Playing Music From USB C Drive

Picked up my silver LE last weekend and I'm still learning about all the features. Big change coming from my old 2008 Civic Coupe.

Is there some trick I'm missing when it comes to playing music files from a USB drive?

Most of my files are either Apple Lossless format, or mp3s. All were burned from CDs using iTunes. Apple Lossless is also known as ALAC and the files use the extension .m4a According to the manual both should work. The drive is a SanDisk and it's plugged into the data port, not one of the charging ports.

I loaded some folders labelled with artist name/album onto the drive but the drive didn't show up at all. I thought it might be due to the folders, so I removed the music files from the folders and deleted the folders, leaving only the music files. The drive still didn't show up.

Then I thought the issue might be with the .m4a files so I removed all of them, leaving only mp3s but the drive still doesn't appear in the list.

The files all start with track numbers - 01, 02, 03 etc. Not sure why that would be an issue since they all have the mp3 extension.

Anyone having this same issue? Any ideas?

It's not really a pressing issue for me as I usually just listen to the radio when driving around town and Android Auto is working so I can listen to Spotify. Still, it would be nice to have this working, especially for a road trip.

 

Thanks . . . you're correct it's 128GB. I just noticed the info you posted in another section of the manual.

Still, I figured it might work since I found some old threads where owners of earlier generation Prius said they were using 128GB ones though there were comments about the time it took the system to index them.

Seems odd that Toyota would reduce the maximum but perhaps they did. Or maybe it's always been 32GB but larger ones sometimes work?? Anyway, I ordered a 32GB and I'll try leaving the larger one plugged in for a while and see if it ever appears on the screen.

I have no idea how it's formatted. I've always just bought USB drives and used them with whatever format they come in. I don't recall ever having to reformat them. I've never used one in a car but I've used a flash drive interchangeably in both Mac and PC without doing anything with formatting.

 

My computer is a Mac Mini and when I checked the 128GB is formatted in exFAT, as you said. I guess I'll just wait for the 32GB to get here and use the larger drive for other purposes. Thanks.

 

While I'm waiting for the 32GB drive I ordered to arrive I thought I might try to reformat my 128GB to FAT32.

Reading up on the Mac's reformatting procedure I came across a statement that "FAT32 can’t work with USB drives over 32GBs. If you own a USB drive over 32GBs, you will need to use a different data format."

So it seems odd that a 128GB drive, presumably formatted in exFat, would work in a new '23 Camry but not in a '23 Prius. I'll just wait and try the 32GB in its stock format first and if that doesn't work I'll try to reformat it to FAT32 and try it again.

As I said, this is not really critical for me since Spotify works fine with Android Auto. Still, if they say it works then it should.

I did learn that my phone will not connect via bluetooth if the USB drive is inserted in the data port. I got an error message which disappeared when I removed the drive and then bluetooth worked fine.

 

My 32GB drive came and it was formatted for FAT32. I loaded some .mp3 and .m4a (Apple Lossless / ALAC) files in folders and they both play. Then, I took the 128GB drive and reformatted it from exFAT to FAT32. Loaded folders with .mp3 and .m4a and they also work fine.

So I guess the comment I quoted earlier, that FAT32 could not be used with drives over 32GB, is not accurate. I guess it's possible that its capacity might be limited to 32GB but I'm not sure if I really even need more than 32GB.