USB Media - Super Slow

orphenshadow

orphenshadow

New Member
#1
#1
I have a 32 GB USB 2.0 thumb driver that I've filled with mp3's all organized by Artist > Album

The issue I'm having is every time I start the car and go to play an mp3 i have to wait almost 30 minutes for it to detect whats on the flash drive.

Is there a specific way I should be loading the media? Or is this just how the stereo works?
 
J

jolly

New Member
#3
#3
A few minutes maybe, but 30 minutes is way over the top.

I have a 32 gb and it's never more than 1½ minute. If the last song played - which is also playing immediatly when put power back - has that amount of time left, I don't even see the transition. Otherwise after that song, it goes back to the first file recorded on the key. Not the first alphabetically but the first according to date and hour. Better be one you like !

Anyway, I already find 1-2 minutes annoying... :thumbdown:

Could be different things :
-Slow key (not all equals)
-Bad formating
-Too much unnecessary files (music only)
-Or a problem with the car itself (bad usb connector or bad head unit).
 
C

club718

New Member
#4
#4
I had same issue I went out and bought a scandisk 32g version 2.0 3.0 loads instantly had issues with pny and geek squad thumb drive now all good
 
J

jolly

New Member
#8
#8
club718 said:
I had same issue I went out and bought a scandisk 32g version 2.0 3.0 loads instantly had issues with pny and geek squad thumb drive now all good
Click to expand...
Agree on Sandisk. Tiny Sandisk "Cruzer fit" 32gig is slow in writing but work very well with the Corolla. Also have a Kingston 16gig that is OK, but not as fast with the system as the Sandisk. Read quite a few so-so reviews about PNY.
 
Donabed Kopoian

Donabed Kopoian

6 Speed Master
#11
#11
There is a reason Windows doesn't allow FAT32 to be used for anything greater than 32GB. The reason is that there will be more clusters than the system can recognize. You can format a 64GB stick with FAT32 if you want, but half the stick will not be accessible. It's like having 8 GB of RAM on Windows XP 32-bit. The address space exceeds the capacity of the system.
 
TigerHeli

TigerHeli

New Member
#12
#12
Okay - I'm using a 64 GB drive with my JVC.

I didn't reformat it, and I think I have more than 32 GB of files on it - if not, I have close to that.

Unless it came as ExFAT or something or the JVC can read it, I don't know what to tell you.
 
J

jolly

New Member
#13
#13
Just a bit of clarification about the 32 GB thing.

FAT/FAT16/FAT32 is the older Microsoft way of organizing space on a disk. It can mangage far more than 32 GB (up to 2TB actually) and is perfectly compatible with modern devices. It's limitations comes from our changing needs :
- It can not manage single files of more than 4 GB (like a movie, but seldomely the case with music).
- It can manage disk up to 2TB but is not managing the space efficiently. Such a drive would work perfectly but the real available space would be less than the announced capacity of the drive (but not cut by as much as half and certainly not limited to 32 GB whatever the size of the drive)
- And, here comes the 32 GB thing, though it could format and manage 2 TB drives, Windows could'nt install itself on a drive larger than 32 GB... That's all that has to do with a 32 GB limitation with FAT : installing pre XP windows versions.

Of course, thirty years ago, 4 GB files and 32 GB drives appeared like an infinite limit at a time of 144 MB floppy disks... Thus the new NTFS system with it's new infinite limit of 16 EB (16 000 000 000 GB). And probably that in thirty years or so...

So basically NTFS is more modern, make better usage of the drive space and might be a tiny mini bit faster than FAT but at the scale ou our music files and thumb drive it doesn't make any significant difference.

Oh ! And as far as Windows refusing to format a 64 gb thumb drive in FAT32 because it's too "big", it could be that the drive was manufactured in NTFS for specific reasons (encryption, compression, whatever) and wont allow retro-conversion to FAT (and frankly there is no reason to do so and you should stick to NTFS) or that you already have a file larger than 4 GB on the drive or that you're using an older version of Windows. In that case, you might still format in FAT 32 but would have to use a DOS command or a third party program to do so.
 
