Hello all,

This looks like a nice Audi forum. I was hoping someone here might be able to help me with what I'm trying to do.

I have a decent sized music collection, and would like to be able to play it off of a hard drive hooked up via a genuine Audi AMI USB cable. I've tried two models so far - a WD My Passport Ultra 500GB and now a generic Silicon Power 1TB drive. I thought the WD wouldn't work because of its encryption-supporting controller (seems different than a standard basic "dumb" disk). So even after unlocking it and formatting in FAT32, it wouldn't be recognized.

Now the new drive - the 1TB Silicon Power drive - isn't recognized either. I'm a little frustrated that I can't find ANY detailed information on the web about which external/portable hard disk drives are compatible with the various MMI versions. I've seen that people have gotten them to work, and it says they can work, but how is anyone supposed to know which drive to purchase?

I'm not interested in using Bluetooth or Wifi or anything Apple - I'd really just love to be able to put audio/video files onto a hard drive and play them through the expensive USB cable I got from Audi.

Perhaps if we can come up with a list, it would help a great deal of people out, and bring a lot of hits to this forum as well

Edit: FOUND A SOLUTION!!

The hard drive I'm using - a Silicon Power 1TB drive - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-014-_-Product

The drive came already formatted in FAT32, so I copied some files and hoped to use it but it did not work. Maybe I did not give it enough time to startup - although I waited a few minutes.

Anyhow, I thought maybe, just maybe, there was a partition/file system problem recognizing it. So I used this tool: http://download.cnet.com/MiniAide-Fa...-75701815.html

I deleted the partition, created a new PRIMARY partition. I then formatted it with FAT32. Recognizes and plays files from the drive now! I am still testing (well, I'm transferring my media collection over now) so I will post back with more info. I know a lot of people out there didn't know they could format a drive in Win 7/Win 8 with FAT32, but there are tons of programs out there that do it. MiniAide Fat32 Formatter seems to work really well, and it does more than just that. When you make changes in this program you have to Apply them afterward, like many other disk utilities (for computer newbs out there) so you can delete a partition, create one, and format with FAT32 then hit the Apply button to make all the changes.

 

A little update for anyone reading and wanting to do the same:

The AMI cable does not provide enough power to power a hard drive, so you need to "inject" power to the drive through an adapter/injector cable by hooking that up to a USB charger as well. You can buy these, or make your own. I made my own and it works wonderfully.

You'll need to buy a USB power y-adapter cable or y-cable - sometimes called power injector cable. Basically a cable with 2 type A (the big kind that go into your computer) male ends, and a type A female end or some other variation that will match your hard drive.