Max external Gigs for USB port

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godrdop9

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I tried searching and checking on the internet but I can not get a straight answer. What is the largest size drive you can plug in to the USB port on the Equinox. I'd rather buy a cheap external Drive and leave it in the car instead of my Ipod. Plus, the External HD's are way cheaper than the larger flash drives. I apologize in advance if this has been asked already, I just can't seem to find the answer!
 

rbiggers

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I tried searching and checking on the internet but I can not get a straight answer. What is the largest size drive you can plug in to the USB port on the Equinox. I'd rather buy a cheap external Drive and leave it in the car instead of my Ipod. Plus, the External HD's are way cheaper than the larger flash drives. I apologize in advance if this has been asked already, I just can't seem to find the answer!

This is a very good question. I am interested to find out as well.
 

dietz4ibanez

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For a storage drive, I don't see how it would matter. Just buy one that holds about the same with some room to spare of your ipod. Smart thinking for not wanting to leave the ipod in your car. Storage drive is a great idea.
 

godrdop9

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Yeah, problem is most places won't let you return tech items, or if they do they charge you a restocking fee. I just bought a 2 TB drive but it needs to be plugged in an outlet. Might try to run an extension cord across the parking lot,lol.
 

jecilop

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I tried searching and checking on the internet but I can not get a straight answer. What is the largest size drive you can plug in to the USB port on the Equinox. I'd rather buy a cheap external Drive and leave it in the car instead of my Ipod. Plus, the External HD's are way cheaper than the larger flash drives. I apologize in advance if this has been asked already, I just can't seem to find the answer!

The trick is that it's not the max GB that you have to pay attention to. It's the amount of files that it can register.
Ex: I had the same idea. I have about 8-9,000 music files. It's just easier to carry a copy of my library on a portable in that wonderfully deep storage area.
For the price, I bought a large GB because the deal was equal to smaller ones. I can carry other stuff for other computer uses if I desire. However, for the music only a max of 10,000 files will be read by the system. Don't let drive size be your primary factor. It's the number of files that you expect to access that matters.

The other points you have to be aware of:
1) It reads the standard FAT32 file format vs. the NTFS/MS?? format just for windows. However, you can always easily reformat a drive without harming anything. Many come with FAT32 as the standard like flash drives.

2) Some portable drives require extra power to work; they come generically with USB connectors with 2 adapters on the single cord. From experience, I've
tried 2 drives in my car. One of them powers fine with the USB connector alone that does both data and power. The other, however, requires addt'l power so both USB plugs must be used (one in the data/power port and the other in the power adapter below for which I have an addt'l power to USB adapter in it for this purpose).

3) The system reads folder/subfolder lists and the files in those. How you seek music will depend on how you are comfortable looking through. If tags work for you, then you are fine. If you prefer to search via folders that you have set up (as I do), then you need to remember to have folders set for reasonably easy searches on the content. Just check it out, and you'll get an easy feel for it. Playlists (as it says folder/playlists) appear to be only applicable from an ipod playlists and not anything you can make up with something like Wdw's Media players as those playlists are path specific.

I hope this information helps. Feel free to ask if anything is unclear or you want to know more. I've played with it and researched it a lot myself!
 

dietz4ibanez

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The trick is that it's not the max GB that you have to pay attention to. It's the amount of files that it can register.
Ex: I had the same idea. I have about 8-9,000 music files. It's just easier to carry a copy of my library on a portable in that wonderfully deep storage area.
For the price, I bought a large GB because the deal was equal to smaller ones. I can carry other stuff for other computer uses if I desire. However, for the music only a max of 10,000 files will be read by the system. Don't let drive size be your primary factor. It's the number of files that you expect to access that matters.

The other points you have to be aware of:
1) It reads the standard FAT32 file format vs. the NTFS/MS?? format just for windows. However, you can always easily reformat a drive without harming anything. Many come with FAT32 as the standard like flash drives.

