External SSD or USB Stick for MP3 in car?

[tracerbullet]

I'd planned on using an old portable drive to play MP3's in my car, I have about 100GB worth and would like them all available if possible.

I thought - hey I should use an SSD like I put in my laptop. More expensive but no worries about needing more power than what is provided, and no worries about being used in MN winters.

Got to thinking that a USB stick would pretty much be the same thing but even smaller.

USB seems the way to go, is there anything an SSD would do better? Or am I silly for even considering it?

(I searched quite a bit, didn't see this talked about)

 

[ss284]

Just get an USB drive that isn't bottom of the barrel and you should be fine. Make sure your whatever interface you are using accepts drives larger than X GBs.

 

[tracerbullet]

I know it'll work, but is the USB worth the extra cost?

$230 for 128GB is cheapest on Newegg atm, but 128GB SSD is $160 AR + cost of enclosure (which isn't much).

 

[RaiderJ]

I've been using a 250GB external drive in my glove box for 4 years or so as my MP3 storage. Formatted as FAT32 and has worked without issue, even through Alaska winters and Virginia summers. Now that I think about it, I'm kind of surprised it's worked so well!

Only change I made hardware wise was to wire in a 12V -> USB Charger plug. That provides the extra power to the USB "Y" cable that I have (looks like this). I found the USB port on my Pioneer deck had too much of a voltage drop over the length of cable I was using.

 

[lsv]

Why an SSD? Seems like a waste of money to play MP3s which most any drive in the past 15 years can play with ease.

If you're worried about weather get a 'tough' branded external

 

[razel]

You'll be fine with a regular laptop HDD. I'm using a 32GB 4200 11 year old laptop HDD in a small car with a rough ride and gets tossed around and parked in the sun often. I've had no problems what so ever. I even tried to see if using a flash drive would improve access times with changing songs or folders. There was no difference... at least with the headunit I was using.

At >64GB, there are times when SSDs price per gig cost less than USB flash sticks, but both are still more than 14x the cost of a laptop HDD.