Has anyone successfully used a portable 2.5" drive (such as a WD passport essential) with JVC head units? I know they'd have to be formatted to FAT32. I found a few posts where guys had them working in older units from around 2008, but nothing recent. Of course I'd be specifically interested in the kd-a815, but figured it would be likely to be supported across the board if other newer models supported the drives. Thanks for any help!
I can't say anything about JVC, but here is a recent thread about my successful WD Elements HDD installation on my new Pioneer headunit. http://www.caraudiotalk.com/audio-forum/showthread.php?t=11028 My guess is if your HU USB port is dishing out 500ma and you have reformatted to FAT32, you should be fine. I didn't need any additional power. I simply plugged it in and it worked just like a thumbdrive.
Thanks for the reply I actually read that thread first since I've been thinking about this. I see newegg has a 120GB WD for only about $30 shipped! It's not the newest smallest, but for the price it can't be beat. Outside of that, staples has a 320GB for 59 this week. I'm a little afraid of that size though for the read time. I'd imagine though that it only reads data, so if you only have 3GB it would only need to read that far?
I'm sure the model you're looking at at newegg is the same model as mine. I got it a few weeks ago as the daily deal for about $25. As for read times, I have about 25 gigs on it in WMA format in Band/Album/Song structure. The access time is pretty quick, not much slower than the 2 gig thumbdrive I was using. The only lag I see is when I scroll through the artists too quickly. If you scroll slowly, you can read the all the names. I was actually surprised when even after shutting my car off, the song picks up exactly where it left off, just like a CD would. If you aren't filling the whole drive, I think you could shrink or create multiple partitions it to help with your access time.
Cool... yeah that's what I was thinking (about the size/partitioning). I'm probably going to order one and just see what happens. If it doesn't work, my roommate was needing an external drive anyway, so that would work out. I mean for $30!?? I've been looking at 16GB and 8GB flash drives so if I could get the WD to work, that would be great!
Just wanted to update: I put about 2GB worth of mp3s on the drive, and the JVC read it in about 22 seconds. I need to find a place to mount the drive in the car, then I'll fill it with more mp3s. I actually built a little holder that keeps it suspended for shock resistance
