Jensen VM9726BT - usb port

[jjlavin]

I have an external hard drive loaded with movies. I tried to connect it to watch but no success. Have others had success? Any tips?

[Happy Vibe]

What format is your drive using?
This is from the manual :
(hard drives must be formatted to FAT32 and NTFS is not supported)

[jjlavin]

Great question. No idea. Is there any easy way to determine that?

[Happy Vibe]

If you go into windows explorer and go to the external drive. Right click on the drive. you will get a drop down menu, click on the properties and you will get a window that opens up and you will see the "File system" there. If you are using Apple I am not sure.

[jjlavin]

Ahhh yes. I see. Mine says NTSF. Which means I need to... Reformat someway? Or do I need a different drive?

[Happy Vibe]

You should be able to reformat. You need to back-up the drive as reformatting will erase all the data. Best to to a goggle search for the steps you need to do.

[jjlavin]

Yup I am googling now. Question - my only option to reformat is exFAT not Fat32. Had any experience with that file format? Does exFAT work in his head unit?

[Happy Vibe]

Not really an expert on formats hopefully some one with more expertise can answer this.

[DaveJordan]

So - I don't really know the answer...but...a few questions / observations.

For info on exFAT, see:

exFAT - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

exFAT was designed for drives larger than 2 TB, but is also used for flash cards larger than 32 GB. What sort of drive are you trying to use - is it a very large hard drive...or a flash drive larger than 32 GB?

My guess, and it's only a guess, is that the Jensen won't support the exFAT format - but it's not that big a deal to format the drive and try it. So that's what I'd suggest - trying formatting it with exFAT and then (before loading it up) try plugging it in to the Jensen and see if it will recognize the drive.

Good luck!

[jjlavin]

Yeah...sounds like good advice. I did just try formatting an SD card to fat32, loaded some movies on it, and now I see there is another problem...it doesn't recognize the MP4 format. I can see the files and file names but when I try to play it says "unsupported format". So now I got that problem too... Ugh. Hate this head unit

[DaveJordan]

I looked through my Jensen manual and it appears that it only supports MP3 and WMA file formats...

[jjlavin]

hmmm...strange. WMA and MP3 are audio formats. When you insert the sd card, it gives a menu at the bottom for "video". So now I'm more confused. Ugh.

[jst3]

I think you'll find most devices like this won't support many video file formats.

We just use a laptop plugged into an hdmi port on the TV. In your case you can plug the ext drive into the laptop and play with vlc media player or whatever your favourite media playing app might be.