brand new usb sticks don't show the folder I just put on them

[Snicklefritz]

this is really annoying. the old 128 gb sandisk in my gt1 would not show several subfolders, some of them recent additions. would not display in the car, yet all subfolders displayed on my laptop and they played fine. the geek squad told me that my usb stick was dying, so I replaced it, and the invisible subfolders were now visible in the car. meanwhile we got a second stinger, the premium. the gt1 has updated media / navigation programming. the premium has the original 2019 version, whatever that is, it looks exactly like what I had back in late 2018 in the gt1. I recently got a usb stick for it and duplicated my media folder onto it. the subfolders that did not show on the old usb stick now all show up on both sticks in both cars. but, a new subfolder that I added to both sticks will not show up, neither stick in either car. does anyone have a remedy for this utterly stupid issue?

 

[JSolo]

What does the folder text look like exactly? May you have exceeded some folder limit? There's a number I can't recall in the owner's or nav manual.

 

[Snicklefritz]

I've never heard of a 'folder limit'. do you mean a maximum number of folders or maximum size of a folder? never heard of either.

 

[JSolo]

From my nav manual

 

[Snicklefritz]

okay I don't have anywhere near 2,000 folders and I don't know what a 'directory layer' is. 8,000 files max? what happens when you exceed? I would expect the entire usb to be unusable.

the subfolder is made up of you tube conversions to mp3. my 'epic' folder is gigantic by comparison. this 'invisible' subfolder in the car is just a couple dozen cat stevens 'best hits' plus 'numbers' the album.

 

[JSolo]

Maybe your file name has invalid characters?

 

[Snicklefritz]

something has gone haywire with my music collection transferred to these identical sandisk 128 gb sticks. now I've discovered that 'list' won't scroll down any further than halfway into the 'T' listings. both stingers, both sticks. clearly there is some new issue with sandisk carrying my music files. I wonder if I reached some threshold on usb sourced storage that the car just won't handle above. my music collection is nearly 11,000 files and 59 gb. I'll try having two sticks with half my collection on each one, and use 32 gb sticks or maybe 64 gb sticks instead of these 128 gb ones.

 

[Snicklefritz]

formatted both sticks. put half my music on one and the rest on the other. both 'list' fine, top to bottom now, and no 'invisible' folders. however, the alphabetized list / files is all I've got, no searching by artist, song or album, those are all grayed out. wth.

 

[Snicklefritz]

ah hah, that 8,000 files limit is real. I added the other half of my music to one of the sticks and now it won't scroll down past the 'T's. so, music must be on two sticks, which means I need four sticks, two for each car. I still don't know why everything except 'Files' is grayed out.

 

[Landshark]

ah hah, that 8,000 files limit is real. I added the other half of my music to one of the sticks and now it won't scroll down past the 'T's. so, music must be on two sticks, which means I need four sticks, two for each car. I still don't know why everything except 'Files' is grayed out.

any reason why you aren't using AA or Carplay? i'm not a "streamer" - i have over 100gb's of music on my phone, and use the Poweramp music app with Android Auto ... no issues. my music goes wherever my phone goes. i did use a flash drive in my previous car, though.

i could be wrong, but does just putting music on a flashdrive allow you to use playlists? i have several playlists - one with a majority of my music, one for when my wife is in the car and doesn't want to hear thrash metal , and a couple others that i just "shuffle all" like a jukebox. i think i may have tried this when i first bought the car, and playlists didn't work, and shuffle only wanted to shuffle through one album, or something stupid like that ...???

a possible solution if your phone doesn't have the storage space (i have 512gb, so plenty of room), is maybe find an older used phone that accepts SD cards, put music on SD card, and just leave the phone in the car as a dedicated music player.

 

[Snicklefritz]

thanks for the ideas. if I had a REAL cell phone instead of this over five years old zte flip phone, I'd have advanced into the modern age and would just stream my music. but I don't want a cell phone in the first place and only carry a bare minimum excuse for one out of duress.

usb limitations are real but I am willing, even choosing, this method, as long as I can access everything on the stick in alphabetical order. in other words, I really don't use anything else but 'file', because it lists every folder alphabetically and I find what I want by rapid scrolling with my knuckle.

as for shuffling, what I noticed early in ownership was the exact opposite of what you said. it won't do the shuffle inside the current folder, but shuffles throughout the entire collection. there I was inside a 'big bands' folder - inherited ripped cd collection of big band era music from my late father-in-law - on 'shuffle' and I got xmas music as my next up offering. well, if it isn't going to shuffle inside the album I want to listen to, it's worthless.

I've never made a 'playlist' in my life. my whole collection is my 'playlist'.

 

[cncBilly]

any reason why you aren't using AA or Carplay? i'm not a "streamer" - i have over 100gb's of music on my phone, and use the Poweramp music app with Android Auto ... no issues. my music goes wherever my phone goes. i did use a flash drive in my previous car, though.

i could be wrong, but does just putting music on a flashdrive allow you to use playlists? i have several playlists - one with a majority of my music, one for when my wife is in the car and doesn't want to hear thrash metal , and a couple others that i just "shuffle all" like a jukebox. i think i may have tried this when i first bought the car, and playlists didn't work, and shuffle only wanted to shuffle through one album, or something stupid like that ...???

a possible solution if your phone doesn't have the storage space (i have 512gb, so plenty of room), is maybe find an older used phone that accepts SD cards, put music on SD card, and just leave the phone in the car as a dedicated music player.

