[mspeed1LE]

Originally Posted by chris227

Been running a portable HDD for my music since 2016. I use bit a 500gig and a 1.5 TB and both work fine through USB.

Sweet! Thanks!

[Rayvan]

Originally Posted by mspeed1LE

Any luck?

My 2 TB did not work.

It spins up, and the light starts blinking in a strange pattern, but it never started playing the .mp3 files that were on the drive.

I waited maybe 30 seconds. Maybe it would play eventually.....?

[SilverCamaroVert]

USB 2.0 can provide about .5 amp (500ma) at 5v. 3.5" spinning hard drives take too much power to spin up and usually require external power. 2.5" drives will mostly work as they take less power. The larger in capacity the 2.5" drive, the less likely it will be able to be run on 500ma given the heavier platters and additional heads. SSD takes FAR less power and would also work fine at any size but get unreasonably expensive over 500GB for this application.

I would think a 1TB 2.5" spinning drive would run fine.

The only remaining question is if there is an addressable limit. That depends on the code of the system and partition format. Most mobile media like thumb drives and external drives are formatted FAT32 which has a partition limit of 2TB. I suspect the system runs on linux (at least I hope it does) so it might recognize ext3/4 partitions which can be much larger. NTFS is likely not going to work as it is a Microsoft format.

I don't have my car yet so I'm making assumptions about the system. It may have usb3 which is good to 900ma. Your manual may say more about the supported formats.

[drfeelgood]

Originally Posted by SilverCamaroVert

USB 2.0 can provide about .5 amp (500ma) at 5v. 3.5" spinning hard drives take too much power to spin up and usually require external power. 2.5" drives will mostly work as they take less power. The larger in capacity the 2.5" drive, the less likely it will be able to be run on 500ma given the heavier platters and additional heads. SSD takes FAR less power and would also work fine at any size but get unreasonably expensive over 500GB for this application.

I would think a 1TB 2.5" spinning drive would run fine.

The only remaining question is if there is an addressable limit. That depends on the code of the system and partition format. Most mobile media like thumb drives and external drives are formatted FAT32 which has a partition limit of 2TB. I suspect the system runs on linux (at least I hope it does) so it might recognize ext3/4 partitions which can be much larger. NTFS is likely not going to work as it is a Microsoft format.

I don't have my car yet so I'm making assumptions about the system. It may have usb3 which is good to 900ma. Your manual may say more about the supported formats.

thank you for that input, very helpful

[mspeed1LE]

Well the HD works just fine in my car however the display regularly shows in the "Artist" field *Unknown*.

What fields in the individual file properties (Windows 10 File Explorer) need to be filled in to work with the Chevy System?

[mspeed1LE]

Never mind the above. Did a little exploring with the system and found the "Folder View" option.
All is good in the tunes department now.

[DevilsReject97]

Originally Posted by SilverCamaroVert

The only remaining question is if there is an addressable limit. That depends on the code of the system and partition format. Most mobile media like thumb drives and external drives are formatted FAT32 which has a partition limit of 2TB. I suspect the system runs on linux (at least I hope it does) so it might recognize ext3/4 partitions which can be much larger. NTFS is likely not going to work as it is a Microsoft format.

I don't have my car yet so I'm making assumptions about the system. It may have usb3 which is good to 900ma. Your manual may say more about the supported formats.

You'll need to format things for exfat now, mainly as this is now the hybrid between FAT32/NTFS. Most usb drives are already formatted for this anyways, but if you need to format anything that's an actual hard drive, you'll need it to be formatted for this.

Exfat also doesn't have the file size restrictions that FAT32 does. There is also a GPL for Linux so it does work within that operating system as well.

Ultimately, I would say buy a 256GB or something similar in size flash drive, as it will more than accommodate your music selection. They're generally pretty cheap, take up very little space, and least likely to be stolen from your car as you dont have to worry about it being hidden. Mine is so small you wouldnt even notice if you didn't actually look for it. I speak from experience, as I have well over 400 GB of music myself..

Originally Posted by mspeed1LE

Well the HD works just fine in my car however the display regularly shows in the "Artist" field *Unknown*.

What fields in the individual file properties (Windows 10 File Explorer) need to be filled in to work with the Chevy System?

Could be a couple of factors really, but most likely, its whatever medium that was used to create the file. When ripping music from a CD to create a .wav, .mp3, .mp4, etc... the programs usually connect to an online database and populate the information based on what the CD tells it. If this information is not present, or it is ripped in a different manner, that information can be missing. It's also possible the formatting of the drive could be part of the issue.

The metadata tag (which is the info in the track that tells you what song/artist/album/etc) is often missing in ripped music that's downloaded from online. It's also usually modified to advertise places you got it from (if you didn't buy it).

You can use applications like this one to modify the data: https://www.mp3tag.de/en/

You can also view it to confirm the data is even correct or present.

[DevilsReject97]

Originally Posted by mspeed1LE

Never mind the above. Did a little exploring with the system and found the "Folder View" option.
All is good in the tunes department now.

Was replying when you posted....but that is also a possibility too Congrats on finding out it was something very simple.