I have had luck copying parts of my itunes music library over to a USB stick with PCM 3.0. I was wondering if anyone has tried a small USB powered hard drive enclosure with an SSD inside? This will generally be faster to load up from the computer side than a memory stick (generally slow, but the newer USB 3.0 ones are fast). My library is between 64 and 128GB so I was thinking of a 128Gb SSD. Understood I have to watch out for the max folder limit.

db

 

I'd be surprised if the USB port on the PCM's Universal Audio Interface is USB 3.0.
Also, the speed of access may be impacted by the way the PCM interacts with the USB device.. if it has to ready a bunch of small data requests (walk the directory tree) then Solid State Drive (which is flash memory similar to a stick) and USB3 may not buy you any significant gain. But it would be interesting for someone to try it out and see what the difference is vs the same files off of a modern pen flash drive.

 

I was only concerned about speed on the computer upload side - on the PCM side, USB 2.0 and slow flash drive speed seems fine.

That all being said, I wonder if I can use a small unpowered usb hub to provide both power to the ipod dock cable and the flash drive connection at once.....

 

Ah, that may make a difference then.

Do try out the hub option... in fact I have one sitting in a bowl at home.. I should try it out.

It boggles my mind that when they made the Y cable the didn't design it to be an H cable, so it continues to allow a USB flash drive to be inserted, while tapping in for 5V to power the iDock, unless they underpowered the 5V (which is possible as it was never designed to power the iDock to begin with )

 

I purchased an unpowered USB hub, attached that to the USB port in the car (PCM 3.0). Then I plugged the iPhone USB power into the hub along with a flash drive.

Viola, both the iPhone power and the USB memory both worked and I could switch between sources easily.

My one concern is that even with the car off, the USB provided power which lit a LED on both the hub and the USB stick, thus there is some power consumption. I assume it also powered the iPhone charger. This causes a small but notable drain on the battery. Not sure if this times out after awhile of the car being off.

Regards
db

 

When the car goes to 'sleep' - after many days, I wonder if that then also gets powered down?