2008 vs 2009 could make a difference, too...

wes · 01-05-2009, 04:09 AM

This thread is pretty fucking awesome.

Good work OP.

I am not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but has anyone tried running a 1.8" or 2.5" HDD connected to an amp or extra car battery? I know for a fact when I get my car, my system will have an extra battery, so I was wondering the possibility of doing this mod. Maybe even converting a PSU from a computer for DC, and then using it to power a HDD?

Just some amateurish ideas. Maybe it will work maybe it wont... But I will definitely try these when I get my car :O

Pseudo Nim · 01-05-2009, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bsd107

2008 vs 2009 could make a difference, too...

Yep, good point. I guess I'm wondering, then, if anybody has a 2008 non-iDrive Professional system that is QUICK to load up USB indexes. If yes, I'll try to get my unit flashed or something, and if no, then it's off to iPod for me.

Rotary Rasp · 01-05-2009, 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skierman64

Rotary, are you going to sell any of your hard drive boosters?

I don't think so. Making the stupid box to put it in took longer than actually making the unit.

When I get some time I'm going to make a schematic and I'm willing to help anyone that takes a shot at this project.

Kilgore Trout · 01-05-2009, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pseudo Nim

I think it must be an iDrive thing. I swear it takes me a full 30 mins, if not an hour, to get the 'List' menu back (i.e., I guess, to re-index the USB stick).

I have 2009 Idrive with a 32GB Kingston USB Flash. Takes milliseconds to index - and I have well over a hundred albums on there.

bsd107 · 01-06-2009, 12:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout

I have 2009 Idrive with a 32GB Kingston USB Flash. Takes milliseconds to index - and I have well over a hundred albums on there.

The 2009 iDrive will remember the last 4 USB devices that were connected, so that it doesn't need to completely reindex a device that it remembers. With speed as fast as you talk about it means that the index is cached already.

I did a test today where I inserted a 16GB USB stick with 517 songs taking 12GB (all WMA Lossless), then immediately started the car. I changed a bunch of songs on the stick, so the car re-indexed it. It took about 30 sec for the index to complete and for the search features to be available. After that the search features were lightning fast, and after car restarts no reindexing time was needed.

Pseudo Nim · 01-06-2009, 07:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout

I have 2009 Idrive with a 32GB Kingston USB Flash. Takes milliseconds to index - and I have well over a hundred albums on there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bsd107

I did a test today where I inserted a 16GB USB stick with 517 songs taking 12GB (all WMA Lossless), then immediately started the car. I changed a bunch of songs on the stick, so the car re-indexed it. It took about 30 sec for the index to complete and for the search features to be available.

Damn, that is pretty impressive indeed - thanks for the tests guys. I wonder if someone without iDrive (2008 or 2009) could do a similar test...

elzar · 01-06-2009, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pseudo Nim

Damn, that is pretty impressive indeed - thanks for the tests guys. I wonder if someone without iDrive (2008 or 2009) could do a similar test...

I have a 2008 without iDrive and a 30GB hard drive hooked up via USB. It's about 18GB full with 4,000 or so songs on it. It takes my car between 3 and 10 minutes to index it and it never acually completes correctly. A huge chunk of the songs come up as Various Artists even though I cleared and retagged everything all at once.

Because of the tagging issue, I just listen to everything randomly. Once I get the full menu list, I'll go to ART > All > All, pick a song, and hit the RND checkmark. It works well other than the 5-10 second lag between tracks.

Pseudo Nim · 01-06-2009, 10:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elzar

I have a 2008 without iDrive and a 30GB hard drive hooked up via USB. It's about 18GB full with 4,000 or so songs on it. It takes my car between 3 and 10 minutes to index it and it never acually completes correctly. A huge chunk of the songs come up as Various Artists even though I cleared and retagged everything all at once.

Because of the tagging issue, I just listen to everything randomly. Once I get the full menu list, I'll go to ART > All > All, pick a song, and hit the RND checkmark. It works well other than the 5-10 second lag between tracks.

Right, that sounds a lot more along the lines of what I am experiencing. In my case, often the playlists do not get loaded 100% and songs start repeating far before the radio goes through all the songs in the playlist (not to mention that it takes a good 30+ minutes to get the genre/artist links up). I wonder if there is a firmware flash for these things....

bsd107 · 01-06-2009, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pseudo Nim

Damn, that is pretty impressive indeed - thanks for the tests guys. I wonder if someone without iDrive (2008 or 2009) could do a similar test...

I'd love to know how this compares: 2008 vs 2009 with iDrive!

bsd107 · 01-06-2009, 01:23 PM

I should say that once (with my 16GB stick with approx 4GB of songs at the time, probably <100 files) on my 2009 w/iDrive I did encounter some errors. The stick seemed to be indexed properly. But then as I was playing all songs of a specific genre, as I got far down the list I realized that the displayed Track & Artist info did not correspond correctly to the song being played. Further down the list I started to see some corruption of this info.

After removing the device and sticking it into my PC to verify that the issue was not with the tag info, I never encountered that issue since.

bsd107 · 01-06-2009, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout

I have 2009 Idrive with a 32GB Kingston USB Flash. Takes milliseconds to index - and I have well over a hundred albums on there.

This would be an interesting case to test. What audio format do you use? And do you know your total song count?

If so, if you could add a few albums which will force the car to reindex, turn the car on, then stick USB flash into 6FL, select the device in iDrive and time how long it takes for the index to show up.

I know that mine takes ~30 seconds with ~500 songs in WMA Lossless format. I'm using a Sony USB flash drive that is rated to Windows ReadyBoost (which implies that it's a fast stick).

I'd be interested to know how it performs with a slower stick with thousands of songs. Particularly as I've had my eye on that 64GB Kensington stick as a potential future upgrade....