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Donabed Kopoian

Donabed Kopoian

6 Speed Master
#14
#14
You're right Jolly and TigerHeli, I forgot that FAT32 went up to 2TB. I would still stick with NTFS regardless.

The drive space being less than announced; however, has nothing to do with the formatting, but with how space is calculated in a binary numerical system versus a decimal numerical system.

2^20 = 1MB in computers, in reality it is 1,048,576 bytes. The rated space is more than actual, because the rated space is calculated in base 10 (decimal), even though computers will calculate it in base 2 (binary)
 
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J

jolly

New Member
#16
#16
Donabed Kopoian said:
You're right Jolly and TigerHeli, I forgot that FAT32 went up to 2TB. I would still stick with NTFS regardless.

The drive space being less than announced; however, has nothing to do with the formatting, but with how space is calculated in a binary numerical system versus a decimal numerical system.

2^20 = 1MB in computers, in reality it is 1,048,576 bytes. The rated space is more than actual, because the rated space is calculated in base 10 (decimal), even though computers will calculate it in base 2 (binary)
Click to expand...
Actually it does, in a way.

Of course, translating binary in decimal is already misleading (as you explained).
But FAT32 also uses larger clusters than NTFS. Since only “one data” (so to speak) can go in a cluster, a same size file would occupy more space (more clusters) on a FAT32 disk than on a NTFS. Thus reducing the theorical capacity of the disk.

Say you have Hotel FAT32: 1,000 ft2 total, 200 ft2 rooms. Total : 5 guests.
Hotel NTFS: also 1,000 ft2 total but 125 ft2. Total : 8 guests.


So a 1000 ft2 theorical capacity doesn’t result in the same real world capacity depending on the “formatting” of the space. So does the real world vs theorical capacity of a drive depending on the formatting.

And the beauty of it is that data, contrary to hotel customers, doesn’t complaint about the size of the room nor the view !


Then again it doesn't play much when we're talking music files on a flash drive
 
TigerHeli

TigerHeli

New Member
#17
#17
A couple of points still need to be clarified.

jolly said:
Oh ! And as far as Windows refusing to format a 64 gb thumb drive in FAT32 because it's too "big", it could be that the drive was manufactured in NTFS for specific reasons (encryption, compression, whatever) and wont allow retro-conversion to FAT (and frankly there is no reason to do so and you should stick to NTFS)
Click to expand...
If it is supported, you should stick to NTFS. The problem is most car stereos (not sure about the Corolla OEM radio) will only read FAT32 media.

(I'm not sure why car audio tends to have limits on numbers of files and numbers of folders and formats, but it does.)

Secondly - there are two problems with drive size:

First - as Donabed said:

https://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080728020513AAvHIQK

The drive will be quoted as 1,000,000,000 bytes per GB. The files will be calculated as 1,073,741,824 per GB.

So - in theory, your 64 GB USB flash drive only holds 59.604 GB of files.

But the above assumes your files are all exactly one cluster (or an even multiple of the cluster size) in length.

In reality - you can store more files on an 64 GB drive formatted in NTFS than on one formatted in FAT32 (but it doesn't help much if the deck can't read NTFS drives.)

All of this was briefly said above, but I thought it might not be fully clear.
 
Donabed Kopoian

Donabed Kopoian

6 Speed Master
#19
#19
Page 251 of the manual lists a ton of information on USB drive requirements, including:

MP3/WMA playback only
USB 2.0 (12 Mbps transfer rate)
FAT 16/32 (so no NTFS)

Maximum Directory Heirarchy: 8 levels
Maximum number of folders (including the root folder): 999
Maximum number of files: 9999
Maximum number of files per folder: 255

One thing to check, is that some Media Programs will also shove album art and other crap into the USB thumb drive. Make sure to remove all of that garbage.
 
TigerHeli

TigerHeli

New Member
#20
#20
Those are reasonable limits, but ...

Again, I've seen some decks with around 2,000 or 5,000 file total limits.

Sometimes the manual is talking about limits for CD-R's and not for USB sticks.

Not sure why the access time is so much longer for a car deck. My JVC takes about 1-second per GB to index (which is pretty good), but really long compared to a phone or computer.
 
