Will Squeezebox Touch play iTunes from USB Drive?

Are you saying there would be pauses during playback, or slow response with the SBT GUI? I assume wireless streaming or ethernet connection to iMac would work better then? The iTunes library is 155GB (Apple Lossless). I could run ethernet cable but I preferred the simplicity of a bus-powered mini-drive.

Guess I'll discover for myself...

I really want to use an iPad as my source, or at least control. My iPhone 4 would be an alternative.

My experience is that it takes a long time to index the drive and that access time is slow. Also, it is not certain whether the Touch will power that drive.

Thanks. I had drop-out issues with SB3 in the past and was concerned about that recurring. I'll still try streaming, as well as the mobile/bus-powered drive since I have one. More then likely I'll have to run ethernet cable to iMac.

There's a lot more digital wireless and FW/USB sources now, but I don't have time to go through that again. I need something this week. If not, I'd look into the Weiss FW converter and others. I'd like to plug my iMac directly into my reimyo DAP-777 but not if it's going to cost thousands. I already put that into the DAC and other gear. And I had the iTransport/iPod server. Loved it, but wanted a larger GUI and didn't want to have to copy music over to it. It'd be great if you could use iTouch/iPhone/iPad in a dock and stream through that right into the DAC.

The touch doesn't have the processing power to seek the data off a large drive. Probably better to use sd cards If you do not want to use your pc. (put some play lists on a sd card, probably 2 gig max. I haveonly put one cd on an an sd card and had no issues. A jump drive should do the same). A hard drive would need to use it's own power, as the touch does not have the auxiliary power to run the hard drive. The HD isn't a drop out issue, it's a data seek issue. Best use is off a pc. I run wireless, love it, sounds great, and I have never had a dropout.