External Hard drive music collection for RCD 510

[gavs]

Hi all,

I've done a search and after 5 pages of results, no answer to my question that I could find.

Just wondering if anyone has had experience enough with using an external hard drive to store their music collection on, then plug it into the MDI for an RCD 510.

I had around about 20GB of music installed initially and the music was able to be read pretty easily but last night I did a huge dump (18000 songs) and now, it won't read. I find this very amusing because my mum's supposedly piece of crap Holden commodore audio system reads it no worries (and is far more intuative and nicer to use than the RCD unit!) yet when plugged into the Polo, nothinig. The hard drive is recognised but I cannot access the music folders.

Any help would be appreciated.

Ta

[team_v]

Hi all,

I've done a search and after 5 pages of results, no answer to my question that I could find.

Just wondering if anyone has had experience enough with using an external hard drive to store their music collection on, then plug it into the MDI for an RCD 510.

I had around about 20GB of music installed initially and the music was able to be read pretty easily but last night I did a huge dump (18000 songs) and now, it won't read. I find this very amusing because my mum's supposedly piece of crap Holden commodore audio system reads it no worries (and is far more intuative and nicer to use than the RCD unit!) yet when plugged into the Polo, nothinig. The hard drive is recognised but I cannot access the music folders.

Any help would be appreciated.

Ta

Maybe something to do with the memory format (FAT32 etc)
Otherwise i have no idea but any more than 200 songs and you are never going to listen to them all anyway so it seems a tad redundant to have that capacity.

[Transporter]

Hi all,

I've done a search and after 5 pages of results, no answer to my question that I could find.

Just wondering if anyone has had experience enough with using an external hard drive to store their music collection on, then plug it into the MDI for an RCD 510.

I had around about 20GB of music installed initially and the music was able to be read pretty easily but last night I did a huge dump (18000 songs) and now, it won't read. I find this very amusing because my mum's supposedly piece of crap Holden commodore audio system reads it no worries (and is far more intuative and nicer to use than the RCD unit!) yet when plugged into the Polo, nothinig. The hard drive is recognised but I cannot access the music folders.

Any help would be appreciated.

Ta

Maybe you have too many folders there. Try to reduce the no. of the folders.

[brad]

Otherwise i have no idea but any more than 200 songs and you are never going to listen to them all anyway so it seems a tad redundant to have that capacity.

huh? I have about 1000 songs on my player. They get a regular run through.

[Corey_R]

Maybe you have too many folders there. Try to reduce the no. of the folders.

I was going to actually ask about the opposite. You haven't put 18,000 files in 1 folder or something have you?

My MP3 collection of just the CDs I own is 65.1GB, 8,890 files, 892 folders. With my RNS510 I use a 64GB USB key - which as you know only holds ~60GB, so not everything is on it at once, but it's always within 100MB of full.

The folder levels are no more than 4 deep, but it's most just MP3\Artist\Album (only 4 deep if it's MP3\Artist "Sideprojects"\Side Project\Album)
Additionally, no "complete path\file.mp3" character length is more than 256 characters, with no individual folder or file name more than 64 characters.

I'm not exactly sure WHAT the limitations of the RCD510 or RNS510 are, but I've used A LOT of different hardware devices, storage devices and software over the years and there have always been various limitations on things such as that - some due to the file systems (FAT, FAT32, NTFS etc), some due to the device/firmware/software. Literally, I've been using MP3s since you had to play them from a command line, rip CDs using a command line program, and encode them from OS/2 3.0's command line because Dos/Windows 95 was too slow.

Anyway... the RNS510 with this situation worths fine for me. I may convert to a HDD soon though, as I get annoyed to have to remove a CD every time I add one.

[Corey_R]

Guys, can we for once please leave personal habits/tastes out of a thread? If you don't listen to music, that's fine, but lets not fill up a thread with crap rather than answering the question that the OP has asked. Cheers

[gavs]

Maybe something to do with the memory format (FAT32 etc)
Otherwise i have no idea but any more than 200 songs and you are never going to listen to them all anyway so it seems a tad redundant to have that capacity.

That is true but what if I want to listen to a specific album out of my music collection, -take muddy waters for example- which I don't have on my iPhone because of space limitations. instead of having to delete songs that I regularly listen to everyday at work (so add another 6+ hours of music there too) to put said album on, I can just leave on the external hard drive.

