anyone knowof a external HD that i can hook up to my pioneer nav unit that is usb powered?

 

u can use any 2.5 portable hard drive. make sure to use a small one tho. something like 40gb and under. also check the manual to see what file format it needs to be in. If you where to use a larger drive, it will take forever for the drive to be indexed by the deck.

 

Go with a datastick. You'll have trouble powering up most of the usb hard drives, even if they are 2.5" models. Also with the time it will take to spin up, you could probably add 30+ seconds to the time it will take the music to start playing.

Also I'm not sure if they fixed the limitation yet, but on mine there's a 500 folder limit. Had to get fancy with the separation of my mp3's. Takes about 20 second for the music to first start with just over 50 gigs of music. After the 20 seconds everything is right there and ready to go.

 

sata/ide drives even in enclosures use 12v, USB interface standard is 5v so you are only able to use a flash drive or ipod/zune

 

There's lots of PORTABLE external hard drives out there that have no power whatsoever, other than the USB hook-up so yes, you can most definitely do that.
I was doing that on my Kenwood for a period of time.

The only downside is you might experience slower song-loading times, versus a fast data stick that holds 32gb or 64gb ... up to you.