Max size flash drive Uconnect radios can handle

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kad

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Anyone know what the largest size Flash drive the U-Connect radios (specifically the 5") can handle is?

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I can't seem to find any detailed information that confirms it, but I've seen some posts online that show they are using a 32GB with no issues, but possibly down the road the voice commands may not be able to read the entirety of the drive. (apparently, but this is referring to an RHB MyGig radio, I'm not sure if you have a Mygig or the RA2) I suppose if you already own the flash drive it wouldn't hurt to try it out just to see, but if you're in the market of looking for a flash drive I don't think you could go wrong with a 32GB which will hold around 2000 tracks if you plan on just loading music onto it. They're damn cheap too.

Technically speaking, I'm not sure if there would be any kind of limit as long as the drive is formatted correctly. But I would personally be hesitant in leaving something like an external hard-drive inside a vehicle as most storage (flash/standard hdd etc) probably isn't designed to withstand high temperatures.

I wouldn't mind testing this here in the office, but the highest storage flash-drive we have in the building at the moment is 16GB as we do not need anything bigger.
 
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kad

kad

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Thanks Alex. As I hadn't had any answers here after a couple of days, I went ahead and ordered a 64GB one from Amazon (This one). It arrived last night and it works with the radio, but I've not gone over the 32GB mark on it yet. As soon as I fill it over half I'll report back here on whether it still works with the radio.

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I was going to say it is pretty big but the more specific NGOs you load on it I bet you will see it takes longer to load
 

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I have been using a 64GB flash drive for about 9 months now without any real issues. I had to force my computer to use the FAT32 format...that's the only one that will work with Uconnect on flash drives greater than 32GB. About 7 out of 10 start ups I do get a 2-3 second pause in my music. I just assume it's because of the size of the flash drive.
 
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kad

kad

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I have been using a 64GB flash drive for about 9 months now without any real issues. I had to force my computer to use the FAT32 format...that's the only one that will work with Uconnect on flash drives greater than 32GB. About 7 out of 10 start ups I do get a 2-3 second pause in my music. I just assume it's because of the size of the flash drive.

Good to know. I didn't check the factory format on this one, but the radio is reading it. I think most come formatted FAT-32 from the factory for the broadest device compatibility. We'll see what happens when I load it up some more.

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Currently I use a (cheap china-made) 2TB USB stick (packaging states 105*C temperature resistance). It is formatted in exFAT with 267 files (1.9GB) currently. I keep it plugged into the center seat storage port.
The system recognizes and reads just fine, Shuffle plays as expected (and picks up where last left off when starting truck), voice commands works.
I have all music files loaded into a single folder on the drive.
I am currently loading my library stored on google drive (approx 240GB). If you hear from me again, I had issues - if not, then no issues ;)


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I have a 2018 Laramie with the larger screen and can tell you I use a SanDisk Ultra Fit 3.1 USB drive (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077VXV323/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and I have previously used SanDisk 3.0 drives that was also 32gb. Currently mine has 125 directories and a total of 3345 music files in .Mp3 format. I believe they will also take a 64Gb drive also but for sure any good brand of 32Gb should work. And you can have up to 9999 directories. The issue is that you can only have 3200 .Mp3 files in total. So as I said I have 3345 which is over the limit and what has happened is that mine still plays them all fine but when I use the voice command to give a command such as "Play Folder Rock Classic" it pops up and ask me to choose between "1. Rock - Classic" and "2. Rock - Classic", which is odd because they are identically named. It's odd it ask me to choose, there is only ONE folder called ROCK - CLASSIC on my drive. If I choose 1 it may play but may give me the error "File Limit Exceeded for Voice Commands", but I can try again and choose 2 and it will work fine, or it may be the other way around, 1 may work but 2 may give me the error. So, for some reason going over this 3200 maximum .Mp3 file limit has confused it. Though if I use the BROWSE button everything looks fine. And again, the voice command does work, but I have to go through this extra step and may get the error if I choose the wrong number. It's kinda odd you can have up to 9999 directories but can't have over 3200 music files all total. I believe that the picture files have the same limitation. Anyway with a 32Gb drive and 3345 high-quality Mp3 music files which total about 20.3Gb and on my 32Gb that means it still has about 8.78Gb free (keep in mind a 32Gb USB drive really only has about 28.6Gb that is usable). So I think a 32Gb will be plenty large for most anyone and if your like me and have a very large and diverse music collection you will have an issue with the maximum number of music files before you run out of space.
 

