USB flash drive and folders?

Badlilstang

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Can we not put music in folders when playing from a USB flash drive? I tried and it would not play anything. If I put them in the root they all play fine. Also, can it power an external HD?
 
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Badlilstang

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Also, can it play the WMA Lossless ?

EDIT: I confirmed it can play WMA Lossless but it was kinda odd. It kept telling me bad media.. etc.. but the play album command let it play WMA Lossless which is pretty damn awesome. Now if I can just get it to let me put albums in folders...
 
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Watson91

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I have never tried using USB with folders. I have the GT Premium and I know the radio has a category/folders option. I would assume you have already read this, but this is pulled from the user manual.

To connect using the system menu:
1. Plug the device into the vehicle’s USB port.
2. Press the MEDIA hard button.
3. Select the User Device tab, the press Source repeatedly until USB
appears.
4. Press Music Library.
5. Select from the listed features.
Once connected, the system indexes any readable media files. (The time
required to complete this depends on the size of the media content
being indexed.) If Autoplay is on, you can access media files randomly as
they are indexed. If turned off, indexed media is not available until the
indexing process is complete. SYNC is capable of indexing thousands of
average size media and notifies you if the maximum indexing file size is
reached.

I wouldn't imagine that the USB port would power an external hard drive. It's worth a shot trying though.
 

Badlilstang

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I got it working in folders.. I just use the Explore USB option and sure enough it works. Not sure why I had issues before but I am using a different USB drive so the other might have had issues. Both are formatted FAT32. It plays WMA Lossless perfectly.. very happy to see that!
 

96svtdriver

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Also, can it power an external HD?

The most the USB 2.0 port on the center console is going to put out is 5Vdc at around 1A average with a maximum of 1.5A as per the USB 2.0 standards.

I was wondering the same thing a bit over a year ago so I decided to test the theory with a Western Digital 2.5" 500GB 5400rpm SATA2 drive, a Western Digital 2.5" 500GB 7200rpm SATA2 drive and finally a 2.5" OCZ Agility 2 240GB Solid State drive. All these I tested in the same USB 2.0 compliant enclosure, which essentially makes them an external hard drive reliant solely on the USB port for power. I also had a small adapter that sits in between the USB port of the car and the USB connector on the external enclosure. I went with 2.5" laptop drives due to the lessened power requirements as opposed to the 3.5" drives typically found in PC's. Now I will mention that there's no way on God's green Earth that either of the platter-type drives were spinning at their max speeds at any given time, nor did the SSD move like it would inside a laptop simply because 1. There's not a super advanced hard disk controller in our cars like in a computer and 2. 5Vdc at 1.5A maximum just isn't enough to make these drives run anywhere near peak. It's safe to say any hardware acceleration built into the controller board on the hard drive, such as caching features is disabled/gimped as well.

I had each drive loaded up with various formats such as MP3 and WAV, since the former is lossy and the later lossless that I knew the headunit would recognize as far as format is concerned.

With a multimeter I tested each as the drive started when the car came on, when the headunit was searching for media, and finally as it played each lossy and lossless media.

Each drive operated flawlessly, albeit each were very slow for obvious reasons, but none failed to perform at each step I tested, never once taxing the power requirements. Not surprisingly, the solid state drive was the fastest in every respect (boot/access/read) and used the lowest amperage consistently, rarely going above 1A, but mostly sat around .8A average. Idle was around .4A

The other two magnetic-platter type drives need more power to move the heads and spin the platters so, yet again not surprisingly, they used more power consistently, especially at boot. They always sat at 1A or slightly above, but didn't go over 1.3A. Idle was around .5A. It's important to note though that a hard bump or even casual driving with these platter-type drives can cause them to move around and not stay at one constant angle/place can these to fail due to the head reader scratching across or even touching a spot on the magnetic surface of a platter. Obviously the cheaper alternative to a SSD, if you can keep it level it's definitely the way to go. I have my enclosure with a piece of industrial Velcro on it with the opposite side of the Velcro on the passenger side of the interior of my center console. It sits at around a 45* angle with the 6" USB cable plugged into the port. The 500GB drive hasn't missed a beat yet after 2 years and has endured even the hottest interior temps.

I would say overall the wiring is of sufficient AWG having visually inspected it myself with my console removed in the past and the 5Vdc was always constant so I am confident in saying that area of the vehicles electrical system was and is stable for what you want to do with an external.

I will say this though, I have heard of SYNC being finicky about what hard drives it likes to recognize, just as it does with some USB sticks and SD cards inside certain cell phones. A Hitachi hard drive is a fairly good bet on compatibility as that is what is in the premium headunits, though I can only say for sure my HU in my '11 Shaker 500 w/ NAV has a 2.5" Hitachi 10GB PATA drive.

Interesting that Ford/Microsoft/Clarion would cheap out like that and not at least use SATA if not SATA2 due to the faster boot/access/read/write and availability of the drives. PATA/IDE is ancient technology these days.

Sorry for the rant, I'm an electrician by trade and a former computer programmer, network installer. I hope this answers your question.:beer:
 
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Badlilstang

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Yeah, I have been in IT for 14 years doing desktop and server support. I already knew the above info :) Building high-end PC's is a hobby also. Ford would not need Esata if they made use of USB 3.0 speed. If they did (Sata III the latest out) it would have to be an EsataP to provide power which from what I understand is a rare connection type unlike USB 3.0 which is backwards compatible.
 
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Dbzguy

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So I just load up all my music onto a flash drive but it doesnt play everything on there. Would this be fixed by putting it into a folder?
 

96svtdriver

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So I just load up all my music onto a flash drive but it doesnt play everything on there. Would this be fixed by putting it into a folder?

It might. Also, take note if the files are VBR or constant bit rate such as 128k or 256k, etc. Sometimes SYNC doesn't like some VBR music files.
 

Badlilstang

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So I just load up all my music onto a flash drive but it doesnt play everything on there. Would this be fixed by putting it into a folder?


It could be the format of the music. I am using WMA lossless I converted from FLAC. I want it as close to CD quality as possible so I don't mind that hte files are much larger in size. I just bought a large flash drive so not to worried about it!
 

califsp

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This is the most information I've seen about using USB flash drives in our oem audio systems. Thanks gentlemen. Detailed info about the shaker systems is impossible to come by as well. In case anyone is interested, I added a second USB port in my glovebox. I plugged this into the SYNC black box under the dash above the glove box:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/0-5m-USB-2-..._USB_Cables_Hubs_Adapters&hash=item565bdb98e5
 
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Badlilstang

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This is the most information I've seen about using USB flash drives in our oem audio systems. Thanks gentlemen. Detailed info about the shaker systems is impossible to come by as well. In case anyone is interested, I added a second USB port in my glovebox. I plugged this into the SYNC black box under the dash above the glove box:
0 5M USB 2 0 A Female Socket Panel Mount to Mini 5pin Male Plug Extension Cable | eBay

Yeah, I heard this could be done! Thanks for the info! There isn't much left of my original shaker other than the source (headunit).
 

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