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.
Double-check your USB drive is compatible and set up correctly. 32GB max FAT32 file system Folders up to 8 levels deep are okay. Individual file size limit is 2GB, but I doubt that's an issue. Other limits: 3000 folders 9999 files 255 files per folder But my guess is your drive is larger than 32GB or it's formatted as exFAT, MacOS Extended, or NTFS.
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.
PCs and Macs are pretty good at reading a wide variety of file systems; "dumber" systems like cars tend to be only able to read one, and it's usually only the older file systems like FAT32. I would double-check your drive just to make sure. Stick it into your computer and check. On a PC, go into File Explorer, find the USB drive, right-click on it, and select Properties. The file system will be right there. My bet is that it's formatted as exFAT. USB drives above 32GB are often formatted that way. FAT32 isn't that great for drives above 32GB.
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.
If you want the larger drive space, you can go ahead and reformat the drive to FAT32 and then try to use it. Reformatting will completely erase the drive, so you'll need to move everything off to some other temporary storage and then move it back. The people who have had success with larger drives in Toyotas probably did the same thing. I know with Windows, you can't format anything over 32GB to FAT32 with File Explorer, but there are third-party solutions that will. Since I'm not a Mac user, I don't know for certain if MacOS can natively format over 32GB to FAT32, but I think it can. I came across some references to Mac users formatting 500GB+ hard drives to FAT32 so they could share media between Macs and PCs.
For me. I tried doing all of the above and it didn't work in my stock head unit for a 2015 model. Aftermarket head units read the drive no problem.
My 128gb drive works on our '23 hybrid Camry. Is it not going to work on my Prius if it ever gets here?
Unknown. The Camry has the same FAT32 file system requirement as the Prius(so your USB drive must already be formatted that way), but it doesn't list a 32GB capacity limit like the Prius manual does. I would say the odds are better than 50/50 that it will work. I don't have a large FAT32 drive to test with(all my big drives are NTFS or exFAT and full).
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.
I'll take a look at the formatting of that drive when the Camry is back home - it is in the Camry. It could be fat32, but I didn't think that worked on larger drives. I didn't give it a thought when I set it up. Just deleted the junk they put on those drives and copied my music folders over. It works great on that.
I ran properties on it and it is, in fact, fat32 (about 1.7 gigs of it, and the rest of the 128 is unallocated space. No mystery I guess. The car doesn't know the rest of it is there. Thanks for the initial heads up.
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.
