Well, I did some reading on my new Soul site, www.kiasoulforums.com , and the USB port allows you to directly connect a USB thumb drive, or a USB hard drive, to be read and played directly on the stereo.

They should advertise this.

Anyways, I'm looking for a good USB hard drive for my music in the Soul when it arrives.

Specs I'm looking for.

1. USB POWERED. I do NOT want to have to run a power supply line for this.
2. RELIABLE. I don't want to waste my money and have to replace it after a year.
3. Decent sized (capacity). I've seen some at 1 TB lately, and they are still small. The WD Passport series looks alright.
4. Not a rediculously huge case.

That's about it folks. I appreciate any help you guys and girls can give me here. I'll keep looking on my own some, but would like some opinions.


SKIP TO POSTS 8 AND 11 PLEASE!!!

 

I have talked to majik a few times about the WD passports. I pretty much swear by WD stuff anymore, had to many seagates go bad on me. They are small and portable and should fit your needs nicely.

 

I'm the other way around. I have had plenty of WDs go bad especially the smaller ones. I suppose you should just pick your poison and hope they didn't screw up that line of products

 

no specific advice on the drive, except that

USB powered may be asking a bit much of the car's power supply. Be sure the drive does not draw too much current lest you fry the USB power supply, or have a non-functional drive

Mount the drive with a shock-absorbing setup if you are looking toward a conventional drive (vs. solid state) b/c too many Gs (crash, big pothole) when a hard drive is spinning could = dead drive.

 

for your car, I'd use flash drives. do you really need over 100GB in your car?

Get a couple 32GB drives and it'll be cheaper, more portable, and more reliable. I've personally never had a flash drive go bad. I would think that portable hard drives (e.g., Western Digital, Seagate) are like any hard drive and sensitive to heat/cold/vibrations.. whereas flash drives are more durable, easily replaced, and get cheaper and cheaper every year.

If you're going to get a portable hard drive anyways, I'm happy with my Western Digital Passport Essential. I didn't see a need for going with the Elite, unless you want extra encryption and a few L.E.D.s on the outside to show capacity.

 

the idea about hard drives in cars going bad due to heat/cold/vibration is not nearly as strong as you may think. there are countless people on mp3car with 2.5" hard drives running for multiple years WAY north and on bumpy roads.

yes, it probably will decrease the life...but not by that much. laptop hard drives are pretty durable.

if you are going for one usb port with no external power, it HAS to be a 2.5" hard drive(if you go disk drive route). 3.5" hard drives need too much power, and will require an external source. this limits you in size to around 500gb currently i think.

western digital makes some nice 2.5" drives, and usually they don't need external power.

you should probably also make sure that it will read from hard drives and flash drives. it might only be able to read a particular format, like fat... which i can't remember if you can do with a hard drive.

 

Knowing you Jer, how you drive your cars, and the occasional romp in the desert (LOL!) , I only have two words for you: SOLID STATE. Yep, they are pretty damn expensive, but hands down THE best Hard Drive for installing into an Auto. Thats why I REALLY agree with majikTib. Get a couple large thumb drives for your tunes and call it good. I would even go so far as organizing my music into genres, giving some headroom to add more music, and getting 3-4 smaller, less expensive thumb drives. One for Rock, Techno, Jazz, Classical, Etc...

But here is the big ones for your enjoyment!


Here you go.......64 GB Thumb drive
ebay thumbe drive


Off brand Japanese electronics, you might want something more mainstream

Sandisk 64 GB
Sandisk$$$$$$

Just do a search for thumb drives on ebay and you'll get different styles and brands.
Hope that helps man.

 

Tibby01

It will read from them, I've even watched the videos on Kia's site telling you about it. Has to be formatted in FAT32.

http://www.kiasoulforums.com/showthread.ph...ight=hard+drive

http://www.kiasoulforums.com/showpost.php?...mp;postcount=27
^^^
This guy has a 160GB WD HDD hooked up to his.



Others on that site are running them, and they've run fine. I just wanted to ask here first as I know who to listen to and who to discount information from. LOL

There are ruggedized ones too, but this is a road vehicle, off roading will be nearly nil.



I want to be able to mount it in the glovebox or somewhere, and hide all the wiring, I don't want a thumb drive sitting in there, so I can put a Y cable on behind the usb mounting face, and still use the USB port for charging my phone. I'd rather spend $150 on a large drive that I can fill over the years, than $60 on a usb thumb drive that holds a small fraction of the same stuff. I like to have room for expansion, and with how cheap these bigger ones are...

http://www.buy.com/prod/toshiba-640gb-usb-.../212211040.html
^^^
116 shipped for 640GB.

http://www.buy.com/prod/500gb-my-passport-...html?adid=17654
^^^
118 for 500GB.

http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-my.../212195503.html
^^^
199 for 1TB. I THINK this one is USB powered...

I'll take another look at USB thumb drives, but right now I wanna try out a hard drive.


Actually, I just found another thread on them, and it looks like I'll be going the thumb drive route if I can find a decent priced 32 or 64GB. The USB only provides 5.0V, and the guy that GOT it working had to run a 12V usb adapter to his cig lighter plug.

http://www.kiasoulforums.com/showthread.ph...2507&page=2

So, unless I find a way I want to do it later, I'll be just getting a thumb drive, or adapter.


I guess now then, I need to find a good adapter, preferrably for a SDHC card, low profile. Then i can upgrade the SD card as they get bigger.



Damn, Tibbytib, that's a GREAT idea. Have one per Genre, on a keychain in the storage compartment...

Okay, I'll start looking at that.

 

redz, the thing about those is that they aren't solid state. Go over a bump hard and it damages the platters. I think you're going to start getting data corruption and issues within a year. The thumb drives or a solid state harddrive won't have that issue. Plus by the time you fill that one up you'll be able to pickup another for 1/2 the price.

If you absolutely HAVE to have a TB of music in the car then you can go that route, just don't hit potholes and listen to music at the same time wink1.gif

edit: usb is always 5v, if you find a hdd powered via usb it would work. 3.5" hdd's are nearly always 12v powered. Some of the little laptop hdd usb drives are powered via usb.

 

It has to be more than a speed bump Supercow. More like "O sh*t I just broke a wheel and lower control arm, and killed my hard drive" type bump. Rare, but happens. I guess if you have a backup, there's no harm if you got a crashed drive every decade or so.