Pioneer FH-P8000BT Double-Din In-Dash CD/MP3/WMA/AAC Receiver with Built-In Bluetooth, iPod Control, and Rear USB Input Buy Now

Pros:
1. Incredible sound.
2. Incredible sound.
3. Did I mention incredible sound ?
4. USB hard drive functionality.
5. Phone bluetooth works well.

Cons:
1. USB hard drive size is limited to 250 GB, 500 directories and 15000 songs. Since it has the 500 dirs/15000 songs limitation you can typically use about 60 GB (out of 250 GB) depending on your songs length, etc.

I am giving this unit a 4 start rating because of these limitations and because of the figuring out process that you have to go through in order to get the most of the USB hard drive functionality.

Pioneer FH-P8000BT USB hard drive mini-HowTo
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I wanted to write a quick HowTo for the USB hard drive functionality so other people that want to use this feature don't have to spend 1-2 days like myself wondering how to get it working.

1. Use a USB hard drive that is mass media storage compliant.
2. Use FAT32Formatter (as specified by another review of this item). Partitioning and formatting this from linux (using fdisk, mkdosfs) will not work.
3. If you have more than 500 directories flatten them out since the unit won't read more than that. I wrote some scripts that do that automatically given a directory structure. Let me know if you need them and I'll post them here. They will only work with linux/unix.
4. You might have to buy an additional cigarette lighter to USB adapter in order to provide extra power to your hard drive. If your hard drive work by just connecting it to the USB cable of the FH-P8000BT you don't need this step. [...]
5. Enjoy !
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