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

Discussion in 'Prius c Audio and Electronics' started by ThatTallGuy, Jun 2, 2012.

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  1. ThatTallGuy

    ThatTallGuy Junior Member

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    I have a 250GB SATA drive plugged in to the USB port (in this enclosure -- I like these because it doesn't require a second plug to power the drive!) and technically speaking, it works fine for the most part, but a number of things that would be EASY FIXES to the firmware that Toyota could introduce make the system nearly unusable.

    Discussion, and some things I've learned, in case they're useful to anyone:

    1. Not only does the drive have to be FAT32, it must only contain one partition. (Windows will not create a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB, but you can get a free tool to do so here, or use any of the Linux tools widely available.) Fine, I can live with that.

    2. The player doesn't know anything about folder hierarchies; it just lists all folders including subfolders all together. This is a pain because I have folders not intended to be seen in isolation... for example I have 20-30 folders named "CD1" and another 20-30 named "CD2"...which I have to open up and look in to find out what they contain. A full reorganization of the folders on this drive is now underway... Alternatively, Toyota could put together a hierarchical UI to use the folders like God and Ken Thompson intended.

    3. The order of folders is *at best* the order of the folders on disk, not alphabetically or by anything useful, and you cannot reorder the folders on the display. To reorder them on the disk you can find free utilities on the web (I use DriveSort, but there are others.) How hard would it be to add a button to reorganize the folders you see on the car??

    4. Too many folders confuses its little brain. I have over 500 folders and the car recognizes only 300+ of them. There's no message indicating that some folders aren't in your list; it takes two or three cycles through the list before you realize the one you're looking for isn't there... a simple message saying "Capacity exceeded, you geeky twit" would be useful.

    5. (The Killer: ) In order to permit voice recognition, when it first sees the drive it goes through the entire partition and generates a list of folders and a soundex (or similar, I haven't seen the tech details) database of all the tags in all the files on the disk. This can take ten minutes or more on my large drive -- and during that time you cannot even look through the folders manually!

    And if that weren't bad enough: IT DOESN'T CACHE THIS INFORMATION. IT REGENERATES IT EVERY TIME YOU START THE CAR. So for the first ten minutes of every trip, I essentially can't use the USB drive other than to continue listening to what I was listening to when the car stopped last.

    How hard would it be to write a little file like Microsoft's .thumbs or Apple's ._DS-Store (or whatever it is) so you can just reread the db at the next startup? Check the timestamp on the file against the timestamp of the directory it's in to see whether you need to refresh that dir or not. Processing time would be cut by 95% (and thus save power in the car!) and you could listen to your stuff in a few seconds.

    All this stuff would be a matter for a couple of weeks' work for one or two programmers and it would make the USB experience light-years better. I'd even help write it if they exposed their API to me. In the meantime, anybody with similar ideas can use a large drive but don't expect it to be fun.
     
    #1 ThatTallGuy, Jun 2, 2012
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  2. SquallLHeart

    SquallLHeart The Techie Guy

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    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.. o_O
     
    #2 SquallLHeart, Jun 4, 2012
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  3. XRinger

    XRinger Member

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    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).
     
    #3 XRinger, Jun 4, 2012
  4. ThatTallGuy

    ThatTallGuy Junior Member

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    Guess I'm pickier than that...
    Any programmer today should consider scalability in their design. We are, after all, on computers (even head units) with more than 640k... that should be enough lesson for anybody. And a car that's supposed to last a dozen years? That's an eternity in the computer world. By the time this car's ready to be traded in, the USB port will feel like an 8-track tape.
     
    #4 ThatTallGuy, Jun 4, 2012
  5. ThatTallGuy

    ThatTallGuy Junior Member

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    Uh... more.

    Complete Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven collections. A good swing at Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Bob Marley. The complete Springsteen. The Beatles. DJ Tiesto. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong and a bunch of their friends. Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Blue Man Group.

    Y'know.... stuff.

    Yeah, I'll probably end up doing that. Pity. I was really psyched about being able to cart around that drive...
     
    #5 ThatTallGuy, Jun 4, 2012
  6. islands0n

    islands0n New Member

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    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...
     
    #6 islands0n, Oct 6, 2012
  7. KimGT

    KimGT Junior Member

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    hmm, I have a 4gb with filled with music. the HU seems to organize that just fine for all the artist.
     
    #7 KimGT, Oct 6, 2012
  8. chivazo

    chivazo Junior Member

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    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.
     
    #8 chivazo, Nov 2, 2012
  9. cknfts

    cknfts Junior Member

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    ---
     
    #9 cknfts, Apr 6, 2013
  10. ThatTallGuy

    ThatTallGuy Junior Member

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    Even USB stick drives are only getting larger. You can already get them at half-terabyte sizes (Kingston DataTraveler HyperX Predator USB flash drive - 512 GB) and that trend isn't going to reverse itself...

    And if you read the post, size isn't the only issue. For example, if I have a couple of operas on one stick, with subfolders CD1, CD2, CD3, I see all the CD1 directories (no clue which opera each is from), then all the CD2's, etc.

    The point is, there was zero thought put into this unit. It would take a trivial amount of effort to make it dramatically better, whether it's a stick or a hard drive.
     
    #10 ThatTallGuy, Apr 6, 2013
  11. Heines57

    Heines57 Junior Member

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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.
     
    #11 Heines57, Apr 8, 2013
  12. gbouten

    gbouten Junior Member

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    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?
     
    #12 gbouten, Apr 21, 2013
  13. cknfts

    cknfts Junior Member

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    #13 cknfts, Apr 23, 2013
  14. ztanos

    ztanos All-around Geek!

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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.
     
    #14 ztanos, Apr 23, 2013
  15. Noibs

    Noibs Junior Member

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    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.
     
    #15 Noibs, Apr 25, 2013
  16. gbouten

    gbouten Junior Member

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    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?
     
    #16 gbouten, Apr 28, 2013
  17. jss2

    jss2 Junior Member

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    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!
     
    #17 jss2, Dec 24, 2013
  18. ThatTallGuy

    ThatTallGuy Junior Member

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    You can plug it into a DC power supply as another poster suggested or you can look for an enclosure that doesn't require that extra power. I do the latter, for example this one (there are others as well.) The requirements for a notebook-sized HD (2.5 inches) are right on the edge of what USB can supply, so some smaller enclosures manage to not require a separate power input.
     
    #18 ThatTallGuy, Dec 26, 2013
  19. ThatTallGuy

    ThatTallGuy Junior Member

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    [geek]
    This isn't a sort. Each folder has an area in the folder which is the "directory" which lists all of the files. As a file (or folder) is added to a directory, it is placed in the next available slot in the directory. What you are getting is the entries in this directory in the order they were placed, i.e. explicitly not re-sorted.

    When you copy a directory or set of them, it will also not bother to sort them, and just reproduce them in the order they were in the original directory. So copying a directory from one place to another will not result in a sorted directory.
    [/geek]

    I recently got an update to the nav unit, which has paid off in at least one useful nav-related way, but I don't know if it has changed any of the music stuff. I will check when there is time and post the results here.
     
    #19 ThatTallGuy, Dec 26, 2013
  20. jss2

    jss2 Junior Member

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    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...
     
    #20 jss2, Dec 26, 2013
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