I thought I would start a thread on USB devices that are known to work. I have a Western Digital Passport 320gb HD (USB powered) that does not seem to work. I have heard of others having success with certain drives...why spend $60 on a 16gb thumb drive if there's a 100gb+ USB powered hard drive out there that is known to work 100%..? No iPod here......Thanks!

 

My wife has 250GB and 80GB Western Digitals. I can try those when my Fit comes in. If the drive is formatted the same as USB sticks (FAT or FAT32, I can't remember which), then I don't see why they won't work.

 

I agree with that the only thing I disagree with is unlike flash drives and ipods harddrives have moving parts. Very delicate moving parts at that. As the music is playing from the drive if you would hit a bump the arm that reads the platters could strike the platter and cause a decent amount of damage. Flash is no moving parts so all is well. I am sure you would probably get the skipping effects you got from some tape and cd players when using a hard drive. I would just be careful if I did that. I am not sure if mounting it would make a difference.

 

You may be in for a lot of skipping.

Some iPods (such as the Classic) do have hard drives in them. To counteract skipping, as well as save on battery life, they buffer data into memory and play the song from there.

As previously mentioned the drive could be damaged while it is running. Plextor makes "Shock-Proof" portable hard drives, but I can't speak to how effective/reliable they would be.

 

Thanks for all the comments guys...my WD320 Passport is FAT32 from the factory. It's possible that most thumb drives are FAT(16) so I'm moving my files off the WD320 now and will attempt to reformat to FAT. In DOS: format /FS:FAT x: where x = the drive letter. FAT has limitations to partition size (32GB), so unless the Fit can distinguish multiple partitions on one drive, I'm screwing myself out of 300 gigs. Of corse Newegg.com has 32gb flash drives for $65 shipped, but c'mon, I just bought a car - I'm broke!! Also, I agree that using it in the car for extended periods could definately damage the drive, so I guess I'll be the crash test dummy for now...

**Update - It's formatting...should be done in about.....5 hours!!

 

With Fat16 format you lose Long File Name (LFN) support. Thus you will be limited to 8.3 format for filenames. Without proper cluster size you will actually be limited to 2GB although I read (at MC MCSE: Windows XP Professional File Systems Overview ) you could get this up to 4GB within NT based OSes that are NT 4 or higher.

 

I just checked my Sandisk Cruzer 4GB flash drive, and it's formatted FAT32.

 

WELP......it doesn't work. I also tried formatting it to exFAT which is a file system also used in flash drives, and that didn't work either; "unsupported" message appears on Navi. If anyone gets a hard drive to work through the USB interface, let us know, thanks!

 

I have been using my hard drive every day. I have a Apricorn Aegis Mini hard drive. It is a 1.8" portable drive.
aegis mini usb
These are not cheap drives though. Here is link to 60gb version:
Amazon.com: Apricorn Aegis 60 GB Mini Ultra Portable Hard Drive with USB 2.0 Interface: Electronics

It is formatted Fat 32. I have used a 2.5" drive as well though I can't remember which one (I have some SATA and IDE ones). I will figure out this weekend.

 

For the money go on craigslist and find an older model iPod and stick it in there...

 

The only difference I can see between your Aegis and my WD320 is the 1.8" form factor vs my 2.5", plus yours seems to have additional shock protection (big plus!), but I can't understand how the form factor is the determining factor on wheather or not it will work in the Fit. If it's just a "brand" thing, I'll pick up the Aegis 2.5" 120G version for $74 from Amazon! Let us know if you can get your other 2.5" drives to work, Thanks! So far we have confirmed working:

1. Apricorn Aegis 60GB 1.8" mini ultra portable hard drive

 

Try formatting the drive again. I had this problem with my flash where I had to reformat it a few times and mess around with the files that are on the drive until it worked. Also try not to put a label on the drive I'm not sure if this has an effect but better safe then sorry.

 

My two cents. I'm a USB storage guy so perhaps I can take a crack at explaining some stuff.

For the 320GB HDD, keep your FAT32 formatting. I'm pretty sure that it supports both. I see Sheepnutz has tried his SanDisk drive so that means FAT32 is supported (only FAT is retarded, that;s a max of 4GB or something). The issue with your drive not working may be the amount of current that your 320GB HDD requests from the USB host (the Fit, in this case). Typically all root hubs allow up to 500mA. Devices may request up to 500mA as well and in their handshake the host determines whether it can allow the device to enumerate or not based on its current budget. I wonder if that's the deal. I found this at WD Passport Pocket Drive WD60W028. The drive consumes up to 300mA. I wonder if it requests for more during enumeration.

Either way, flash is the way to go. HDDs are too susceptible to shock (even they have RAM buffers - to someone who was talking about iPods. But you're right iPods are designed to work with some shock)

Also, to those buying old iPods, I have a 4th gen 20GB that I had hoped not to replace since it works just fine (yes i know, its text, no color, no video but it rocks) and I cannot use it. Buy 5th gen or later. Check manual pg 130

 

I haven't tried the drive, since I don't take delivery of my Fit until tomorrow, I just popped it into the computer to see how it was formatted.

 

I tried re-formating it back to FAT32 and after a few hours it said the disk was too large. So I had to use Vista which only showed the option of NTFS or exFAT, so it's now NTFS with no volume label...I guess I'm kind of stuck now......

 

I guess the question is how many mA's does the Fit USB output.....perhaps some drives need more mA's than others, which could cause an issue..?

 

Reako, this might help: 2000/XP FAT32 Limit . . . www.allensmith.net

I just used one of my many flash devices yesterday, 16GB, 8GB works like a charm, even with U3 on it (the CD ROM emulation on U3 confuses many other devices like large printer/copier/scanners at the office).

So thinking over all the non-optical media options, I figured that the easiest way to play music is to put select organized folders on a 8 or 16GB drive and just plug it in. My 8.7GB of music will play for over 5 days non-stop, I'm never going to need that much in the Fit, nor am I patient enough to navigate it all.

So 320GB is out of the question for regular use, you can do it as an experiment.

The only advantage the iPod offers is the use of playlists, otherwise copying the iTunes music library over to a flash drive works just as well. On the flash drive, playlists would mean creating a second copy of the desired songs in a folder that represents the playlist, not very efficient.

 

Sorry to stay on topic, the following worked for me:
1> SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8GB
2> SanDisk Cruzer Micro 16GB

 

Hmmm, I just tried 2 of my 2.5" external drives and they did not work. One was PATA and one was SATA. I know I tried a 2.5" at one point and it worked ... I wish I remembered which one. It might be one that is now in notebook. i will keep you posted if I figure it out.

 

The ipod has a 1.8" hard drive. I guess that might be the reason...