Portable HDD connected via USB

[richman6100]

Hi,

I've had my new IS300h F-Sport since the beginning of March and overall I'm mightily impressed.

I have the Premium Nav / ML stereo and I'm having an odd issue when connecting a portable HDD (2TB Samsung M3) to it via USB. I have about 800 albums on the drive, all ripped to MPEG-4 (.m4a) using the AAC codec. When I connect the drive it's located instantly and a significant number of the albums appear, but quite a few are missing. There is nothing unusual about the ones that it doesn't display (the title, artist etc simply don't appear), they are ripped in exactly the same way as those that do appear. The ones that are displayed play flawlessly. I have checked that the music is not corrupted in some way by connecting the portable HDD to two different computers - no problem there. The drive is formatted as MS-DOS (FAT), which should be fine for 2TB drives and there's probably less than 200GB of music on it anyway. Does anybody have any experience of this issue and how to resolve it?

Many thanks,
Rich

[PaulWhitt20]

My CT used to have a limitation of 255 files in a folder any more would not show up. Maybe if you split them up into smaller folders it may help.

[richman6100]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the reply.

The music is organised by artist, a folder for each each one, with sub-folders for their albums. For some artists there are a dozen or so albums (and therefore a dozen or so sub-folders), for others there may be just one or two albums. The missing artists / albums include both extremes as do the ones that are displayed (and play) correctly. I'm rather baffled. It's not like just the first 255 (alphabetically) are working. I have artists from A-Z that do appear and play.

Cheers,
Rich

[rayaans]

Not sure if this might be a solution but it should be formatted to FAT32. as far as I'm aware MS-DOS can mean to be FAT16 or FAT32 

[richman6100]

Hi Rayaan,

Yes, it's FAT32 formatted.

Cheers,

Rich

[rayaans]

I see. Generally the music on my USB is in no general order. It's not alphabetic at all.

Are artists missing? Or just the albums of these artists? 

[richman6100]

Hi,

As far as I can tell, it's certain artists and therefore their albums too. I have at least a couple of artists with over a dozen albums (in sub-folders, by album) that appear fine, so it doesn't appear to be as simple as too many sub-folders.

Cheers,

Rich

[rayaans]

Are the artists in the same order as on the HDD? I'm quite confused as well 

[PaulWhitt20]

Is it the order that the files were put on the HDD?

Sent from my Iphone using Tapatalk

[richman6100]

Thanks for your input Rayaan, Paul,

Yes, the artists that are appearing are in alphabetical order, as they are on the HDD. There are random ones missing though when displayed in the Lexus. I did wonder if it had something to do with the order that they were added to the drive, but, with a couple of exceptions, they were ripped in alphabetical order and added in that order.

I don't know how the Lexus's system works. Could it be that it processes the metadata for the artists / albums somehow and it's running into issues during this process?

Rich

[tHomBleached]

Make a note of the ones that you can't see. On your PC, open them up in anything capable of reading the ID3 tags (even iTunes should do). See if there's anything odd in the tag (a symbol like €%#¥>~ etc) or even if there's a space before/after the end of a field. Could be the nav is a bit more particular on what it will scan. 

[richman6100]

Thanks Thom, I'll give that a go tomorrow and report back. I've just made a list of the artists which I'll compare with what the premium nav is displaying.

Cheers,

Rich

[Steve44]

Rich - according to the manual, USB is limited to 3000 folders max, 9999 files max and 255 files per folder max. Also it can only decode MP3, WMA and AAC(m4a) files up to 320kbps. The files must have either .mp3, .wma or .m4a file suffix.  M3u playlist files aren't supported and the max folder depth is 8, although the manual says to prevent issues no more than 2 folders deep is recommended.  

Previous experience of another car (not lexus) with limits, it depended on which version of windows/mac and which app i used determined which files the car picked up. As it scanned the disk, it loaded the first ### tracks it found, regardless of how they were arranged on the disk.  I guess it is to do with how the system creates the master boot record on the disk.