I was going to actually ask about the opposite. You haven't put 18,000 files in 1 folder or something have you?

Nope, each artist has it's own folder and in each folder (mostly) is broken down into the specific albums. And yes, it is FAT32 format, it worked yesterday morning, loaded the big bunch on there and now it doesn't. Might have to sort out all the folders, think there is 1 with 2000+ in it of what I don't really listen to.

Guys, can we for once please leave personal habits/tastes out of a thread? If you don't listen to music, that's fine, but lets not fill up a thread with crap rather than answering the question that the OP has asked. Cheers

Thank you Corey, not after opinons here about what I should and shouldn't listen too and how I should or shouldn't listen to / store it. Hell, if I wanted to load up 180000 songs of Scandanavian Death Metal I should be able to without judgement, I just want it to work.

Thanks

[brad]

Can you do a roll back & see if it works again? Then increase 20-30 folders at a time?

[Corey_R]

I would recommend a roll back too.... but I wouldn't bother with the 20 to 30 at a time.
Start with 50% of the files/folder. If that works, add another 10% etc. If it isn't something silly like some corrupt file, or that 2000 songs in a folder, then there could be a limit of 10,000 songs/files/folders etc that the system has.

[gavs]

Righto, come to think of it, I will try it to 32 GB (because that's what the RCD 510 has as an SDHC card limit) then go to 50 GB. If it still works, will keep adding more.

I'll also break down the folders more, see if that helps

[Corey_R]

The RNS510 also has a 32GB SDHC limit. But that's the SDHC specification...

[gavs]

Ok, update.

I loaded 25 GB onto the hard drive, plugged it in and it worked no worries

I then loaded another 10GB on and.... It still worked.

So I loaded all of my mapping stuff on too and..... no joy. I then moved the mapping stuff into it's own folder and it worked again!

Seems that it doesn't like mixed file types in with the music, especially *.flac audi files, that was the problem. One 6 minute song was 34MB!

[Corey_R]

That's good news gavs.

Btw, dArK5HaD0w made this post which extracts part fo the RNS510 manual to explain some of the limitations. This includes folder depth, as well as file name/folder name length limitations like I expected.

So it could still be that one of those things you moved around were breaching the limitations:

as corey_r already mentioned, you can store MP3s on you rns510 hdd.
u can also store WMA files on it.

u just gotta make sure u meet the requirements for the MP3 data and data carrier:-
• CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW with a capacity of 650 MB and 700 MB.
• 4.7 GB DVDs and up to 8.5 GB Double Layer DVDs.
• The CDs/DVDs must correspond to the ISO 9660 Level 2 standard as well as the Joliet data system (single and multi-session).
• Data names must be no longer than 64 characters.
• The list structure is restricted to a depth of 8 list levels.
• The name of the artist, the album and the title of the reproduced MP3 data can be shown as ID3 tag, providing this information is available. The list and data name will be displayed if there is no ID3 tag.
• WMA data (Windows Media Audio) can also be played even if the copyright is additionally protected by the DRM procedure (Digital Rights Management). Such WMA data is not supported by the unit.
• The operation and behaviour of playable WMA data conforms to the MP3 data and will not be described further.

Bit rate (data flow per time unit)
• The system supports MP3 data with bit rates of 32 to 320 KB/s as well as MP3 data with variable bit rates.
• The indicated playing time data with variable bit rates is not reliable.

[gavs]

Yeah, indeed I did read that, but interestingly enough, the exert regarding "mass storage devices" does not specify any limit. Why? Because it can only be accessed through the MDI input, all other formats are plugged directly into the RCD 510 itself The MDI reads the mass storage device, then works out what files have music in them and lets you access them.

So, for anyone else out there, for $50, you can pick up a 320GB portable hard drive, plug it into the MDI port of your RCD / RNS 510 and take your whole music collection with you, just don't include *.flac files with *.mp3's!

[Spydar]

There appears to be limits to how many files it can read in a folder.
I am using an old 160 gig hard drive in the car and some folders which have like over 2000 songs in will only read to around the first 600-700or so files. I have had to split some of these large folders so there are less songs in them.