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One thing I'm trying to figure out if anyone knows is how to force the system to delete all previous indexes that it has stored for your USB drive and re-scan the drive. It should do this automatically anytime you insert a new USB drive but my system doesn't seem to be doing this anymore. My dads Ford has a "Force Re-Index of Media Drive" option in the menu system but my RAM doesn't, which is sad because otherwise the RAM's system is SOoooooo much nicer, more advanced, and more intuitive than the Fords system, but we don't seem to have a way to force a re-scan of the USB media. And disconnecting the batteries overnight does not do it. Nor does pulling the fuse to the USB panel. Anyone found a way to force the system to re-index the USB drive?
 

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One suggestion, I use the mini type usb sticks, mainly samsung. Is real easy to have something in center console, go to shut it and moved on top of the USB stick and possibly ruin usb outlet or bend. The mini ones, much safer. Less to hang out. Plus they are fast and priced right. Transferring over flac files is super fast.

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So not to totally derail the conversation but what’s the point of playing your music from flash drives when most of us have a smartphone that has a large enough hard disk to play our music from there? And no, I don’t mean using streaming media, I mean for like me, for example, when I got away from CD’s back in 2008, I became an iTunes member and had ripped every song I had off of CDs and all the ones I got from Napster and Imesh- we won’t talk about that...., and put them all on a new iPod. So now, I have well over 10,000 songs that I keep on my iPhone. Are you all saying that basically I can turn my truck into one giant, Hemi-powered iPod?


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^yes^

lol

I use a 200Gb memory chip in my phone which is loaded with MP3's and I also use the USB. Combine that with Sirius and local stations, and it's a rolling jukebox.

I remember when Napster first hit the net. My brother told me about it and I was one of maybe just a few thousand using it the first few months and it was hit or miss to get the tunes you wanted sometimes, then it just exploded and I was like Awww yeah, here we go! Good times man, good times.
 

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^yes^

lol

I use a 200Gb memory chip in my phone which is loaded with MP3's and I also use the USB. Combine that with Sirius and local stations, and it's a rolling jukebox.

I remember when Napster first hit the net. My brother told me about it and I was one of maybe just a few thousand using it the first few months and it was hit or miss to get the tunes you wanted sometimes, then it just exploded and I was like Awww yeah, here we go! Good times man, good times.

How would I put songs on that flash drive when I use iTunes to take control of all my music? Can you like, take a flash drive, poke it in the side of your laptop, open iTunes and sync that flash drive just like you would an iPod? That would be cool if you could. Or ****, I guess that since my old iPod classic is still good, I wonder if I could just plug that into my laptop, update it to all my current songs with iTunes and just leave that plugged into the USB port in my truck… Play my music from it and just use the Bluetooth connection to my truck from my iPhone just for making phone calls.


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Plankton

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How would I put songs on that flash drive when I use iTunes to take control of all my music? Can you like, take a flash drive, poke it in the side of your laptop, open iTunes and sync that flash drive just like you would an iPod? That would be cool if you could. Or ****, I guess that since my old iPod classic is still good, I wonder if I could just plug that into my laptop, update it to all my current songs with iTunes and just leave that plugged into the USB port in my truck… Play my music from it and just use the Bluetooth connection to my truck from my iPhone just for making phone calls.


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I don't use IOS stuff, so I have no idea. I know iPods and such are a more closed system and there isn't a lot of room to do what you want with the files. I connect my phone to my Windows PC and load it up. Same with the USB stick. It's all a FAT32 file and directory data based system.
 

