Just borrowed a USB drive and want to move my entire iTunes music library to the Volt's HHD? Is it as easy as exporting my music to the USB stick, plugging it into the Volt's USB port and hitting the RECORD button??

Next question about how long will it take to RECORD about 21GB of music?

Thanks in advance

Some sticks, especially big ones, did not work for me.
Some filenames (I have lots of wierd classical stuff) gave it a hard time..

4gb took a while to copy once I got the files in a reasonable format. I don't know how long (> 5min) as I sat for a while, then went in the house.

For me, it's been much easier just to plug my iPod into the USB port in the console; I have an extra iPod cable. The menu interface from the center display to the iPod is okay. I've had problems with the HDD keeping the tracks in album order rather than alphabetically. Even putting a CD into the slot and hitting record doesn't work real well. For me, the biggest value of HDD is the ability to pause radio broadcasts and later skip over the commercials; such is if I am taking a trip and listening to XM and want to take a rest stop break, I can pause the old-time radio show and not miss out.

If I'm missing something with the order, please let me know.

The Volt can only accept MP3 files. If you have an iTunes library full of AAC files you have to convert them to MP3's first. Once you have the MP3 files you can dump them onto a USB thumb drive and they copy pretty fast into the Volt's HD.

As for the track order... If you select the songs by Album they stay in order. If you select the songs by Artist they are in alphabetical order.

The Volt (2012 at least) can also accept WMA files in addition to MP3's.

I created a playlist named Volt and converted all my AAC music to MP3 so it's already to go but we have bad storms in the area and are hunkering down in the basement. So I won't get to this until tomorrow.

Update, I cleaned up my Volt Playlist in iTunes and got it down to 15.5 GB. The USB stick I have is 16 GB. I had to reformat it to work with the MAC OS X operating system and file format (it's different than a PC's) then dragged the iTunes Music folder to the mounted USB stick. It took about 20 minutes to export 3265 songs.

I plugged the USB stick into the Volts USB port and it read it and I'm now exporting 3265 songs to the Volt's HHD. This part of the job looks to take the longest amount of time as it took 40 minutes to transfer the first 1000 songs. The car is on the charger so I'm leaving the radio on until it's done.

The source of your song files will greatly affect the Volt's ability to play the music:

early iTunes Store purchases = Protected AAC = Does not play on Volt
later iTunes Store purchases = Purchased AAC = Does play on Volt
Music converted from CD = could be any of the iTunes import encoders = MP3 and AAC should work fine on the Volt

Once copied over, you may get frustrated by Album songs playing in alphabetical order versus track order.

There are too many drawbacks to the HDD, I'm using an iPod.

David

Follow up. It took about 2 hours to record 3362 or 15.5 GB's of MP3 formatted music to my Volts HHD. I usually select what I want to listen too by Album, all the songs are ordered correctly. My first check a test of Sgt Pepper's.

So I now have my entire music library with me in my Volt and nothing I have to carry back and forth or have loose in the cabin.

The Volt can only accept MP3 files. If you have an iTunes library full of AAC files you have to convert them to MP3's first

Not true. I currently have about 1,800 songs on my HDD and probably 98% of those are AAC and they play fine. They do have to be .m4a, .m4p (protected) won't work.

Follow up. It took about 2 hours to record 3362 or 15.5 GB's of MP3 formatted music to my Volts HHD. I usually select what I want to listen too by Album, all the songs are ordered correctly. My first check a test of Sgt Pepper's.

So I now have my entire music library with me in my Volt and nothing I have to carry back and forth or have loose in the cabin.

This only works if your music is static and you have no intention of adding or subtracting music. Personally I have a 8 GB USB Flashdrive that I just leave plugged in and it works very well.

If I want to adjust the music, I just bring the drive into the house, connect it to my computer and make the adjustments I want and then bring it back out to the car later. Note that I do not have 15 GB of music, but only about 4GB.

My only complaint is that shuffle seems to play the same songs (though randomly) over and over again and some songs are never played. I wish they had implemented a "subtracting shuffle" that removes a song from the playlist until all the songs have been played as long as "Shuffle" is selected.

I wish the USB port afforded some protection to a plugged in memory stick, when I was doing this I opened the console lid and w/o thinking a dropped in my BB car charger plug, that's pretty big and heavy and it hit the USB stick, I also leave my reading glasses in a hard case, pack of gum and other things in there so leaving a USB stick plugged in all the time is an accident waiting to happen for me.

I did discover a new CD I recently bought and hadn't loaded into my iTunes library so I just loaded it and hit RECORD. It took 30 minutes but I had the car plugged in. so if anyone is interested in doing this it's relatively easy and having your music library at your finger tips is priceless.