I don't have the hard drive on my MY 2012. I believe that is because I don't have the navigation system. If you want to add music, one can easily do so with a smaller sized USB flash drive.

This has been a popular choice IIRC.
http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruze...0812F7O8/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1375401370&sr=1-3&keywords=usb+flash+drive

 

Yes, your 2011 Volt has a 30 gig hard drive, which is awesome. I use it for audio books, and have over 100 stored in my Volt. I transfer via CD using tools provided by Audible (http://audible.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3636).

As to programming, just hit CONFIG, and explore the different settings. The Owners Manual should help as well (http://www.chevrolet.com/content/da...site/en/Home/Ownership/Manuals and Videos/02_pdf/2011_chevrolet_volt_owners.pdf).

 

I was under the impression that the 30 gig hard drive is standard on the 2011 and 2012 models. Don't ask me how to use it, I'm a dials and knob kind of guy.

 

30GB HD was not standard in the 2012, only if you have the GPS. I don't have the GPS and just use a 64GB flash drive instead. I don't miss the HD at all. Only advantage of the HD is being able to record off of the radio.

 

It was easier for me to use a flash drive. Some sort of issue downloading already paid for songs directly from the apple device to the hard drive so flash drive works better. I got 1,500 songs in and it looks like it can hold about 10,000. 2012 with GPS.

MrEnergyCzar

 

If you have the hard drive in a 2011 Volt, there will be a REC (Record) button on the lower right of the center stack.
insert either a CD, or a USB stick with mp3s on it and once the music system starts playing them, hit the REC button.

The rest of the steps are pretty easy, the display will prompt you whether to record only the one song, or the entire device playing. Once you have even one song on the hard drive, it will show up as a choice and start playing whenever you select hard drive with the button on the center stack.

The hard drive will not show up as a choice, however, until at least one song has been recorded to it.

Also, there can be problems loading large quantities of songs from usb devices, so it might be best to do small amounts at a time to start out.

 

How do you access the 30GB Hard Drive (if it is even on this model)? I want to put my music in the car.

There is a rather involved process to answer this question.
1. Use your standard visual and tactile equipment to locate and open the glove box
2. Using the same equipment, locate a rectangular 3D white object encased inside a clear flexible material
3. Using your tactile manipulator, remove the object from the glove box and extract the object from its clear enclosure
4. Set aside the clear enclosure for re-use
5. Combining and coordinating your visual and tactile equipment, locate a data table in the 3D object that is labeled "Index"
6. Carefully scroll the "Index" using your visual equipment. Stop at Hard Drive Device in the H Section.
7. Send an email to yourself with the 7-26 reference number.
8. When you receive it, open the email and again using your standard visual and tactile equipment, locate this section in the white object.
9. Here is the hard part. Engage your primary core processors and run a character and pattern recognition sub-routine on the area imaged by your visual equipment.
10. Run the result through context and syntax parallel processors looking for matches to English language patterns. A set of detailed instructions should resolve from this. If not, your parallel processors may be impaired or in need of replacement.

 

My biggest problem with the hard drive on my 2011 is that it doesn't put the album tracks in the order on the album, but rather, alphabetically, especially when you use a flash drive to transfer MP3's. I struggled with this - there is a thread on gm-volt.com you can search for. Bottom line, I downloaded the free "mp3tag.exe" software (do a google search) and used it to rename each track, prefacing it with "01", "02", etc. to maintain the same order as in the album.

 

Just want to add one more point, and that is it seems when you record to the hard drive, all music gets re-encoded, in an unknown format and bit rate, which unfortunately are not configurable. This is especially a problem when using the record function for music that's already been compressed (like in mp3 format). Music compression is lossy, and the audible side effects become more noticeable the more generations it goes through. For that and other reasons, I stick with playing music off the USB drive, which I've ripped or downloaded myself at what I believe are higher bit rates. Sounds clearly better to me, even better than music recorded to the hard drive directly from a CD (uncompressed) source. It's also a shame that the system doesn't allow XM to be recorded, other than for the temporary 20 minute buffer.

Which raises a question I have: do the non-HDD Volts allow you to pause XM radio? That's a nice feature, and even stays paused when you shut off the car. Assuming you're back within 20 minutes, you can pick up where you left off.

 

I believe there is no pause mode unless you have the internal hard drive option.

 

Which raises a question I have: do the non-HDD Volts allow you to pause XM radio? That's a nice feature, and even stays paused when you shut off the car. Assuming you're back within 20 minutes, you can pick up where you left off.

Good Q, I have the 2013 and I don't think I've tested that yet (been listening to podcasts). It'd suck to lose that feature :/