Hard Drive in the USB port -- poor design; Toyota, please fix, it's easy!

well.. Toyota didn't expect someone to plug in an external drive with a massive library of files... so yea, i wouldn't have expected them to design an OEM headunit with the capabilities that you mentioned.

it's an OEM headunit afterall..

 

How many songs do you plan to have on your drive??

I got the SanDisk 8GB Cruzer Fit shorty drive and after dumping most of our CD collection (a dozen discs), I had only used about 900 mb for about 100 songs.
So, it kinda seems like I could put something like 800 songs on my cheap little drive (if I could afford to buy that many).

What I should have done, was purchase a couple smaller capacity (1GB?) USB sticks and put the songs my wife likes on one stick, and the songs I like on another..

That way, the media reading cycle will be even shorter than I have now. (It's about 4 seconds now).

 

I plugged in a 160GB iPod Classic into the USB port and it indexes through 8,897 songs quickly. I know it costs less to use a big hard drive but all that time wasted waiting for it to start up is major FAIL...

 

hmm, I have a 4gb with filled with music. the HU seems to organize that just fine for all the artist.

 

I'm using a 4gb sandisk and no problems at all. Obviously the system was not design for an external drive and I am sure there is a limit on what it can handle. I do agreed that it should have better search features and a way to sort files and directories better. Hopefully, someone will come up with a software update or hack to fix many issues soon.

 

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I have a 64 gb thumbdrive. I just transferred the entire itunes folder to the drive and I was good to go. The thumb drive is small and black and blends in well. Works as well as an ipod.

 

I tried to connect my 500 GB WD passport to the usb port and I got the error that there is not enough power to use it. How to get past that to even worry about the file issue?

 

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Plug into the DC outlet. This "should" provide enough power to run the HD. The usb just doesn't put out enough. The thing won't even charge my tablet unless I leave it in for a good long time.

 

The songs on a USB device will be listed in the order they were copied to the USB device. If you completely erase the USB storage device and copy the entire library to the USB device at one time, they will likely be in alphabetical order by folder and then alphabetical/numerical order within each folder. I maintain a read/write disk image of the 32GB USB flash drive that I keep in my Prius. When I make changes to the master disk image, I will completely erase the USB device and completely copy the entire archive again just for the changes to be the changes in alphabetical order. However, to force the car to create a new index, you first have to put in another USB device and power up the car. Then, take out the dummy USB device and put your main device in again. Otherwise, the index will not rebuild and the changes to the device will play and view at the end--not in alphabetical order.

As the to the originator of the thread saying the index was rebuilt every time the car was started, I haven't had that problem. Once the index is created, it's done and it won't create it again unless a different USB device is inserted.

If you are a Windows user and can somehow change the metadata that is the date and time the file was written to the drive (it's NOT the regular file modification or creation date), then you can determine the order that files and folders play when the device in in the car without having to erease and rewrite the entire device. I'm a Mac user and there is no Mac utililty that can do that because that kind of metadata is not used in Mac systems. Again, it's not the file creation or modification date.

I completely agree that the FAT32 limitations imposed by Toyota are a bit too 1990's for me. With the above you can hopefully work around these issues.

 

What I don't like is if you select an album it will play that album and then start over. There does not seem to be a way to make it play all the songs on a stick unless you take them out of their album folders. Am I wrong here?

 

I just purchased a 2013 Prius C Two, and it looks like none of the problems have been resolved by Toyota, unfortunately. While I'm not using a 250gb external hard drive, I am using a 64gb USB flash drive, loaded up with MP3's (also, it's tiny. It only sticks out about a 1/4 inch from the USB port). Right now, I've got about 120 "albums" on the flash drive, and only using ~20gb of space.

The manual states that the maximum number of folders is 999 (including the root). I wonder if they actually changed this, or if it still really only recognizes 300+, as the "ThatTallGuy" thought. The manual also states that the max number of files on a device is 9999. Both the folder limit and the file limit seem a bit arbitrary.

On the whole, this is the only part of my new Prius C that I'm disappointed with. It would be fairly trivial for Toyota to make this a LOT better. The other gripe I have with USB audio is no gapless playback between songs. And it would be cool if they supported OPUS files in addition to MP3 and WMA (though I'm probably in a small minority with preference for OPUS files).

In any case, the tips and workarounds in this thread are helpful to know. I had no idea how the stock head unit was sorting the folders/files. While it seems like a really dumb way to sort it (order in which is was loaded onto the drive, not alphabetical), at least now I know... Thanks!

 

yes, please be sure to update us with any changes in the USB audio stuff. of course, my Prius C Two doesn't have a nav unit, so even if it did fix things, I'm not sure that I'd be able get an update...