Are there issues with brands of USB thumb drives?

Greetings.

I have a 2012 Prius II, and am trying to establish a library of "go-to" music on a thumb drive that I can leave plugged in and know that I'll always have something right for my mood. But I'm having trouble getting the Prius to recognize my preferred thumb drive.

I'm using (or trying to use, anyway) a Lacie MosKeyTo (LaCie - LaCie MosKeyto) because of its tiny profile, so there's nothing poking out to get bumped or whacked while it's plugged in. This little guy actually uses a micro-SD card for its storage, so in theory I'd be able to put a 32 GB card in it pretty cheaply and have more music available than I could listen to in a cross-country trip.

My Lacie drive has worked just fine on Windows XP, Windows 7 32-bit, Windows 7 64-bit, Mac OS X 10.8.1, Ubuntu 10.10, and Ubuntu 12.04. I've plugged it into laptops and PCs directly, as well as into monitor-side hubs and docking stations without any issue (other than, in some topographies, difficulty grabbing the little bugger to unplug it). This is the case both with the "stock" 4 GB card and with a 32 GB micro-SD replacement.

The trouble is, regardless of which micro-SD I have in it I cannot get my Prius to recognize the drive and play the music. The USB option on the touchscreen remains dimmed and unavailable. The card came formatted FAT32, and based on something I saw in another post somewhere online, I went ahead and reformatted it (not the fast reformat) as FAT32 to ensure it was clean.

I've moved a few folders of MP3s to it, but when I plug it in my stereo doesn't indicate that it sees any USB device plugged in at all. I borrowed a Kingston DataTraveler SE9 (
USB Drives for personal and business use | Kingston
) from a friend, and that worked perfectly well, finding the MP3 file on it without issue. It also found files a few folders deep on a Kingston DataTraveler DT108 (
products
) without any problems. But both of these drives have a much larger (and therefore potentially more fragile) profile sticking out of the USB port than the Lacie.

I've even tried the Lacie drive through an extension cable that I know it connects through on PCs, to confirm that it's not some issue of the form factor somehow not reaching deep enough into the Prius USB jack, but that didn't recognize the drive, either. (The DT108 connected through the extension cable just fine.)

Why would my Prius be unable/unwilling to recognize it? Are there known restrictions on brands or types of USB drives that come into play with this beast? Can someone else recommend a tiny USB drive that is known to work with the Prius?

Thanks for any insights anyone can provide on this.

-- BarryT

 

TsKarma —

Thanks, but that seems to be about generating playlists. My issue is that the Prius's stereo is not even recognizing that the USB drive has been plugged in and mounting it.