Mine too! Shuffle everything freakin shuffle. It’s annoying when you want to listen to albums the way they come. Ya get a couple great songs in a row that blend into one another and it freakin shuffles after the first song to somewhere else in the album. Or a list won’t play that from # 1 to the end it just shuffles it’s way around. Very irritating.

 

[Redleg94]

thanks for the ideas. if I had a REAL cell phone instead of this over five years old zte flip phone, I'd have advanced into the modern age and would just stream my music. but I don't want a cell phone in the first place and only carry a bare minimum excuse for one out of duress.

usb limitations are real but I am willing, even choosing, this method, as long as I can access everything on the stick in alphabetical order. in other words, I really don't use anything else but 'file', because it lists every folder alphabetically and I find what I want by rapid scrolling with my knuckle.

as for shuffling, what I noticed early in ownership was the exact opposite of what you said. it won't do the shuffle inside the current folder, but shuffles throughout the entire collection. there I was inside a 'big bands' folder - inherited ripped cd collection of big band era music from my late father-in-law - on 'shuffle' and I got xmas music as my next up offering. well, if it isn't going to shuffle inside the album I want to listen to, it's worthless.

I've never made a 'playlist' in my life. my whole collection is my 'playlist'.

You COULD get an older Android phone that will still run Android Auto or an older iPhone that will run Carplay on a pay as you go plan and then just keep the phone offline so it only updates off of wifi. Essentially use it as a fancy Media player. Most of the music services that will run in Android Auto or Apple Carply will allow you to only play music that is loaded onto the phone. You would also get the ability to download and use maps offline for navigation.

 

[JSolo]

Try using poweramp/AA in the middle of nowhere. Doesn't work well without functional data.. And if I remember, AA won't work without data at all (airplane mode). Catch 22.

 

[Redleg94]

Try using poweramp/AA in the middle of nowhere. Doesn't work well without functional data.. And if I remember, AA won't work without data at all (airplane mode). Catch 22.

Learn something new everyday.

 

[Landshark]

as for shuffling, what I noticed early in ownership was the exact opposite of what you said. it won't do the shuffle inside the current folder, but shuffles throughout the entire collection. there I was inside a 'big bands' folder - inherited ripped cd collection of big band era music from my late father-in-law - on 'shuffle' and I got xmas music as my next up offering. well, if it isn't going to shuffle inside the album I want to listen to, it's worthless.

I've never made a 'playlist' in my life. my whole collection is my 'playlist'.

playlists solves all this. you could have a "Bigband" playlist, a "Christmas" playlist, and a playlist that has your entire collection.

i really only have two playlists ... "entire music collection" (for when i'm alone in the car), and "wife" (which doesn't have thrash/speed metal on it and has music we both can agree on).

 

[Snicklefritz]

playlists solves all this. you could have a "Bigband" playlist, a "Christmas" playlist, and a playlist that has your entire collection.

i really only have two playlists ... "entire music collection" (for when i'm alone in the car), and "wife" (which doesn't have thrash/speed metal on it and has music we both can agree on).

sounds like my life and my wife. she really can't stand thumping bass or any discordant music like 'epic', which is a current favorite of mine. but we have plenty of albums that she likes. and if I didn't like it then it wouldn't be in my collection to begin with.

I have made the second set of usb sticks for the car that she shares with me. since they are 32 gb I have had to cull entire swathes of folders to fit. should make finding the music that she likes less of a chore.

 

[cncBilly]

You COULD get an older Android phone that will still run Android Auto or an older iPhone that will run Carplay on a pay as you go plan and then just keep the phone offline so it only updates off of wifi. Essentially use it as a fancy Media player. Most of the music services that will run in Android Auto or Apple Carply will allow you to only play music that is loaded onto the phone. You would also get the ability to download and use maps offline for navigation.

I recently lost a fairly new phone in the drink and am back to an old Samsung 5 and the car won’t talk to in on Android. Blue tooth is all it will do.

 

[LordKOTL]

Try using poweramp/AA in the middle of nowhere. Doesn't work well without functional data.. And if I remember, AA won't work without data at all (airplane mode). Catch 22.

AA should work without data, as long as the apps you are using don't use data. If they do you're SOL for that app.

I've been out in BFE and Google Maps worked just fine as long as I had the offline maps downloaded. Traffic data doesn't work, understandably. Ditto with using a music app like MusicOLet which doesn't use data.

 

[JSolo]

I went from a state of having data to partial data to no data. Poweramp starting to cut out when in the area of partial to no data. It was playing mp3's on the phone.

Perhaps the issue was google maps opened as well, and since it couldn't get data it caused a software panic of sorts. I don't recall if offline maps were downloaded for the area. Still, google maps should not have affected poweramp¿?