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Max amount of songs on usb flash drive

Discussion in 'Gen 4 Prius Audio and Electronics' started by 'LectroFuel, Mar 20, 2016.

  1. grape808

    grape808 Active Member

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    Ya but I'll have more opportunities to test it! I haven't even gotten to my hip hop files yet.

    Actually there were some files not reading on my 2nd drive, and I only recopied those, so if those are now readable, then it looks like recopying might be the fix. I will check later today.
     
  2. axle2152

    axle2152 Active Member

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    That is all good to know, didn't know there were limits...figured the limits would have been the same as the filesystem. On the other hand there is bluetooth...so anything that can pair up with the car will work...

    The only thing I am disappointed is that it cannot read WAV files via USB. I'm kind of old school plus a nerd and rip vinyl to WAV or CD's so it is nice having uncompressed audio to use for playing back vinyl in the car...CD's will suffice since bluetooth audio is a bit compressed, but not terrible.
     
  3. grape808

    grape808 Active Member

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    Ya, I was disappointed it couldn't read FLAC or WAV too. In this day and age, we're limited to mp3 and wmp? Who even uses WMP anymore, lol. But it's not hard to convert lossless files to high bit rate mp3, which is what I've been doing for a lot of my older rips, which were mostly FLAC.

    Also if its a matter of cleaning up tags and making sure the file copied onto the drive without corrupt information, I'm going to test that 9,999 limit again.
     
    #23 grape808, Sep 21, 2016
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2016
  4. grape808

    grape808 Active Member

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    Just to follow up on this, the easy fix for files not being read seems to be to copy them to a computer straight from the flash drive (so any comp will do), delete and redo the relevant property tags in Windows, and copy and replace them back to the flash drive. I have well over 20k files on 3 flash drives and they're all readable and tagged so that i can listen by artist, album, or genre, or just play the whole drive at random.

    I put my metal songs on random this morning and by luck the second file was a 70 minute long Radio Fenriz show that I had downloaded off his soundcloud. I'm never going to listen to the same song while in my car ever again.
     
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  5. MikeDee

    MikeDee Senior Member

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    What's the maximum size usb drive you can use?
     
  6. alanclarkeau

    alanclarkeau Senior Member

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    As far as I know, there is no SIZE limit - my 32/64s work fine, haven't tried bigger - plus there's no real use. There could well be a limit - any huge ones released after the PRIUS JBL was designed may not be recognised, though it may be reverse engineered.

    BUT - don't expect to fill it up a 128 (or even 32 if they're small) drive with songs and play them all - there is a limit of files and folders - have a read through the posts above.

    I also haven't been consistently able to have them play in the order I'd like - sometimes it works, other times JBL/USB plays them in whatever order it feels like.

    I ended up buying a multi-pack of cheap coloured 8GB drives, and have loaded them with different genres of content - types of music, podcasts etc - Swapping a lightly loaded USB drive was much easier than trying to shuffle through the folders of a large drive - particularly with the awful touchscreen JBL audio in the PRIUS. Give me real buttons anytime.
     
  7. Prodigyplace

    Prodigyplace Senior Member

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    According to the 2017 manual, here are the playback specs.
    upload_2017-1-10_17-56-1.png
    upload_2017-1-10_17-56-43.png
    upload_2017-1-10_17-57-9.png
     
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  8. grape808

    grape808 Active Member

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    I use a couple of 128s with very large files (podcasts, really long music files like dj mixes) and it reads fine. I believe the key is not going over 9,999 music files. You can have other things on there like pictures. It will only read the mp3, mp4, and wma files (not listed in manual but in my experience it reads mp4s).
     
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  9. ETP

    ETP 2021 Prime(Limit),Highlander HYB Plat,B52-D,G,F,H

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    Ok, tried a EXFAT USB stick today and the USB menu item was greyed out. What am I doing wrong? 32GB stick with MP3.

    .mp3 files!!!!!!!

    So how do I fix this?
     
    #29 ETP, Feb 26, 2017
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2017
  10. Prodigyplace

    Prodigyplace Senior Member

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    According to the manual in Post 27, you use FAT 16 or FAT 32.
     
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  11. ETP

    ETP 2021 Prime(Limit),Highlander HYB Plat,B52-D,G,F,H

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    k.
     
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  12. alanclarkeau

    alanclarkeau Senior Member

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    Other option, could be a faulty USB stick. I've got 2 "faulty" USB sticks according to Samantha, one of which will work on both of my laptops and on my TV, but Samantha doesn't recognise at all. The other she recognises, shows it has (for example) 16 songs, but she will only play a couple of seconds of each before jumping to the next one. My other 7 or 8 USB sticks work fine.
     
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  13. Prodigyplace

    Prodigyplace Senior Member

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    Backing up the data and reformatting them might help. Do not choose quick format.
     
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  14. alanclarkeau

    alanclarkeau Senior Member

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    Yep - did that - copied to a directory on my laptop, formatted, recopied and still didn't work. It had worked with another though.

    Incidentally, when I first loaded Windows 10 on my laptop, it wouldn't format USB sticks - but with various Microsoft updates, it'll now format successfully - I was having to use my old VISTA laptop for formatting.
     
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  15. Prodigyplace

    Prodigyplace Senior Member

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    I assume you tried with the Vista laptop too.
     
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  16. alanclarkeau

    alanclarkeau Senior Member

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    Hmmm - well, no, I didn't - I'll give that a go. Stranger things have happened.
     
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  17. My08

    My08 Junior Member

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    Hi - so I have a 2017 with the basic sound system and for the Scandisk 16gb flash I am using it will not see any folders. I put all my song in the "root" approx 1300 songs and it only recognizes 498. I agree that some may need renaming - any additional help would be appreciated. Thanks,
     
  18. Prodigyplace

    Prodigyplace Senior Member

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  19. alanclarkeau

    alanclarkeau Senior Member

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    As @Prodigyplace said.

    I haven't done that for a couple of years - initially I put a full 64gb in and it just sat there. So I tried again, reformatted, loaded about 240 files, and it sat there for a while while it did an indexing (whatever that is?), but it worked fine after that.

    I would suspect that we're working with the FAT32 restrictions (I think it's 512 - but that's with 8.3 file names, and could be significantly less with Long File Names). Additionally, I'm not sure if TOYOTA puts restrictions on too and USBs are different from Windows.

    USB music? | PriusChat also discussed the issue more recently.

    I ended up buying a handful of small 8gb Flash drives, just putting a small number of files on each - I gave up on directories. Much easier to handle, particularly as it generally plays in random order. Mostly PODCASTS.

    And for real music, I use the CD player, quality is much better.
     
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  20. SPB-CH

    SPB-CH Junior Member

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    I have a Walkman Z series 1 with around 70 complete albums and some radio shows like the complete set of Tony Hancock's 'Half Hour' - no problems with that or iPhone. Not much luck with USB sticks though. Maybe I have to format them. Haven't tries an SSD yet.