Max USB size

[Rob123]

After much playing today trying to get a 2TB external HD to work in the car (Columbus system) and failing, I've been playing around with the HD's partitions and found that 1TB works, and anything over that doesnt.

My HD is currently formatted in NTFS, but did try it in exFAT while it was still set to 2TB.

OK, I doubt i'll get anywhere near 500GB, nevermind 1 or 2TB, but I've now set the HD to have 2 partitions, both 1TB each, 1 for Car Media, 1 as Computer Backup.

Hope this info may help anyone considering using a USB HD

[Shermo]

Even with FLAC music I think 1TB should be enough Thats around 2000 lossless albums!

 

But thanks for the info! I'm thinking about just getting an 128Gb SD card, that should be more than enough for me plus I remember reading something about it having problems with USB devices and forgetting what track it was on and needing reconnecting? Although that might have been a Bolero?

[Rob123]

I've gone totally overboard with mine - 2 x 128GB SD cards, plus USB Harddrive when needed.

I have Columbus though, which plays videos, so I have videos saved which obviously takes up a lot of space

[florino]

When do you look at videos? They should only work when the car is stopped.

[Neily03]

When do you look at videos? They should only work when the car is stopped.

It does only work when stationary but sometimes it's nice to have something watch

[Rob123]

Traffic jams, waiting for the missus somewhere. Also, stuff like stand up comedy and programme I can 'see' in my head when driving and like listening too, like family guy, one foot in the grave etc, all make boring 2 hour drives to and from work, much less boring

[Rob123]

To add to this, after partitioning my 2tb HD into 2 x 1tb partitions, both Partitions show in the car, similar to having 2 different files.

In theory then, you could use any size HD, split into multiple partitions no bigger than 1tb, and you could use all available space.

Not that anyone is likely to need that much space...

[selector]

hello

i was interested by your post because i can't find how to make my amundsen read my 1TB usb disk

 

it is formatted in NTFS, which should be supported as showed in the amundsen user guide

 

but when i plug it in, the usb feature doesn't activate, like it does when i insert a usb key for example.

 

do you have any idea of what the problem could be ?

 

thanks for your reply

 

anthony

 

(sorry for my english)

[gullyg]

hello

i was interested by your post because i can't find how to make my amundsen read my 1TB usb disk

 

it is formatted in NTFS, which should be supported as showed in the amundsen user guide

 

but when i plug it in, the usb feature doesn't activate, like it does when i insert a usb key for example.

 

do you have any idea of what the problem could be ?

 

thanks for your reply

 

anthony

 

(sorry for my english)

 

Admundsen doesn't read NTFS, or at least not on SD cards and I'd suspect USB as well.  The info that's in some of the Admundsen manuals are totally wrong, basically an out and out lie.

 

Try formatting as FAT32.

[selector]

thank you for your reply gullyg

 

I'm going to test my HDD formatted in FAT32, but this will force me to create several 32 GB partitions (FAT32 is limited to 32 GB partitions) 

 

:((

 

anthony

[gullyg]

thank you for your reply gullyg

 

I'm going to test my HDD formatted in FAT32, but this will force me to create several 32 GB partitions (FAT32 is limited to 32 GB partitions) 

 

:((

 

anthony

 

 

Fat32 isn't limited to 32gb partitions - however I think windows limits formatting through the gui to drives/partitions under 32gb.

 

Instructions on formatting were covered on a previous thread

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/297358-sd-card-formatting/

[selector]

nice link gullyg, thank you

do you know what is the limit of FAT32 ?

i mean, do you think it would be possible to format a 1GB disk in FAT32 ?

 

anthony

[mannyo]

Yes you can format a 1TB disk as FAT32 but you'll need to use a command prompt in Windows rather than the built in tools. Or if your a MAC user then just use the normal Disk utility. Only drawback of FAT32 is the 4GB file size limit, but thats not a problem for music.

 

Or try this

 

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/format-fat32-drives-beyond-32gb-limit/

[fabdavrav]

Windows hates converting large drives to fat32..I use Easus partion manager software, the free edition. This is very good for moving, merging, converting & re formatting......

[geco]

Hello everybody.

 

Looking at the posts above I see that to work properly with Amundsen, an external USB disk must be:

- USB 2.0, not 3.0

- FAT32, not NTSF nor ExFAT

 

So far, no "official" max size allowed indication.

 

Selector, have you successfully formatted your disk in FAT32?

Does anybody else tried a 1TB?

 

I'm planning to buy one with the biggest possible size for my Amundsen.

 

Thanks very much in advance for your answers.

 

Greetings from rainy Milan,

Giorgio

[gullyg]

Be careful with extremely large drives.

My experiance with USB hdds and head units is the seek time to go through 10s of thousands of files and folders will cause the head unit to become almost unusable.

Although I've not tried it with the admundsen as I don't listen to music much. Tend to use podcasts over bluetooth or the radio.

[geco]

Thanks for your advice gullyg.

I didn't consider that a very large number of files could overstress the head unit.

I'm temporarily using a 150 GB with "only" 6000+ files and I don't see any issue.

My plan is to buy a 1 TB hdd.

Anybody who's using such HDD on Amundsen? Ever experienced the problem described by gullyg?

[h3srr]

Rob123

Sorry to be a bit thick, but where do you plug your USB drive into? I had the impression that the USB socket could only be used for changing devises!

Steve

[mannyo]

USB socket should accept the drive, its not just charging.