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In my experience, the 2016 RA2 radio works with extFAT formatted drives. I used a 128gb 3.0 drive.
I installed a 2015 RA4(8.4) and the drive would no longer work for music. I had to reformat that same drive to NTFS.
I have about 7000 tracks on it currently.
My folder scheme goes like this:
Root/Music/
then I have individual folders for each letter, based on how they are displayed on the radio.

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Mordechai

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How would I put songs on that flash drive when I use iTunes to take control of all my music? Can you like, take a flash drive, poke it in the side of your laptop, open iTunes and sync that flash drive just like you would an iPod? That would be cool if you could. Or ****, I guess that since my old iPod classic is still good, I wonder if I could just plug that into my laptop, update it to all my current songs with iTunes and just leave that plugged into the USB port in my truck… Play my music from it and just use the Bluetooth connection to my truck from my iPhone just for making phone calls.


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As long as you can use a format that the uconnect system can read. I know mp3, and wma(mostly) work. Not sure about AAC

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Mordechai

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I have a 2018 Laramie with the larger screen and can tell you I use a SanDisk Ultra Fit 3.1 USB drive (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077VXV323/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and I have previously used SanDisk 3.0 drives that was also 32gb. Currently mine has 125 directories and a total of 3345 music files in .Mp3 format. I believe they will also take a 64Gb drive also but for sure any good brand of 32Gb should work. And you can have up to 9999 directories. The issue is that you can only have 3200 .Mp3 files in total. So as I said I have 3345 which is over the limit and what has happened is that mine still plays them all fine but when I use the voice command to give a command such as "Play Folder Rock Classic" it pops up and ask me to choose between "1. Rock - Classic" and "2. Rock - Classic", which is odd because they are identically named. It's odd it ask me to choose, there is only ONE folder called ROCK - CLASSIC on my drive. If I choose 1 it may play but may give me the error "File Limit Exceeded for Voice Commands", but I can try again and choose 2 and it will work fine, or it may be the other way around, 1 may work but 2 may give me the error. So, for some reason going over this 3200 maximum .Mp3 file limit has confused it. Though if I use the BROWSE button everything looks fine. And again, the voice command does work, but I have to go through this extra step and may get the error if I choose the wrong number. It's kinda odd you can have up to 9999 directories but can't have over 3200 music files all total. I believe that the picture files have the same limitation. Anyway with a 32Gb drive and 3345 high-quality Mp3 music files which total about 20.3Gb and on my 32Gb that means it still has about 8.78Gb free (keep in mind a 32Gb USB drive really only has about 28.6Gb that is usable). So I think a 32Gb will be plenty large for most anyone and if your like me and have a very large and diverse music collection you will have an issue with the maximum number of music files before you run out of space.
I've use voice commands to play individual songs, and artist's with just under 7000 total tracks. But haven't tested genre's

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As long as you can use a format that the uconnect system can read. I know mp3, and wma(mostly) work. Not sure about AAC

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I just looked in my manual and sure enough, it says it does. Guess I’ll have to dig up my old iPod and sync it to my iTunes. d0b1f7516a41352604907f167e2e5a79.jpg


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One reason I like usb most is it shows album art on radio screen, using phone it doesn't show. There is free app on play store, called album art changer, any songs on phone, you go into app, shows all music files and lets you select what you want to use as the art. Takes like 5 seconds to change or add own art and app searches for all art associated with the song and does it quick, then the art is embedded in the song for any radio, pc etc that shows art when playing music. Bluetooth songs, I feel get louder than the usb and maybe sound a tad bit better.
 

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One reason I like usb most is it shows album art on radio screen, using phone it doesn't show. There is free app on play store you called album art changer, any songs on phone, you go into app, shows all music files and lets you select what you want to use as the art. Takes like 5 seconds to change or add own art, then the art is embedded in the song. Works great.
Same here, I am really fond of seeing the album art. One drawback I found is that I can't use my normal high resolution images from my PC. Had to downsize them to 400 x 400 /522 x 512. If they are too large in resolution/size they won't load.

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