Anyone notice this yet - The owner's guide says the limit on total # of files on an mp3 cd is 255. However I've burnt a CD with exactly 929 files in 39 folders, and it seems that 472 of those files are playable, and they appear in 18 folders. The rest of the files & folders of course do not show up at all. Now, I haven't recursed through every single folder to verify that all the files are there, but I did notice the last folder that appears, which is the 18th folder, has only 36 / 44 total files there. When I do a count of all the numbers of mp3s that appear in previous folders, plus those 36, that gives me exactly 472 total on this mp3 cd. Anyone else notice this / can verify this? I wouldn't be surprised if the manual is wrong on this.
It is the FAT (File Allocation Table) for the CD itself. It cannot support more than 255 entries in the root. Placing files in folders is the workaround and has been that way ever since the emergence of burnable CDs. .
This problem also exists with a USB device using FAT32 file allocation. The limitation is 512 files. However if you have long file names it could count as two files.
I supposed the real test is to burn some mp3 files, say 50 per folder, and have them all named with the minimum amount of characters, e.g. 1.mp3 2.mp3 3.mp3 and see how the Prius fares with reading all of them.
It doesn't matter how full the media is. When the FAT is filled you can't store any additional data. Doesn't matter if it is a CD or a 360K 5 1/4" floppy.
On our UK head unit (SatNav on a HDD, and includes a DVD / CD drive for music), a DVD with MP3 files on only shows up the first 255 tracks regardless of using folders. Also you can put files into folders in a specific order, and it can seem to ignore tracks from various folders. e.g. if you put 30 folders in the root, with 10 tracks in each folder, it may not get all 10 tracks from folders 1 to 25, and 5 from folder 26 - it may miss some from a variety of folders. No idea why Another thing - Don't think that FAT is relevant for CDs / DVDs, as FAT is not the filesystem used.
