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A note about high capacity USB sticks in the Prime

Discussion in 'Prime Audio, Electronics, and Infotainment' started by Lee Jay, May 13, 2017.

  1. Lee Jay

    Lee Jay Senior Member

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    Just a few facts:
    1. The Prime will only work with USB sticks formatted FAT16 or FAT32, not exFAT or NTFS. This is in the manual.
    2. Many (but not all) larger devices come formatted to exFAT, or so I've read. My own 64GB was actually NTFS formatted.
    3. Windows won't natively format drives larger than 32GB to FAT32 - only NTFS or exFAT (which is an artificial limitation), making it hard to use a drive that's not already formatted to FAT32 in the Prime.
    4. A workaround that works is this tool: HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool - Free download and software reviews - CNET Download.com . It's very light-weight, no installation and it works. Note that you have to run it as an Administrator (right-click, run as Administrator).
    5. I just bought a 64GB SanDisk Ultrafit and it came formatted FAT32. This surprised me, pleasantly, but I'm not sure how to find this out in advance for any similar devices. If you buy something else and aren't so lucky, the above tool will fix the problem.
    Just an FYI.
     
    #1 Lee Jay, May 13, 2017
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  2. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    Question. Some users have stated (mostly with the Gen 3), that the car needs to index all the songs on the USB (so that you can browse through it on the headunit). It results in a long delay before the music starts playing. Are you experiencing the same thing with the USB outlet in the Prime?
     
    #2 Tideland Prius, May 14, 2017
  3. Lee Jay

    Lee Jay Senior Member

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    Sort of. The music starts right away but the only way you can select what you want is right or left selecting, which is very random during indexing.
     
    #3 Lee Jay, May 14, 2017
  4. stevepea

    stevepea Senior Member

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    Thanks, good to know. I just ordered a couple super-cheap ($3 ish) junky 8MB USB sticks from ebay for use in the car (ones I don't care if they fry or melt or whatever...) But good to know about the NTFS/FAT thing.

    One quirk I noticed... I cleared out an old 4MB USB stick for the time being, and made a File Folder where I put a bunch of one particular show's podcasts (NPR's "A Way With Words"). Then OUTSIDE of that folder, just dumped about 8-10 various other podcasts from different places.

    But when I plugged the USB stick in into the Prime, and am going through the list of available MP3 titles to play, instead of all the "Way With Words" podcasts being clumped together (when doing "NEXT->" or "<-PREVIOUS"), it's all mixed together with the files OUTSIDE the folder for some reason. So there might be 3 "Way With Words" in a row, then one of the other podcasts from outside the Way With Words folder, then a couple more from the folder, then couple from outside the folder, etc. Not a big deal, but in my old car when playing, all the ones in a particular folder would be next to each other (when doing the NEXT or PREVIOUS track skipping around)...
     
    #4 stevepea, May 14, 2017
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  5. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    But it will be in order once the indexing has finished?

    The music starting right away is good. I'm used to the delay with BT Audio
     
    #5 Tideland Prius, May 14, 2017
  6. Lee Jay

    Lee Jay Senior Member

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    Well, the indexing (finally) finished, and I can browse it. Things can be ordered in numerous ways (folders, albums, artists, songs, I think).

    One MAJOR limitation is that you can only do partial browsing while you are moving! This means, on a long trip if you want to change albums, you might have to stop if the album you want isn't near the one you were just using. That's just nuts and it's actually LESS safe than if they didn't limit this because it means I'll switch to Bluetooth and get the music I want on my phone. Is it better to use the 11" display or the phone? Browsing is also less than speedy.
     
    #6 Lee Jay, May 14, 2017
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  7. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    Hmm.... Yeah BTA on the Gen 4 allows me to scroll through the playlists (all 18 of it)
     
    #7 Tideland Prius, May 15, 2017
  8. mdhare

    mdhare Member

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    You can try to use voice recognition to select an album. I know it is not great but may be better than nothing. I added artist name to the album title for my Prius USB stick that helped for me.

    I also overrode the composer tag, I chose decade, but you could maybe do first letter of artist or album title to navigate quicker with those annoying limitations. Some fancy programs such as foobar 2000 have a mass tagger that makes it a piece of cake
     
    #8 mdhare, May 15, 2017
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  9. nanobozho

    nanobozho Member

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    i have been able to workaround the limitation on browsing folders/files on a stick... i scroll down as far as it will go, start a track in the lowest folder, then browse again, it allows me to go lower in the folders... repeat as necessary to get to what you want...

    this only works for browsing down... to go up, i usually go to artist and select something i know is near the beginning of the alphabet...

    i have also found that i can affect what is near the top by naming the folders with numbers... and i number the tracks in a folder (add "01" to the beginning of the fiename, etc) to make sure they play in the order i want...

    i am not thrilled that the meta info (track names) do not show up... it seems to be strictly by filename...

    and of course, .wav, flac, ogg, aif file playing would be great too...

    ~will (obviously a ginormous audio nurd)
     
    #9 nanobozho, Feb 20, 2018
  10. nanobozho

    nanobozho Member

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    also entune ignores folders within folders, just dumps them all out as separate folders...
     
    #10 nanobozho, Feb 21, 2018
  11. Digloo2

    Digloo2 Active Member

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    is there any way to get from a currently playing song back to the list of songs on the album?

    And is there any way to display the song list other than alphabetically?

    When I pick an Album, it always starts with the first song in the (alphabetically-sorted) list. The song selection after that seem semi-random.

    My Prius V had a button to select between sequential and random, and you couldn't change the order of anything on the screen.

    My Prime seems to be missing the sequential / random button, and I see no use in listing songs alphabetically when that's not the order they're supposed to play.
     
    #11 Digloo2, Mar 11, 2018
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