[russgreen]

I have a strange problem trying to use a USB stick in my i30.

I started off with a 1GB stick....MP3's in folders and all worked well.
I tried a 64GB stick...couldn't get it to work (might be a dodgy stick although it works in my PC)
I have a new 8GB stick from HP. It currentlty has 4.1GB of music on on saved in folders in the format <Album Artist>\<Album>\<Track#> - <Title>.mp3
I put the stick in and the i30 reads it and starts playing through the tracks....seemingly OK.  I can skip forwards and backworks through all the tracks but I cannot browse the directories and select different albums.

I tried removing a lot of the music so that I just have a few albums saved in the same directory format.  No problems ready the directories this time. 

I'm struggling to figure out what it can be.  Any ideas?

[Shambles]

Hi russ, so we are talking about folder levels deeper than one. I once created a "\classical" folder then individual subfolders for 4 of my favourite composers. While all the tracks would play fine I couldn't use the FLDR button to get between the composers.

Wonder if that might be the problem? Sure seems that way with my software version.

[Dazzler]

 Hi Russ,

I'm using a nearly full 8 GB memory stick (or a 16gb I can't remember )  with folders for each artist and just use the folder up/down buttons on the r/hand side to navigate pressing the button between them to select . The up down button on steering wheel only selects the next track.

[russgreen]

well I resyncronised the contents of my stick....this time with only 1 level of folders.  Each folder is in the name format "Artist - Album" and contains the MP3's. 

Same problem.  Cannot browse the directories but can play the music.  Pushing the right button does nothing and going through the menu system also cannot browse the directories.

Its odd that it works with a few albums nested in multiple levels of folders. 

[Dazzler]

well I resyncronised the contents of my stick....this time with only 1 level of folders.  Each folder is in the name format "Artist - Album" and contains the MP3's. 

Same problem.  Cannot browse the directories but can play the music.  Pushing the right button does nothing and going through the menu system also cannot browse the directories.

Its odd that it works with a few albums nested in multiple levels of folders. 

That's odd sounds like you are now set up the same as me and although I cant do it with the steering wheel buttons the folder up and down buttons work a treat (they only swap me to the next album though and then after I've pushed the right hand knob (tune/file button) I can then select individual tracks with the track selector on the unit or on the steering wheel...

[russgreen]

when i have only a few folders I can push the right hand buttons and turning it scrolls between folders / albums....I was hoping for the same functionality on a full stick.

[Shambles]

I'm now wondering if the head unit has some kind of memory into which it reads the whole index (ie FAT)  of the drive, and has hit a limit on the number of filenames...?  

As I'm off work now for a while over Xmas I might just try filling my 16gb data drive up with lots and lots of titles and see how that goes.

I'll do this and let you know the result

[Shambles]

Well I shoved a few "Now" albums onto my 16gb Transcend stick (filled to around 12gb), most with sub-sub-folders





But my head unit said "USB Empty"


So I moved quite a few up by 1 level and deleted half of the albums


Still says "USB Empty"


Must be the transcend pendrive . My other free stick is 4gb and doesn't have any problems, providing each album sits in its own folder in the root.

Sorry don't have time to do any more fiddling right now.

[Lorian]

You sure the music is not being stored on a secondary partition? It might cause problems if the drive has/did have U3 on it for example.

[Shambles]

Spookily enough I just took delivery of a Cruzer with U3 on it. Will try that tomorrow.

As for my "USB Empty" message, I forgot my Transcend was formatted as NTFS

[eye30]

See your a fan of the "now" range.
No wonder you need all this time off just to listen. 

[Duckman]

See your a fan of the "now" range.
No wonder you need all this time off just to listen. 

I was going to say that it said USB empty because it was such popular drivel 

Haha, we still love you Shambles, regardless of your pop taste

[babis_xo]

I suppose that the amount of folders /tracks that can be played back is limited (not tested though).
According to the manual, my Pioneer DEH-4000UB (in my other car) can play back USB sticks /ext. devices from 250mb to 250gb, but:
- up to 15.000 tracks
- up to 500 folders
- up to eight tiers directories
apparently the above numbers do not apply to our unit but they maybe indicational.

...I was going to say that it said USB empty because it was such popular drivel... 

 

[russgreen]

thats odd. I called my dealer about this and was told there is a 2gig max so I deleted mp3's until I had only 2gigs worth of music and its all working as expected,

so whyt can some of you make it work with more files?

[Lorian]

Mine is a 16Gb Freecom stick formatted with FAT32 and I have 10Gb+ of files on there, it works OK.

Maybe there was a limit in some older radio firmware. If there is then you could ask the dealer to try a firmware update on the radio at the next service. They should get firmware updates for the radios on a CD, it should only take a few minutes to perfrom an update.

If you switch the radio off (so you see the clock) and then hold down 1 and 6 key it will show you the EEPROM and Firmware version.

[russgreen]

This has just reared its ugly head again.  I had 1.9gig of music on my stick with directory searching working just fine. I've deciding to resample the MP3 down to 128 kbps during sync to get more music on. I now have 1.8gig of music but quite a few more tracks. Now I can skip between tracks but not the folders (albums).  So maybe there is a limit on the number of tracks the head unit can cope with. Currently there are 496 tracks on the stick.

[Lorian]

I'm not sure how many tracks I have, but it's certainly more than 1000.

Have you tried connecting the drive to a PC and doing a chkdsk/f  on it?

[russgreen]

there is nothing wrong with the stick. I just sat in the car with a laptop and started removing albums and re-testing the stick. I got quite fedup and removed all but 4 albums without changing the folder naming format and it worked.

When I have some more time I'll investigate this a little more carefully.

[Lorian]

Is it formatted with FAT or FAT32?

[russgreen]

FAT 32.

I've re-synced my music without compression up to 1.9GB on the stick.  Not downsampling to 128kbps basically means there are about 200 fewer tracks on the stick than when it wouldn't work.

There must be some limit on the number of tracks to system can hangle as well as the overall size.

[babis_xo]

I have three different usb sticks (2x4GB & 1x2GB) which contain ~800, 600 & 400 mp3's respectively, arranged in folders and sub-folders. I have no problem with any of them.

[freds]

I have a Kingston 32GB stick with approx 28GB on it, FAT32 format, and it works fine. I removed all non music folders as that seemed to upset the head unit , and have one track in the root directory, all others are in folders and subfolders 1 level deep. I use Easy CDDA to rip the cd's and the default MP3 seems to work fine. I've used many different sampling rates , doesn't seem to affect my unit.
I also use a Vosonic Multimedia player HD 160GB and that seems to be recognised ok as well , as long as the folders don't exceed 2 levels.

I have the mid range head unit in a petrol 2.0 and I'm quite happy with it , might get better speakers later though.