The tagging corresponds to the standards set out, so ID3tag V1.0 to V2.3 is compatible. I assume odd characters may prevent them being loaded.

See pages 265 onwards in the manual.

[richman6100]

Hi Steve,

Thanks, that's very helpful. I'd read the manual, but somehow managed to skip the columns referring to max numbers of files. I suspect that this is the issue as I have because my drive contains more than 18,000 files. Codec, bit rate and file format should all be ok, so I'll delete some content from the drive and see if that resolves things. I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks again,

Rich

[richman6100]

Hi again,

I deleted a load of music from my portable HDD, bringing the total number of files down to just under 10,000, and that seems to have done the trick. Many thanks to those of you who helped me with this.

I'm still not entirely sure why specific artists / albums were missing before - they were't the last added to the drive, nor the last alphabetically - the premium nav does seem to read the drive in a strange order. The vast majority of the music was copied to the HDD in the same sitting, and the drive itself was never anywhere near full, so I would expect the files to be written contiguously. Anyway, we seem to have cracked it.

One thing I have noticed is that when the drive is connected, although it's accessible within 5 seconds and the music can be played, the 'Browse' option can take between 5 and 10 minutes to become active. Up until then it's greyed out. Does anybody else experience the same?

Thanks,

Rich

[andywin]

Picking my new IS200T sport up tomorrow with the standard infotainment system. Can I use a portable HDD with the standard system?

 

[Blisteringblue]

I hate the infotainment in this car for all it's worth.   It really is shocking.

I got a 64GB Micro USB stick that is fat32.   Yet half the music I put on showed up as "unkown" artist.

So stripped the ID3 tags out to basic info ARTIST / ALBUM / TITLE / TRACK / GENRE / YEAR and then it cataloged it all fine and you could play it.

Album art was all a little hit and miss, and then I couldn't understand why sometimes it would show the full track name (eg. 01 - Oasis - Wonderwall) as the song and then other times it showed the title correctly without the track and artist.

Seemed to be no pattern to it, until I got to understand that pile of cr@p that is gracenote.   And seriously out of date Gracenote at that and it appears absolutely no way to upgrade gracenote too.

For USB to 100% guarantee that your Album Cover displays you can only have a a picture that is 120 x 120 pixels.    Yes, some bigger ones display but other times they don't, but stick to 120 x 120 and they always display.   Also if Gracenote recognizes the album you are playing you will get the white Gracenote logo bottom left and at this point, the title will display correctly as just the title.   If Gracenote has not recognized it then you get the actual filename of the track from the USB disk.   Also even if you change your settings for gracenote to not display cover art it still does it if the pictures are over 120 x 120.   Honestly stick to 120 x 120 and album art is always fine from USB.

The artist is always recognized luckily as is the folder name as Album if you do what I do and have ARTIST as the top folder and then each album as sub folders.   So this means you can use the voice activation to pick your music.

Anyway the crux of my story is its a complete pile of dog doo, and the only equipment this car likes belongs to apple.    Us Android and USB owners are pretty shafted really.

LEXUS IF YOU READ THIS "YOUR INFOTAINMENT BLOWS CHUNKS"

[richman6100]

Hi BB,

It certainly seems like the Premium Nav could do with updating, it certainly isn't cheap. I hope Lexus's reputation for customer service is justified and that they are listening / reading. Much can be achieved by firmware updates. My (embedded) album artwork is significantly larger than 120 X 120 px and almost none of it displays correctly. Granted, some of my music isn't mainstream, but a reasonable amount is.

You mention the Lexus system is better with apple gear (I respect that it's not your preferred platform), do you know if an iPod would be a better solution than a portable HDD?

Thanks,

Rich

[rayaans]

With regard to the infotainment system, I was expecting it to be horrendous before getting the car going by the reviews on here 

Honestly I have to say, after having such low expectations, it's impressed me. 

Its paired up to my phones and wifes phones perfectly (Honor 7, HTC one M9 and Samsung Galaxy note 3), it holds contacts etc. Sometimes it gets slow but it's not often. It also recognises all my music in the order I put it in and displays the names out in the correct format. I am on version D btw.

