Has anyone tried this? Walmart has a 1TB USB 2.0/3.0 on sale. Its a spinning disc type not solid state.


I saw a few other threads where people are using low profile jump drives with success. I'm unsure if the car USB can support a HDD at all, or the power requirements. If its 2.0 compatible I don't see why not.




Thoughts?

 

I have tried to use my HDD with my new Fit. Unfortunately I couldnt get it to read anything. Now its also a USB 3.0 HDD, but I don't have much faith with a 2.0 drive.

 

Why do you say this? No faith in a 2.0 device? Makes sense as the USB ports in the Fit are 2.0 compliant only. A USB 3.0 device will not operate.

 

The reason I say this is like an older computer, it can still use a 3.0 device. Just not as fast. Maybe an portable SSD could work? I can't test that.

 

I agree USB 2.0 is an older interface, but never had any reliability issues with it. If it was USB 1.1 then I'd be worried ha!


A SSD could work, but I'm guessing no because the computer OS in conjunction with the drivers employ a "write leveling" algorithm that a static firmware device does not normally perform. I'm thinking a standard portable HDD formatted to FAT32 without any file management software stands a better chance at compatibility.

 

I'd be concerned with premature failure of the drive in the car. The disk spinning while the car is moving could potentially damage it.

 

Techie and computer information systems degree holder checking in.

1. A USB 3.0 drive will work just fine in the FIT's 2.0 ports it will just run slower.
2. A hard disk (spinning platters) is not recommended in cars because vibrations and bumps and the worst thing that can happen to hard drives. You can do it but don;t expect the drive to lat much longer than a year or two depending on driving conditions.
3. A solid state drive is recommended because it does not have moving parts.
4. A solid state drive's firmware will handle most things related to drive health and even if the drive is not healthy you are reading 3-10MB files very slowly, it will handle it extremely well.
5. The biggest issue you will find when locating USB hard drives is to find one that only requires 500ma of power. USB 1.1 and 2.0 only supply 500mA@5V DC (milliamps at 5 volts DC which is 2.5 watts) of power, that's why many USB 2.0 portable drives use 2 USB plugs or a wall (110v AC to whatever DC the drive needs) adapter. This is different with 3.0 because 3.0 can use up to 100 watts. This will be your primary barricade of using a hard drive or SSD in the FIT.
6. Make sure the drive is formatted FAT32, they usually come pre-formatted to FAT32 so no worries there. If it's not formatted FAT32 then Google how to do it.

Some other things to consider are that 128GB flash drives are cheaper than 128GB SSDs (I only count reputable brands in that statement).

128GB flash drive=$50
128GB external SSD=$100 for USB 3.0 won't work in FIT (power)

256GB flash drive=$120
256GB external SSD=$150

512GB Flash Drives=$400+


If you want my $0.02 buy one or more 128GB flash drives.

 

How much music do you have? I think I have about 22gb of music and it seems like a lot. If you have enough music to need a 1Tb drive, I would be really impressed.

 

I'd be a bit surprised if the Fit's head unit could reliably cope with cataloging and navigating 1 TB worth of music files.

Some quick math suggests that 1TB is about 9-10 months of non-stop 24x7 playing 320 kbps MP3 (or whatever) files. That seems a bit much for car use; you'd go at least a million miles before being forced to repeat a song (and probably two or three million miles if you aren't stuck in the city all the time).

 

Oh I have nowhere near 1TB of music. I merely saw it on sale at walmart and was curious if a hard drive (spinning or ssd) would even work in the fit. I have around 30gb of music. Seems the power requirements would be too steep to power the hard drive in the car.

 

He probably just saw the 1TB on sale and used it as an example, not that he would actually fill it.

Another reason to just get one of the 64 or 128GB flash drives.

 

Oh God no I love music a lot (my screen name gives it away obviously) but not that much to buy that amount of music...legally :-P I think a 128GB flash drive is in my future!

 

Will you be able to play something? Probably. Is it a good idea? Probably not. The manual specifically warns that using HDD drives with the Fit can damage the drives.

 

The manual also states you can use an iPod Classic, which has a spinning drive. For the hell of it I plugged in an old 5th gen iPod with a 30gb hdd. It worked, but usability wasn't any better than a flash drive.

 

I know my friends civic (2014) had issues with USB Drives larger than 8gb, does the fit have this issue?

 

I do not know as I have not tested it (I use bluetooth streaming, thank you T-Mobile for not counting streaming against my data) but I can attest that many electronics that have MP3 support don't work with large libraries.

You could have 3 files MANY hours long at 2GB each and it would have no issue, but have 3000 files and it slows down or has issues. It depends if the system tries to compile the files into a database to allow searching or whatever. If the system just reads the files themselves then it should work with up to the maximum for FAT32.