[TuffLittleUnit]

One other little test I did whilst I had a demo X3 was to try connecting a Western Digital Passport 2.5" portable hard disk drive to the USB port.

Absolutely gobsmacked to find that it worked and the iDrive would happily browse the folders. The HDD capacity used was 320GB and I had about 20GB of music on it in MP3 format, mostly at 320Kbps. I had another 200GB+ of various other content (photos, home videos etc) and it happily ignored this stuff.

No fancy cables required, just plugged the standard cable into the car's USB port and off we went. Thought this might be useful.

[Nahoa]

Whoa! That's interesting.

My salesman said this stereo would load audi CD's onto the vehicle's HDD. He wasn't sure if that were audio, MP3, or both. Any info supporting this and confirming that it works with MP3's?

Any indication that you might be able to move the music from your Western Digital onto the vehicle's HDD via iDrive and the USB connection?

[TuffLittleUnit]

The CD drive definitely had a "copy to car" function which is a nice way of saying "rip to hard disk".

I'm afraid I didn't look at copying music from the portable HDD to the car's HDD but my recollection from scanning the manual was that any mass storage device attached via USB (HDD, memory stick, smartphone in appropriate mode) could be used as a source to copy from providing there was no DRM on the files. Can't be absolutely certain just what it said but I do recall the DRM exception.

[sfax]

Originally Posted by TuffLittleUnit

The CD drive definitely had a "copy to car" function which is a nice way of saying "rip to hard disk".

I'm afraid I didn't look at copying music from the portable HDD to the car's HDD but my recollection from scanning the manual was that any mass storage device attached via USB (HDD, memory stick, smartphone in appropriate mode) could be used as a source to copy from providing there was no DRM on the files. Can't be absolutely certain just what it said but I do recall the DRM exception.

You can copy mp3 files from an external device via USB to the HDD in the car. I doubt if you can play mp3s direct from the device when connected but in theory you could browse to the device using iDrive and play files directly. Will post some experience on this when I get to test it out

[TuffLittleUnit]

Originally Posted by sfax

I doubt if you can play mp3s direct from the device when connected but in theory you could browse to the device using iDrive and play files directly.

That's exactly what I tested ... I had the audio system in the car playing MP3s that were stored on my portable hard disk. Although the MP3s were about 3 folders down from the root of the drive the car went straight to the folder containing the MP3s. The files were organised in folders by artists and album and I had to navigate between these using the iDrive controller. There was no cover art etc displayed.

[sfax]

Originally Posted by TuffLittleUnit

That's exactly what I tested ... I had the audio system in the car playing MP3s that were stored on my portable hard disk. Although the MP3s were about 3 folders down from the root of the drive the car went straight to the folder containing the MP3s. The files were organised in folders by artists and album and I had to navigate between these using the iDrive controller. There was no cover art etc displayed.

Yup, sorry, I didn't read your initial post correctly. A new owner (thread below) has done the same with wmv files too and likewise everything worked except the album covers.

http://x3.xbimmers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=478705