[itsxtian]

Update, took delivery this weekend and plugged in my LaCie Little Disk 1.8" 60 GB 3600 RPM (model 301271)

Works like a charm!

[itsxtian]

Question: Does anybody leave their hard drives plugged in all the time? I noticed the blue light on my lacie does not turn off after I turn off the car.

Is this a drain to the car battery?

[dinkoh]

Originally Posted by itsxtian

Question: Does anybody leave their hard drives plugged in all the time? I noticed the blue light on my lacie does not turn off after I turn off the car.

Is this a drain to the car battery?

GREAT question. My car ran out of battery once... it may be from USB HDD!

[dinkoh]

Originally Posted by jtmccabe

I bought a 160 GB iPod and for me, yes, it was totally worth it. To date, I've bought three drives that either don't work at all or only work sometimes. That's way too much PITA to deal with just to save a few bucks. The point of this thread is to find a drive that works for everyone, to allow people to save money while eliminating the PITA factor. Also, I once wanted a drive bigger than 160 GB to hold all my music and then some. But then I realized that the extra space would be useless because of the 20k-song limit.



It's not about stockpiling music so you can go on a 100-day road trip without ever hearing the same song twice. It's about having all your music available at all times, so if you want to hear a certain arbitrary song or artist, there it is. Also, deciding which of your 20k songs you want to take with you takes WAY too long!

Man... have you tried the Apicorn though? I have the IOMEGA. It's getting worse in terms of reliability.

[fucema]

Originally Posted by highendsyl

Some additional remarks:
* The 1.8" Toshiba 60gb = 4200 rpm
* It takes a while before artists, albums, genres, playlists come available. They are updated constantly.
* My mobile phone was in the armrest. I received a call and the USB connection was lost. So the Bluetooth and/of GSM signal disturbs the USB connection. I have to find another spot for my mobile phone.

I will update with new experiences.......

PS. unlock of navi works perfect...... (but that is another threat)

I keep my cellphone in the armrest on top of the apricorn hdd. I have no problems with the usb connection being lost when a call comes in on my cellphone. Maybe you should take your car into the dealership?

(Im assuming you understand that the incoming call just interrupts the audio so the speakers in your car can play the phone rings, etc.)

[fucema]

Originally Posted by itsxtian

Question: Does anybody leave their hard drives plugged in all the time? I noticed the blue light on my lacie does not turn off after I turn off the car.

Is this a drain to the car battery?

I wanted to reply to this in more detail but since Im more paranoid lately about BMW techs reading this forum... but I personally am not worried about a small LED draining the battery.

[Iceberg]

Originally Posted by mrvuml

Its consistency thats important, the need for the drive to start up everythime you get in the car. I had a 60GB WD Passport that would only work about 50% of the time.

Mr. V, I had the same problem and, even though you have moved to a USB, I'd like to share with you a solution:

The symptoms were sporatic loading and availability of the files, low power clicking of the HDD, and still the blue light was on.

I found a 3" USB cable that came with a cheap MP3 player and tried it. Now, my WD60 GB 5400 RPM (model WD600U017-001) starts up everytime. Apparently, the shorter cable provides less resistance to the power. However, I would think that that little difference wouldn't matter. Oh well, it still works and I still have music, so good to go!

FWIW,
Iceberg

[highendsyl]

Originally Posted by fucema

I keep my cellphone in the armrest on top of the apricorn hdd. I have no problems with the usb connection being lost when a call comes in on my cellphone. Maybe you should take your car into the dealership?

(Im assuming you understand that the incoming call just interrupts the audio so the speakers in your car can play the phone rings, etc.)

Of course I understand, no I mean it swapped (after the call) to Radio and did not recognise the USB drive anymore

[GraemeSmith]

Question: Does anybody leave their hard drives plugged in all the time? I noticed the blue light on my lacie does not turn off after I turn off the car.

Is this a drain to the car battery?

I wanted to reply to this in more detail but since Im more paranoid lately about BMW techs reading this forum... but I personally am not worried about a small LED draining the battery.

Actually the drive is constantly running too. If you have it tucked away in an arm rest it is also getting hot. Hot and constant running = dramatically shorter life. I half pull the plug on mine at day end. I also think this is a software FLAW on BMW's part. The USB socket should power off with ignition off to prevent this.

[fucema]

Originally Posted by GraemeSmith

Actually the drive is constantly running too. If you have it tucked away in an arm rest it is also getting hot. Hot and constant running = dramatically shorter life. I half pull the plug on mine at day end. I also think this is a software FLAW on BMW's part. The USB socket should power off with ignition off to prevent this.

Oh that is bad if the drive is doing that while the car is powered down. Honestly, I thought the power would cut off after 5 minutes or so. I know the car power seems to stay on for a few minutes after you exit the car and lock it. And when you approach (with CA) and unlock, it brings power to that usb port also... at least I assumed that was the case, and it wasnt on 24/7.

Time to do some testing without my CA fob!

