Originally Posted by Landstander

I've got a question about using a hard drive in my A6. I'm also using a USB-powered 2.5in Western Digital 640Gb hard drive. My question is: when the car is shut down, does the hard drive power down as well? Is there a possibility that it will continue to leach power from the battery?

I tried testing it by shutting down the car and locking it. When I got back in, the light on the hard drive was still on. Is this just because some of the subsystems power on when you enter the vehicle? And if the hard drive truly remains powered on, do you think the power drain would be significant enough to be concerned about over long periods?



--And an additional FYI, I've also not found a video format that will play in the MMI.

Originally Posted by Inyoury

If you are worried about needing more memory for media without power drain, use SD flash memory sticks. There two slots. These days the size per goes up to ad much as 256GB. Obviously the price would be greater than the external HDD, but nothin to store and very clean and easy.

Originally Posted by Landstander

I did a little more testing and it appears as if the hard drive does indeed power down when the ignition is turned off.

Also, on the subject of SD flash cards, does anyone know if the MMI supports SDXC cards? I know that it supports SDHC cards but their capacity is limited to 32GB. SDXC can reach capacities of 2TB.

Originally Posted by Inyoury

As I understand SDXC cards go up to 256GB (Lexar). Capable of going up to 2TB in near future

Originally Posted by Landstander

I did a little more testing and it appears as if the hard drive does indeed power down when the ignition is turned off.

Also, on the subject of SD flash cards, does anyone know if the MMI supports SDXC cards? I know that it supports SDHC cards but their capacity is limited to 32GB. SDXC can reach capacities of 2TB.