2) Some portable drives require extra power to work; they come generically with USB connectors with 2 adapters on the single cord. From experience, I've
tried 2 drives in my car. One of them powers fine with the USB connector alone that does both data and power. The other, however, requires addt'l power so both USB plugs must be used (one in the data/power port and the other in the power adapter below for which I have an addt'l power to USB adapter in it for this purpose).

3) The system reads folder/subfolder lists and the files in those. How you seek music will depend on how you are comfortable looking through. If tags work for you, then you are fine. If you prefer to search via folders that you have set up (as I do), then you need to remember to have folders set for reasonably easy searches on the content. Just check it out, and you'll get an easy feel for it. Playlists (as it says folder/playlists) appear to be only applicable from an ipod playlists and not anything you can make up with something like Wdw's Media players as those playlists are path specific.

I hope this information helps. Feel free to ask if anything is unclear or you want to know more. I've played with it and researched it a lot myself!


Great info! Greatly appreciated Sir.

Hey if you get any time and you think about it maybe do a quick video of it in use! :waytogo:
 

dietz4ibanez

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My aurora doesn't even have that. I wish it did!

But I got a monster cable tape adapter.. It is actually pretty legit sound.
 

jecilop

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UPDATE: I have the Nav screen. "Navigating" the usb or hard drive can be very difficult with a lot of files as it will scroll through all of the files and not only show sub-folders. I can't imagine what it must be like if you don't have the Nav screen as I remember the player from test drives of models without the Nav system. Instead, a subfolder is like a heading then all files list that are in it and then the next subfolder and its files, etc.... This is just a heads up to everyone. ALSO, PLAYING TO THE END OF A FOLDER DOES NOT take it to the next folder. It starts over withing the folder or stops depending on your settings. It's not the most intuitive interface. Depending on what you want, you might be better buying a few cheap flash drives and putting music on them according to genre or whatever you want. Just a thought. This is input after months of using it now.
 

pieter

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I use 2 32G flash drives in my '13 Nox. The MyLink system will only 'keep track' of 2 music sources, either a phone and a flash drive, or 2 flash drives. You will notice every time you start the car and the USB input was last selected and used that it will go trhough indexing again. There are 2 stages to the indexing: the initial when you first plug the drive in and the system then stores that info. The 2nd stage is when you have added tunes and/or playlists the system will go through a comparison of the index points it has stored and checks them against the flash drive for changes. I suspect it just looks for the time stamp on the folders/playlists.

While you can certainly use genres and artists for tunes selection, my personal preference is to use playlists. I have my tunes in folders by artist with subfolders for the albums. The playlists are stored in the root artist folder. I generate my playlists using Media Monkey and also make sure the cover art is embedded in the music file in the same program. The m3u playlists shows the absolute drive path, including the drive letter but that has no impact on their usability in the car.

I've given thought to going to larger flash drives but suspect scrolling through playlists or artist folders will become a bit of a pain. Besides, it's amazing how much music you can carry with you in 2 32G flash drives. I've filled one, the other is less than 1/4 full and I'm running out of music both my wife and I will listen to.
 

pieter

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Update to the last post.

We're going on a road trip soon and I wanted to have a sufficient number of tunes to carry on a 3000km trip so that we wouldn't have to listen to same tune more than once. So, I picked up a 128G flash drive and formatted it FAT32. So far I have about 60G worth of music, roughly 7000 files, so I have a way to go before I reach the 10,000 song limit. I will make a some observations with respect to the size of the drive and how it influences the use of the myLink system in our '13 1LT.

It takes roughly 20-25 minutes to finish the initial indexing of the drive when you first plug it into the USB port. I can live with that, re-indexing when the car is started up again takes about 90 seconds, again, liveable. The performance/speed of the interface when you wish to go to a different playlist is quite a bit slower than it was with the 32G drives. I haven't finished filling the drive as yet and have thus far about 70 playlists on it and while I haven't timed it, it takes quite a while for the playlists to come up after selecting playlists from the main menu, and it takes a while for that list to populate once selected. Snappy it is not, I'll live with it though because i can carry so much music on one stick. With a USB drive this large I suspect I'll run up against the 10,000 song limit before I run out of storage capacity.
 

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