USB flash drive questions

[stumbles]

I've got a couple of questions regarding using a USB flash drive to playback music in my 2014 CX-5 Touring. I tested the feature out on a 8Gb stick (~1000 songs) and it worked great. It took about 30 seconds to load, but played back nicely and let me select by Artist/album/etc. So now I'm thinking of buying a bigger flash drive to fit more music, but here are my questions:

1) Is there a capacity limit for the USB drive?
2) I've heard conflicting things about a 2000 song limit for the head unit, does this limit exist?
3) Do the loading times just get longer the more music is on the drive? Right now its about 30 secs for ~1000 songs, but I've heard people complaining about it taking minutes to load.
4) How should I format my USB stick? I'm using Fat32 on the 8GB, which works, but I'm wondering if another format might be faster.
5) Does anyone know if the CX-5 supports USB 3.0? Should I spend more money to get the faster flash drive or just stick with 2.0?

Thanks for any help you can give me!

-stumbles

 

[nXt]

4. FAT32, nothing else will make it faster.
5. No.

 

[stumbles]

Thanks nXt, that's already super helpful (saved me money not buying 3.0)

Any info on the first three questions? What size/how many songs have you got working?

Thanks,
stumbles

 

[coldsoda]

32GB here no issues with playback. I believe there is a limit to number of songs within a folder, but not limit of total songs on a flash drive. I think someone else on here is using a 64GB flash drive. I have not had loading time change when adding more music. I have close to 80% used on my 32GB drive now. Hope that helps a bit. Just organize the music in your flash drive to your liking. I have it as follows:

-Artist
----Songs

Good luck!

 

[ranman]

I have just over 4000 songs on a 32GB drive, with folders by artist and then folders for each album within that. It does take a while to load, but so did the 8GB drive I tested it with. I usually just listen to another audio source for a few minutes after first starting the car. Then when I switch to USB it's not too bad, probably 15-30 seconds.

 

[stumbles]

Thanks everyone, great info.

Anybody out there have success with 64Gb or larger?

I wonder how high you can go...maybe even just a solid state external drive...perhaps that pushing it.

-stumbles

 

[coldsoda]

Thanks everyone, great info.

Anybody out there have success with 64Gb or larger?

I wonder how high you can go...maybe even just a solid state external drive...perhaps that pushing it.

-stumbles

Have not looked into power requirements for the solid state ext hdd devices. Maybe if I get time this weekend I'll look into it a bit more. Those usb ports in our cars have a power limitation but I do not know the specifics there...

 

[CX-5tormtrooper]

Hey STUMBLES,

I tested out my 64GB microSD (formatted to FAT32) and it worked just fine. Later, I tried adding all my songs to it on my computer and the card ended up getting corrupted (known issue for Kingston). I just received my RMA replacement and I'm still working on updating all my file tags, but 64GB definitely does work.

I tried using a 128GB Kingston HyperX SSD (formatted to FAT32) and it would not work for me. Maybe I was too impatient for the radio to scan, but I only added a song or two to it and it still didn't recognize it. I even tried using a USB Y-cable to draw extra power from the power port next to the USB input source, no luck. If someone can find a solution for SSD's that would be great!

 

[stumbles]

Cool, I think I'll go with a 64gb flash drive for now. Let me know if you have any luck with the SSD.

-stumbles

 

[Senor Valasco]

How are you formatting a 64GB to FAT32? I thought there was a limitation well below 64GB with FAT32.

 

[rg2013]

Individual file sizes for FAT32 are limited to 4gb, but you can format a volume up to 2TB.

 

[CX-5tormtrooper]

SENOR VALASCO, I used the HP USB Storage Format Tool to format my 64GB microSD and 128GB SSD to FAT32. It is available from download.com.

 

[stumbles]

Quick update to share the troubleshooting and tips I've learned in trying to do music with a USB flash drive.

1) I bought a 64gb Patriot Axle drive (~$40), which is nice because its small and can fit below the tray in the center console.

2) However, it came formatted in exFAT and the head unit needs FAT32 as nXt pointed out. As Senor Valasco and Stormtrooper have noted, Windows 7 doesn't let you format drives larger than 32gb in FAT32 for some silly reason, so I needed to download a third party program to format my drive.

3) I'm using Media Monkey to clean the id3 tags on my music, which is really handy free software. It includes a feature that lets you Sync your flash drive to the Media Monkey library, which is useful if you add new music in the future. Additionally you can pick any file structure you want with this feature.

4) Now the problems. The HU is quite slow in loading the music. I'm not sure if this is purely a function of a) how many songs you have, or if it is also to do with b) number of artists/albums it needs to generate a list for OR c) the file structure on the USB key itself. I'd rather try and get the loading time under 2 minutes or so, the faster the better.

5) As coldsoda pointed out, there seems to be some kind of song limit. I tried putting all my songs in the root folder of the flash drive, and it will only load ~1800 of them (and it takes over 3 minutes to do so). Next I'm going to try putting them into artist folders and see if that makes it faster/gets me past the song limit.

Update: I put ~2100 songs into three folders just to test it, and they all loaded. So, don't put all your music directly into the root of your flash drive if you have more than ~1800 songs.

-stumbles

 

[CX-5tormtrooper]

Hey STUMBLES, thought I'd add my updates to yours.

I finally got through cleaning my music collection, using MediaMonkey as well, it's quick and easy.

Using a 64GB microSD via USB adapter. I have my music divided into genre folders, loaded up 4464 songs, leaving 34.7 GB's free. It did show all of my songs.

It took 6~7 minutes of "USB Reading" to load everything. I could have sworn the 3rd time running it, it only took 1-2 minutes, but I was paying more attention to driving.
Ran into a few MP3 tag discrepancies, but when I look at it on my PC it looks correct so I need to figure that out.
Also trying to figure out how to reduce load times, paring down my music collection again.

 

[RedBaron]

Ran into a few MP3 tag discrepancies, but when I look at it on my PC it looks correct so I need to figure that out.

Might well be the ID3 tag version the Mazda looks at vs. what your PC is set to look at. I use "MP3 Book Helper" freeware (http://mp3bookhelper.sourceforge.net/ - no longer in development but still works fine on latest Windows) and that lets you set an option to make both version 1 and version 2 tags the same.

 

[CX-5tormtrooper]

Thanks for the software suggestion REDBARON, I'll give it a go and report back later.

 

[stumbles]

Stormtrooper, thanks for the update. MediaMonkey should be able to fix any tag issues as well. MM has a functions under Tools>Advanced Tag Management called "Clean Id3v1 and v2 tags..." and "Synchronize tags". If you first clean the tags in your library, followed by Synchronize them, that should fix any problems on the CX-5 head unit.

I put a bunch of music on my 64 GB USB flash drive in a folder structure with "Artist name/Album/Song" and they all loaded into the head unit on the CX-5...eventually. Like you said it takes around 6 minutes, but it seems like it might be getting faster each time a little bit. It was definitely faster on my 8GB drive though.

I think I'm just going to live with the long loading times for now. Eventually it might make sense to just get an iPod classic for the car :/

If you find a way to reduce the loading times, please let us know.

Thanks!

-stumbles