All in all I was expecting to be disappointed but I can't say it's any worse than the MMI system in my brother in laws old Q7 2013 plate which seemed to die every 2 days. 

Having said that, it's not as smooth as the one in my 2012 RX let alone a patch on the 2016 RX which has the best infotainment system to date on a Lexus.

It will be interesting to see the new infotainment system that's going to be on the LC however, should be a good un by the reports I'm getting 

[Blisteringblue]

Hi Richman,

My first 18 months were pretty much Iphone and ipod and it worked great.  Decided to ditch the apple when I learned about the impending new headphone design and only apple can do repairs, so decided enough was enough and went to the Android.  Even ditched the Ipod for the USB just because it's 1cm across rather than an ipod with moving parts and was starting to stutter and make disk noises.

Yes I could save my stress levels and go back to the Ipod but have persevered.  In the past 90 mins I have actually managed to strip and replace all embedded cover art on 40GB of files from the stick back to 120 x 120 pixels.    I've used a combination of mp3tag and Ifranview, and to be honest it was reasonably easy, but I am an IT Manager by trade so I understood the process.

I don't complain about the sound from the premium nav, once you get there it's great, but getting to a point when you can play your music easily and neatly with art etc, boy they make it complicated.

I would stick with a USB stick though if you are struggling with a full portable hard disk.

[richman6100]

Hi BB,

I too work in I.T. for my sins and I'm relatively platform agnostic, but I feel your pain. There's no need for this to be so difficult - iOS and Android should be equally supported in my opinion. I happen to have a lot of apple kit. I have an iPod I may try, but its capacity is limited and I have a large music collection (circa 2500 CDs). Unless there is a compelling reason to use an iOS device I think I'll persevere with the HDD. Limiting the quantity of music on it has improved the situation. I'm puzzled by the delay before the Browse function works though.

The ML stereo is pretty good for a car stereo (my real passion is not I.T., but home HiFi, of which I have a reasonably high-end system), but it does seem unnecessarily difficult to get your music played through it.

Cheers,

Rich

[Blisteringblue]

The delay is all around this cataloging done by the system and this gracenote.   It's basically the old CDDB database with track details etc built into the infotainment.

If you read the manuals, Lexus only recommend 32GB max for sticks etc, so we are pushing it a bit with larger drives.  My 64gb stick gets to browse under 60 secs from starting up so I can live with that.

I now have a combination of the phone with 128GB microSD (80gb Music) and the USB stick with around 50GB of music on.    If I want playlists I go with the phone over Bluetooth and play genres or era/decades on shuffle, then if I want specific albums I go with the USB Stick.  Hopefully tomorrow on my drive home I can enjoy the correctly displaying artwork from the USB to prove all my theories :-)  I am going to ask about a Gracenote update when I get the next service, but I'm expecting them to look at me like I'm strange.

[pobrown]

After some trial and error I found that 300x300 cover art worked fine for me.  I first tried 400x400 but only a handful displayed but with 300x300 everything appears to show up.

I wish the system would display the track name from the ID3 tags rather than the file name - my wife's 2015 Toyota Aygo does!

[ganzoom]

USB sticks, iPods, HDD to store music...are you guys all still living in the 00' ;)

Since the likes of Spotify, apple Music etc I cannot remember the last time I accessed music stored on hard media...Even at home!!! 

My Iphone 5 has a tiny 16gig of memory yet I can still stream just about any music I want, when I want. 

Stop messing around with outdated tech, give streaming services a go, life is so much simpler :).

[Blisteringblue]

Lol, have been thinking about it as got some limited streaming for free through my amazon Prime account, however the weak link for me is my phone is on Vodafone and I get it from work so cant choose.  Their data is still quite poor.

Thanks pobrown, will have a try of 300x300 now ive worked out a quick method to alter in bulk, and i took a copy of the full size files :-) I will say my system does display the proper track name when gracenote recognizes it.