Rotary Rasp · 01-06-2009, 01:59 PM

I have been using my usb booster for a week now. With 18,000 mp3's the system takes about 30 seconds to play the music after I first unlock the car. For example, if I unlock the car and wait 25 seconds before starting the engine, the music will play instantly.

I have 160gb 7200rpm drive.

2009 E92 with nav

Rotary Rasp · 01-07-2009, 04:29 AM

I've loaded more music on my hard drive, 29,324 mp3s to be exact. The post in the beginning of this thread stating that the system will only see 20,000 songs is not correct. I can see and play all 30k mp3s.

Indexing takes less than a minute.

bsd107 · 01-07-2009, 08:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rotary Rasp

I have been using my usb booster for a week now. With 18,000 mp3's the system takes about 30 seconds to play the music after I first unlock the car. For example, if I unlock the car and wait 25 seconds before starting the engine, the music will play instantly.

I have 160gb 7200rpm drive.

2009 E92 with nav

Good info. But I have found that my USB stick will play right away - during the indexing. What you really need to do is go to the screen that lets you filter by genre, artist, etc. That screen will be greyed out while the device is indexing. But it can play music from the device during that - you just don't have any search options until it is complete.

bsd107 · 01-07-2009, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rotary Rasp

I've loaded more music on my hard drive, 29,324 mp3s to be exact. The post in the beginning of this thread stating that the system will only see 20,000 songs is not correct. I can see and play all 30k mp3s.

Indexing takes less than a minute.

What car do you have (year, and with or without iDrive?)

bsd107 · 01-07-2009, 08:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elzar

I have a 2008 without iDrive and a 30GB hard drive hooked up via USB. It's about 18GB full with 4,000 or so songs on it. It takes my car between 3 and 10 minutes to index it and it never acually completes correctly. A huge chunk of the songs come up as Various Artists even though I cleared and retagged everything all at once.

Because of the tagging issue, I just listen to everything randomly. Once I get the full menu list, I'll go to ART > All > All, pick a song, and hit the RND checkmark. It works well other than the 5-10 second lag between tracks.

I've read about issues (on 2008 and earlier - not sure if it applies to the 2009 E90) where the tags can't be above a certain size - e.g. 32kb. Some album art can take it above the limit. Could this be causing your issue?

elzar · 01-07-2009, 08:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bsd107

I've read about issues (on 2008 and earlier - not sure if it applies to the 2009 E90) where the tags can't be above a certain size - e.g. 32kb. Some album art can take it above the limit. Could this be causing your issue?

I doubt it. I retagged completely with Tag and Rename based on the folder structure and filename. The only data in the tags are Song Name, Band Name, Album Name, and Track Number. That's a couple hundred bytes at most.

Rotary Rasp · 01-07-2009, 08:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bsd107

What car do you have (year, and with or without iDrive?)

2009 E92 with iDrive

Rotary Rasp · 01-07-2009, 08:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bsd107

Good info. But I have found that my USB stick will play right away - during the indexing. What you really need to do is go to the screen that lets you filter by genre, artist, etc. That screen will be greyed out while the device is indexing. But it can play music from the device during that - you just don't have any search options until it is complete.

Yes, this is true. With my 8gb usb stick the music starts to play right away. If I only load 8gb on my hard drive, the music will start to play right away also.

mid-corner fun · 01-07-2009, 09:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rotary Rasp

Yes, this is true. With my 8gb usb stick the music starts to play right away. If I only load 8gb on my hard drive, the music will start to play right away also.

This is true on 2008s even with 60GB+ of music. The menu is grayed out but by toggling between sources (Radio/MP3s) I can get the car to start playing the previous album selection almost immediately. It then takes less than a minute for all options to become available.

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01-05-2009, 04:09 AM	#421
wes wesCUHz Drives: bat-mobile Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Washington Posts: 44 iTrader: (0)	This thread is pretty fucking awesome. Good work OP. I am not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but has anyone tried running a 1.8" or 2.5" HDD connected to an amp or extra car battery? I know for a fact when I get my car, my system will have an extra battery, so I was wondering the possibility of doing this mod. Maybe even converting a PSU from a computer for DC, and then using it to power a HDD? Just some amateurish ideas. Maybe it will work maybe it wont... But I will definitely try these when I get my car :O

01-06-2009, 01:23 PM	#430
bsd107 Captain Drives: 2009 335i E90 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: US Posts: 623 iTrader: (0)	I should say that once (with my 16GB stick with approx 4GB of songs at the time, probably <100 files) on my 2009 w/iDrive I did encounter some errors. The stick seemed to be indexed properly. But then as I was playing all songs of a specific genre, as I got far down the list I realized that the displayed Track & Artist info did not correspond correctly to the song being played. Further down the list I started to see some corruption of this info. After removing the device and sticking it into my PC to verify that the issue was not with the tag info, I never encountered that issue since.

01-06-2009, 01:59 PM	#432
Rotary Rasp Lieutenant Colonel Drives: 2009 E92 335i 6MT Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: SoCal - Torrance Posts: 1,501 iTrader: (6)	I have been using my usb booster for a week now. With 18,000 mp3's the system takes about 30 seconds to play the music after I first unlock the car. For example, if I unlock the car and wait 25 seconds before starting the engine, the music will play instantly. I have 160gb 7200rpm drive. 2009 E92 with nav

01-07-2009, 04:29 AM	#433
Rotary Rasp Lieutenant Colonel Drives: 2009 E92 335i 6MT Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: SoCal - Torrance Posts: 1,501 iTrader: (6)	I've loaded more music on my hard drive, 29,324 mp3s to be exact. The post in the beginning of this thread stating that the system will only see 20,000 songs is not correct. I can see and play all 30k mp3s. Indexing takes less than a minute.