Any "unpowered" USB hubs that work wiith two drives to support USB Music & Tesla Cam?

[DCEV]

I currently have one USB drive with two partitions to support USB Media and TeslaCam for Sentry and Dashcam storage but I am quickly realizing I need two separate drives.

I have nearly 225GB of music so that drive would see very little data writing and should last a very long time and I'd like to keep that drive separate.

Meanwhile the TeslaCam folder will see many data writes causing drive degredation and when that happens I'd just like to be able to replace the TeslaCam drive without having to redo my entire music collection. Plus I can then get a WIFI drive so I can view TeslaCam folder videos any time, transfer videos, and delete old sentry videos.

So this necessitates a USB hard that allows two drives to be plugged in so I can maintain individual drives for music and TeslaCam. Has anyone does this? To keep "cable clutter" to a minimum, can two drives be supported with a USB splitter type cable, essentially creating an unpowered USB hub with two USB data ports?

Appreciate any ideas on the best way to do this!

The reason I'm trying to figure out a WIFI solution is because I feel plugging and unplugging the drive will eventually lead to data corruption between both the media player and Sentry/Dashcam potentially having files open in the USB drive. All the WIFI drives I have found do not support two FAT32 partitions within the same drive hence the need to get a WIFI drive that supports one FAT32 partition for TeslaCam.

 

[M3BlueGeorgia]

Partition your USB stick, which is what we do, though I'm not sure how you get to 225GB of music as my wife has almost 1,000 songs and that uses less than 8 GB.

We use a USB splitter, not a hub. Both sides of the split provide power but only one supports full functionality.

 

[DCEV]

I've already setup 2 FAT32 partitions in one drive and for the reasons I explained, I'm looking for a better solution.

Your music library is probably not high resolution. I've invested a lot of effort in building a high resolution music library of mostly lossless FLAC media so this is why my music library is around 225GB. The effort is totally worth it for me as my music sound sublime with hte upgraded audio system in the car. But this is al beside the point as I want to put the TeslaCam partition in a separate partition so if it wear out sooner, I can just replace that without my music drive being affected and also I can then manage the TeslaCam partition by deleting and viewing files without having to remove the USB drive.

If anyone has found an unpowered dual USB splitter that allows full data functionality ob both ports, please let me know.

I guess otherwise I can look for the smaller available powered USB hub to connect the two data drives and the additional cable for the phone dock.

 

[BluestarE3]

You're better off with a compact USB hub vs. a splitter cable. A hub gives you more flexibility. Most of the splitters I've seen have data/power on one leg and only power on the other.

 

[StaticDischarge]

I'm using the unpowered hub below with an SSD for the dashcam and either one or two usb flash drives for music depending on the day. The remaining hub port is plugged in to the charger wire; it works but is a bit slow. The second car usb port is plugged into the other charger wire, it's much faster. I've notice that the dashcam will sometimes not appear on the screen. Unplugging and replugging the hub fixes it. Works but is not perfect.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UMVFJW6

 

[DCEV]

I'm using the unpowered hub below with an SSD for the dashcam and either one or two usb flash drives for music depending on the day. The remaining hub port is plugged in to the charger wire; it works but is a bit slow. The second car usb port is plugged into the other charger wire, it's much faster. I've notice that the dashcam will sometimes not appear on the screen. Unplugging and replugging the hub fixes it. Works but is not perfect.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UMVFJW6

Thanks! Seems like I should look for the smaller possible USB hub that is powered as that will offer full speed data capabilities to each port.

I guess ideally I should look for a USB hub that is 12V powered and that's not going to be easy to find

 

[DCEV]

Hmmm....

Wouldn't this work? It's 12V powered and offers plenty of USB data ports. The nice thing is I can even connect a USB based WIFI sharing device that can then make all the drives plugged into the USB hub totally wireless!

Kendrick 12 VDC Active 7-Port USB "Charging" Hub 3.0

 

[Flyguy]

Off topic, but how do you navigate 225 GB of music through the Tesla USB interface without going nuts?

 

[DCEV]

Off topic, but how do you navigate 225 GB of music through the Tesla USB interface without going nuts?

Easy. I listen to all my music based on genre and in random order. So I just select the genre I like and let the car select the songs in random order like a radio station. The benefit of course is crisp high quality audio that works really well with the upgraded audio and the music is not dependent on cellphone reception.

I do have a bunch of playlists and it's super disappointing that the Tesla media player does not play playlist. I mean what kind of a media player doesn't play playlists?!!!

 

[Flyguy]

Easy. I listen to all my music based on genre and in random order. So I just select the genre I like and let the car select the songs in random order like a radio station. The benefit of course is crisp high quality audio that works really well with the upgraded audio and the music is not dependent on cellphone reception.

I do have a bunch of playlists and it's super disappointing that the Tesla media player does not play playlist. I mean what kind of a media player doesn't play playlists?!!!

Ah, makes sense. Similar to you, I did a custom upgrade. Part of it was adding a hard-wired auxiliary input that bipasses the Tesla processing so I could play lossless from any device. Maybe I’ll revisit the USB option with a simplified file system just to have that option

 

[DCEV]

Ah, makes sense. Similar to you, I did a custom upgrade. Part of it was adding a hard-wired auxiliary input that bipasses the Tesla processing so I could play lossless from any device. Maybe I’ll revisit the USB option with a simplified file system just to have that option

You don't need to do any of that bypass stuff.

If you play a high quality well-mastered FLAC file via USB, the quality is noticeable and appreciably better than what is streamed. It's staggering how they have not fixed some of the media player issues... I mean how hard is it to add playlist support?

The media player is really my only disappointment with the car's software.