USB Hard Drive - questions and recommendation advice

I have used a 500GB "G|Drive slim" that had been sold in an Apple store. It's a traditional hard drive (non-SSD) that has worked without issue, even with the lower power offered by the Model S's ports. That said, I'd probably be trying an external SSD drive if I had to do it today.

I've got a 64GB USB flash drive and figure that it can hold about 14,000 songs. That's more than 858 hours of music . . . or about 5 weeks of listening time if I never slept. That's plenty for me.

Format any drive to fat32 using the tool I linked to in this thread:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/show...SB-thumb-drive?p=246748&viewfull=1#post246748

I use two 32gb San Disk Cruzers:
Amazon.com: SanDisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 32GB USB Flash Drive (SDCZ33-032G-B35): Computers Accessories

At $19 a pop, how can you go wrong?!

Even more affordable are the 8gb sticks, which I'll use for my version of a playlist. Plug one of each in each port.

I long ago, ripped all my music into iTunes. From there you can just drag and drop your music to the USB sticks as desired. Also have it in iCloud, which automatically upgrades it all to the highest bit rate to 256+ or something. Having it in the cloud essentially allows me to play all of my music through the phone or iPad (via Bluetooth) as long as I have cell connection.

Then I use this for charging devices via the 12v plug:
Amazon.com: Scosche USBC202M Dual 10 Watt (2.1A) USB Car Charger works with iPhone 5, 5S and 5C: Cell Phones Accessories

SCW-Greg said:

...
I long ago, ripped all my music into iTunes. From there you can just drag and drop your music to the USB sticks as desired. Also have it in iCloud, which automatically upgrades it all to the highest bit rate to 256+ or something. Having it in the cloud essentially allows me to play all of my music through the phone or iPad (via Bluetooth) as long as I have cell connection.

Then I use this for charging devices via the 12v plug:
Amazon.com: Scosche USBC202M Dual 10 Watt (2.1A) USB Car Charger works with iPhone 5, 5S and 5C: Cell Phones Accessories

Click to expand...

== What Greg Says: If you have an iPhone, iTunes match is the way to go. You don’t need a cell connection though, as you can selectivly download the music to your iPhone or iPad for offline listening. Otherwise, a couple 32Gb Thumb drives will do the trick (I would still use iTunes to do the ripping and cataloguing of your music).

Go with at least a 500GB 'portable' (2.5" laptop) hard drive if you want to carry your whole collection with you. I've been using a 750GB drive for over a year to store my >60K track collection without issue. I use MediaMonkey to sync playlists (recommend "Accessible Tracks" to sync everything) to the hard drive.

I use a 64GB hard drive formatted with the Linux EXT4 filesystem and have ripped my CDs to lossless FLAC. Some of my CDs are HDCD and I have a tool that converts them to 24-bit FLAC files which play just fine.

Toshiba USB drive 1 TB. You want a USB drive that is powered via USB connection (vs. separate power adapter). With today's prices, there is no point in getting less than a full TB.

Most important point is Aaronw's… to get best sound out of Tesla stereo, you need to rip to lossless format e.g., FLAC. I've never before heard a stereo where difference between MP3 and lossless is so significant. FLAC will also take up more drive space, which is another reason for at least a TB, especially for 3,000 CDs, and a reason that the memory sticks are insufficient (for a collection of any size). Also, if you get into the large memory sticks (say 128 GB), they cost as much as a 1 TB USB drive anyway.

Re-reading your post: you're a vinyl and CD guy! You are going to HATE compressed (MP3) audio through the Tesla's system. Before you waste time ripping 3,000 CDs, do this test: rip a couple of your favorites onto a small memory stick in both MP3 and FLAC format. Listen. That exercise will convince you to do FLAC.

If you want any help with how to rip to FLAC, PM me. With 3,000 CDs, you may want to find a local high school student you can pay to do it… it's gonna take forever.

In my case I also got the Reus Audio (Reus Systems) upgrade which made a noticeable improvement in the sound and it sounds crisper and more clean now. I have yet to understand why it takes so long to rip a CD compared to reading all of the data off of a data CD. There are many tools available for ripping CDs to flac. I have one where I just pop in a CD and it automatically rips it. I keep a stack of CDs by my computer and just pop in the next one on the stack when it finishes. The only issue I can think of is FAT32 does not scale well for large hard drives.

In a somewhat related arena, I was starting to get excited about Neil Young's Pono music player (PONO) as a vehicle for playing high-quality audio music in the Tesla. Unfortunately I saw on one of the FAQs that it will not provide output through the USB, only through a 1/8" output jack, which is notably absent in the Model S.

Though I think I can still justify getting a PONO, as it will force me to collect and maintain FLACs, which I can then just plug in with a USB, as described here.

If your songs are in folders, think iTunes, you ave to keep changing folders with no flow from folder to folder.
Can that be fixed?

langhornereid said:

If your songs are in folders, think iTunes, you ave to keep changing folders with no flow from folder to folder.
Can that be fixed?

Click to expand...

I had another device with that problem and I solved it by using a script that created symbolic links to all songs in a single directory, then I used that directory. I also did links based on genre, etc. I don't know if this works in the Model S, but a thought nonetheless.

JakeP said:

In a somewhat related arena, I was starting to get excited about Neil Young's Pono music player (PONO) as a vehicle for playing high-quality audio music in the Tesla. Unfortunately I saw on one of the FAQs that it will not provide output through the USB, only through a 1/8" output jack, which is notably absent in the Model S.

Click to expand...

I have a Pono on order and noticed that you could "side-load" songs to it using a USB port. Implication is that the Pono will be recognized as a hard drive, which may mean that you could use it with the Model S just like a USB hard drive.