I am about to order a smallish (50 to 100 gb) ultra portable external usb hdd. New egg has an eagle tech 80 gb drive for 33 bucks now. I was looking at getting a 32 gb flash drive, but 'real' ones are about 60 to 75 still.

These drives on average require 5v, but I'm not clear what the HU puts out.

Would it be safe to say that 5400 rpm and 1.8" or 2.5" are all pretty much safe to use for this?

 

I don't know about 1.8" one but my 2.5" SATA portable HDD works fine. Plus my phone (Sidekick LX) which requires 3.7V works fine with the USB connection so I'm assuming anything requires 12v and less works fine. Hope this info helps

 

I bought a 250 GB hdd from newegg for about 39 bucks. I put every music folder I could find on my computer on it, and I still have about 200 GB left. I've now gotta get the process started for converting all my cd's into mp3. ZZZZZZ

So far, its worked out great- the drive needs to be reformatted to fat 32, and I forget which file allocation size setting I used. (I think 512) The stock radio has very fast response, even the initial connection. It only says "USB Load" for 2 to 4 seconds. I can quickly jump to any of the 50+ folders I have on it now. When you turn on the radio again, it picks up exactly where the song left off, even in the middle of a song.

This is the best solution I've ever had for audio in a car- no more dealing with mp3 cds! I especially like that I can drag a folder of music (I used nested folders) and the HU will treat each nested folder as a standalone. (my other radios couldn't see nested folders in mp3 cds) For example, I have a folder named for a band, and that band has about 40 live shows, the date of the show being the name of the folder. On the HU, it correctly shows the info in the text area.

Now I just gotta get a sub hooked up, and I'm set.