USB-C Device Compatibilities

Maybe, but you might have to work at it a bit. The car can only recognize drives formatted in FAT16 or FAT32. Pretty much all drives larger than 32GB come preformatted in exFAT or NTFS. You can try and reformat a 64GB drive as FAT32, but you'll probably need a third party file manager to do it. Windows can't do it natively, and I'm not sure if Macs can. And even if you do succeed in reformatting it, I can't guarantee it will work. I haven't tried it myself, so I can't vouch for it.

And no on the Ultra Speed. The car is using USB 2.0 HS (480Mbps/53MBps) as its interface standard..

 

Yes, larger drives work perfectly as long as they're formatted Fat32.

Samsung's tiny 256GB drives are factory formatted fat32. Look for model # MUF-256DA/AM.

Drive speed isn't an issue. The car only needs to read a flash drive quickly enough to play media files. And it can do that.

 

The 3.2 speed is not the issue. USB drives are designed to fallback to the speed of the device to which they're connected.

Try reformatting the drive in fat32 and copy a few mp3 files to it. And make sure it's plugged into the correct port, believe only one of the car's USB ports is a data port, the rest only charge.

 

I'm using my older thumb-drive USB3 - 256Gb with an adapter UBB-C / USB3. As long as you follow the <=255 files per folder rule - It works fine.

 

Confirmed working in my 23 Prius LE:

SAMSUNG Type-C™ USB Flash Drive, 64GB, Transfers 4GB Files in 15 Secs w/Up to 300MB/s 3.13 Read Speeds, Compatible w/USB 3.0/2.0, Waterproof, 2022, Blue, MUF-64DA/AM ✅
Came formatted as FAT32.

Did not work:

Verbatim 32GB Store ‘n’ Go Dual OTG USB 3.2 Gen 1 Flash Drive for USB-C Devices – 2 in 1 Type C Thumb Drive❌
Even when formatted to FAT32.

 

I'm using a 128 gb flash drive. Just understand that a fat32 partition (and it is a partition) is only 32gb, and the car won't be able to see the unformatted portions.

 

Luckily, you can format almost any size USB drive as FAT32 using utilities like "Rufus". I'm using a 128gb Samsung USB C in my 2024 Prime XSE - it's awesome. I can utilize and access the entire 128gb partition!

 

good to know. Is it in partitions or does it just fool the reader into thinking it is.

 

While I try pretty hard not to be an expert on details of FAT partitioning, what I can glean about it suggests that 32 GB has never been an inherent limit to partition size. The marketplace has mostly been choosing other formats for devices larger than 32 GB, but that doesn't mean you can't make a FAT32 partition bigger than that.

If this article is accurate, you don't run into an absolute limit (where the FAT32 format can't cover the whole drive) until 16 TB (article also mentions a "practical limit" around half that size). Probably won't be running into that with a USB stick for some music in the car.

According to the article, the Windows GUI format tool won't give you the FAT32 option for a partition larger than 32 GB, but the 'format' command run from cmd or PowerShell can, and so can 3rd-party utilities.

 

As posted above, Samsung's tiny 256GB drives are factory formatted fat32. All of the drive's space is usable. Works properly out of the box, no formatting necessary.
Look for model # MUF-256DA/AM.

 

It's just one single partition.

 

I used both of these drives formatted to FAT32:
Lexar JumpDrive S45 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive - LJDS45-128ABNL
and
SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive (SDCZ43-128G-GAM46)
with a USB to USB-C adapter.
More critical issue is a number of files per folder. It shouldn't exceed 255.