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Help Please: Playing Music on a USB Hard Drive

Discussion in 'Prius v Audio and Electronics' started by SageBrush, Nov 14, 2012.

  1. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

    Joined:
    Jun 4, 2008
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    Location:
    Southwest Colorado
    Vehicle:
    2012 Prius v wagon
    Model:
    Two
    My USB hard drive was plug and play in the Lexus CTh, so I am stumped why the Prius v is not also. A bit of searching the archives suggested that the music has to reside in the root directory, perhaps as a folder. If this is the problem I need some techy help because of the way my HD is partitioned:

    I used Mac OS X disk utility to make three partitions:
    1. "x.6", an OS X entended format partition
    2. "Mac OS X Install ESD", an OS X extended format partition
    3. "FAT", a FAT32 formatted partition

    Terminal output shows the root directory has a folder called 'Volumes', and the logical partitions are inside. Any advice how to help the Prius find the music other than reformatting the HD ? Thanks!

    Addendum: I added a symbolic link in the root directory to /Volumes/FAT/Music that does not solve the problem.
     
    #1 SageBrush, Nov 14, 2012
  2. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

    Joined:
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    Location:
    Southwest Colorado
    Vehicle:
    2012 Prius v wagon
    Model:
    Two
    For now I have given up on the HD and copied the music to a FAT formatted USB memory instead that works like a charm
     
    #2 SageBrush, Nov 14, 2012
  3. mandasol

    mandasol Member

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    Location:
    Atlanta, GA
    Vehicle:
    2012 Prius v wagon
    Model:
    Three
    I've found the USB thing is too glitchy to make it worth using even when it's working "properly".

    It supposedly can only read down three levels in the directory structure, but it lists all the music together without any structure so you have to search through all your music to play a song and it's a royal pain to do that with the V's touch screen especially if you have thousands of songs. Unless your tags are all arranged 100% perfect you'll get a mess to search for your music by categories sometimes even by artist or album.

    Also, the V has a glitch in where it will automatically play random music from your connected USB device every time you start your car - even if the radio was turned off or to another source. If you plan to only connect your device only when you want to hear music from it, then you don't have that problem.

    I find it a lot easier to just load all my music onto a cloud service and stream it through bluetooth.
     
    #3 mandasol, Nov 14, 2012
  4. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

    Joined:
    Jun 4, 2008
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    Location:
    Southwest Colorado
    Vehicle:
    2012 Prius v wagon
    Model:
    Two
    So far, the USB drive seems to be doing fine:

    One partition, formatted FAT32 titled 'MUSIC'
    Multiple folders in root, each one an artist.

    I haven't checked whether individual albums organized as folders inside the artist folder are being read correctly.
     
    #4 SageBrush, Nov 14, 2012
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