[GarryF]

The car takes about 15 mins to go into full sleep mode,

i.e. if you stop for fuel and get back in the car it will remember what settings the heated seats etc were. Place the HD where it's visible and check if it still has power after 30 mins

[fucema]

Originally Posted by GarryF

The car takes about 15 mins to go into full sleep mode,

i.e. if you stop for fuel and get back in the car it will remember what settings the heated seats etc were. Place the HD where it's visible and check if it still has power after 30 mins

Nice ,thanks for the tip. I'll try it tonight after I get home.

[fucema]

I came home last night and placed the drive where I could see it from the outside. The drive light was on when I left the car.

The drive light was off when I came back later after 2 hours. Looks like my assumption was correct and you don't have to worry about your harddrive using all your battery power while you are gone.

[itsxtian]

Thanks for testing fucema!

[emarkd]

I can confirm that a Maxtor 160GB OneTouch4 mini will not work without additional bus power. However, it works great with the added amperage. I picked the drive up at Best Buy for 78.00 and got a 12v to USB adapter at Radio Shack for 20.00. About 100.00 invested for 160 gigs of music and it works like a charm

I've just got my car three days ago, so this is new to me. Anybody have any advice about living with this type of setup?

[ftb]

Simple solution for all Ipod and iTunes users.

In iTunes enable the ipod to be used as a USB hard drive. Use Windows Explorer to set up artist and album directories on the iPod. That is use the iPod as portable hard drive device. Only certain files are recognized : MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC according to the 3 series manual. I have used itunes to reconfigure my music files to MP3 (try the highest quality possible) and save then to a directory which is then copied to my iPod hard drive.
THis way I have the iPOd as aportable music palyer for my headphones and an incar source via the USB conection.
Works well with my 2nd Gen 20 GB ipod; it plays the songs in digital , powers the iPod and turns it off when I shut the engine.

[rubber_ducky]

Originally Posted by ftb

Simple solution for all Ipod and iTunes users.

In iTunes enable the ipod to be used as a USB hard drive. Use Windows Explorer to set up artist and album directories on the iPod. That is use the iPod as portable hard drive device. Only certain files are recognized : MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC according to the 3 series manual. I have used itunes to reconfigure my music files to MP3 (try the highest quality possible) and save then to a directory which is then copied to my iPod hard drive.
THis way I have the iPOd as aportable music palyer for my headphones and an incar source via the USB conection.
Works well with my 2nd Gen 20 GB ipod; it plays the songs in digital , powers the iPod and turns it off when I shut the engine.

I was wondering about this. According to the instructions on apple's websitel, you can apportion any percent of the ipod to act as a hard drive.

In your case, how much of your 20 gigs is set to be a USB hard drive? Also, does the car differentiate between the usb hard drive portion & the ipod portion?

[jhermosillo]

Hello all,

I tried the Apricorn USB Drive 120GB 4200 RPM it is loaded now with at least 70GB and it works fantastic, like a charm. I don't have Nav system and at the beginning to scroll thru the artists was a nightmare, very slow due to a lot of music in there, What I did is Create Folder from A to Z and sort the artist by Initial, now is very easy using the DIR Option intead of Artist. Hope this helps.

Saludos

[jtmccabe]

Originally Posted by jhermosillo

Hello all,

I tried the Apricorn USB Drive 120GB 4200 RPM it is loaded now with at least 70GB and it works fantastic, like a charm. I don't have Nav system and at the beginning to scroll thru the artists was a nightmare, very slow due to a lot of music in there, What I did is Create Folder from A to Z and sort the artist by Initial, now is very easy using the DIR Option intead of Artist. Hope this helps.

Saludos

Good news... thanks for the report!

120 GB is a nice capacity since that would be enough to hold the maximum 20k songs if they average < 6 MB. Hopefully we'll see a nice 160 GB 1.8" option soon since 192 kbps MP3s seem to average around 7 MB.

[dinkoh]

Originally Posted by jhermosillo

Hello all,

I tried the Apricorn USB Drive 120GB 4200 RPM it is loaded now with at least 70GB and it works fantastic, like a charm. I don't have Nav system and at the beginning to scroll thru the artists was a nightmare, very slow due to a lot of music in there, What I did is Create Folder from A to Z and sort the artist by Initial, now is very easy using the DIR Option intead of Artist. Hope this helps.

Saludos

how long have you used it?

my biggest compliant with my IOMEGA is that it sometimes doesn't start when I start my car, particularly after I open my trunk before starting the car. I have to turn it off then back on for the iDrive to recognize it.

[jhermosillo]

Originally Posted by dinkoh

how long have you used it?

my biggest compliant with my IOMEGA is that it sometimes doesn't start when I start my car, particularly after I open my trunk before starting the car. I have to turn it off then back on for the iDrive to recognize it.

I have used it for 8 day in a row now, and It works like a charm, not one problem. I recommend this one.

Cheers

[AWD Addict]

I know everyone knows the USB flash drives work fine, but I just thought I'd post up that my new 32G Patriot stick is AWESOME.

I have over 250G in total music, but 32G is so damned much, It'll probably be a year before I need to make any changes. I've got one huge directory with all single songs in it, so I can just leave it on random, and I'm now adding whole albums. I'm no where close to filling the thing yet either, which is AWESOME.



Indexing is immediate, and there are no load times - so while the $/G is lower for a flash drive, there are definitely other benefits.

Here's the stick on newegg. It's like $110 after MIR.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220261