I've been working on this for a while now, and finally got finished last night.
I Have an Alpine CDA-9886 HU and I bought a 120GB notebook Drive (2.5 that requires no ext. power source) to hook to the HU's rear USB port.The reason that I couldn't just hook this thing up and use it are the folder limitations that Alpine imposes on you (most likely to save on mem space in the HU). Those Limitations are: 100 Folders in the root dir (max), 8 folders deep (max), 100 files per folder(max) and 500 total folders(max). The tough part about this is, that all of my files are stored on my computer by artist/album/filename.mp3. and I have 1300 artists.
I used a program called Media monkey to sync the external HD to my music collection, and it worked great. I did have to assign Genera's and Ratings to all of my files, but now If I add any new music to my collection, It will automatically add anything I deem "HD worthy" if I assign it a rating for 3.5 stars or higher, and remove anything I lower the rating on below 3.5 stars.
I now have 5 root folders with 114 folders split between them, averaging 83 files in each. I have a total of 8590 songs, 54.4 Gb of music on the drive, out of my 200+Gbs of total music.
When I first hook the Hard drive up it has to index (search) my drive that takes about 8 sec, and only happens when you first hook the drive up. It remembers where you left off, even when you unhook it. When you search for files of folders it is super fast, almost unbelievably so.
The only drawbacks to this are it does not recognize playlists, and I think it plays back in the order that the files were written to the drive (not an issue for me, I always use random and have my folders set up to genera's.)
2002 Ford Focus Sony CDX-GT410u Sony XT-100HD HD Tuner Stock speakers, no amp, no subs
I have same HU and a Maxtor 80GB HD USB
Getting no where fast
FAT32
Just 1 song in root & 1 folder with 1 double album
DEVICE ERROR
Have a 4:1 USB that is AC powered into 12V adapter
Have power
HDD has two USB conns one labeled "power" other "Power Data"
Tried both in 4:1 "DEVICE ERROR"
Tried "Power" only into 4:1 and "Power Data" into HU "DEVICE ERROR"
HDD works fine either way on my laptop
Help ?!? Maxtor i-800 said not supported on other than listed op systems
Alpine said nothing over 40 GB and relly no HDD, but up to 40 MIGHT work
Dark Ages !
I am using a Samsung portable HD. It came with a "Y" usb cable so you can plug it into 2 usb ports if you want, but I only use a cheap usb extension cable.