Donabed Kopoian

Donabed Kopoian

6 Speed Master
#21
#21
This was specifically in the section for USB sticks.

1 second per GB actually isn't that bad. In my Pioneer, it would take about 10 seconds or so for a 4GB USB stick, while a 4.7 GB DVD-R took over a minute.

The difference is most likely static indexing and loading versus dynamic.

The stereo indexes all files, loads the track, then plays. Where-as a phone or Windows can index and load the first 20 files or so, then if you click the first file, load that right away, then continue indexing, or it can continue indexing and displaying files as you scroll down (since you'd be slower at scrolling than the computer).

You'll see the delay if you have, say, 500 pictures on a folder in your phone, and immediately scroll to the bottom of the folder when you first get into it, same with Windows. But if you click on the bottom file, it can load that file, then go back to indexing.

Dynamic is more of a pain to program for, and car stereos don't exactly have powerful processors, so they probably just do everything statically.
 
TigerHeli

TigerHeli

New Member
#22
#22
But waiting 30 seconds for your music to start gets old quick.

What some decks (and the Toyota) do and that I wish mine did - is index in the background when I am listening to FM or while I am listening to the song I left off with, and then have the index ready if I want to browse for something.

Oddly - it is file size and not number of files ...

i.e. I have 6700-some files in 34 or so GB and it takes about 30-seconds to index.

I made a test stick with 10,000 ring-tones (all the same file, different names and ID3 tags) on a 4GB stick, and that indexed in about 4-seconds - maybe even less.
 
Donabed Kopoian

Donabed Kopoian

6 Speed Master
#23
#23
I think it looks for the address of the cluster where the track starts, and that is why it is physical size and not file amount dependent. Only thing I can think of that explains it.

Yeah, my Pioneer ONLY started indexing when you were in CD or USB mode ... but if you left the mode and went back into it, it used the indexing that already occurred, so it wasn't like I had to start over ... unless ... of course ... I stalled the friggin' car >.<

If *I* was programming it, I would save in Keep Alive Memory, the address of the song that was playing on power off and the time where the track was. When the stereo is re-started, if the address matched the beginning of a track on the stick or the disc, it would index that track, load that track, go to the time, and then index the next tracks and wrap around to the track prior to the one that was playing (round-robin). If the addresses didn't match the beginning of a track (which would happen if the drive was changed while the power was off), then the first song would index, load, play, and then index to the end.

It isn't true dynamic programming, but it would mimic it well enough to keep most people happy, unless you always change tracks right when you start the car up.
 
TigerHeli

TigerHeli

New Member
#25
#25
Donabed Kopoian said:
Yeah, my Pioneer ONLY started indexing when you were in CD or USB mode ... but if you left the mode and went back into it, it used the indexing that already occurred, so it wasn't like I had to start over ... unless ... of course ... I stalled the friggin' car >.<
Click to expand...
Yeah, the JVC is like that also - 30 seconds whenever I start the car and switch to USB, but after that it is instant.

If *I* was programming it ...
Click to expand...
I SO wish you could do sub-contract work for Pioneer, JVC/Kenwood, Alpine, Clarion, etc. - not that it will happen, but one can hope ...
 
stusmith

stusmith

New Member
#28
#28
Donabed Kopoian said:
Also, my first computer was an AMD 50 MHz with 8 MB of RAM and a 640 MB hard drive, LOL! Couldn't even hold my pictures folder on my current computer.
Click to expand...
486/33Mhz, with 4 megs of RAM, 500MB hard drive, DOS and Windows 3.11....

I remember when I bought another 4 meg SIMM chip (remember those) and *doubled* the memory. That sucker would scream!

Of course, this was when 14.4 dialup was fast.
 
V

Vitali.pom

New Member
#31
#31
orphenshadow said:
I have a 32 GB USB 2.0 thumb driver that I've filled with mp3's all organized by Artist > Album

The issue I'm having is every time I start the car and go to play an mp3 i have to wait almost 30 minutes for it to detect whats on the flash drive.

Is there a specific way I should be loading the media? Or is this just how the stereo works?
Click to expand...
I apolagize ahead for bumping the post.
Does it happen even if the flash drive remains plugged in between the car starts?
 
J

jolly

New Member
#33
#33
Vitali.pom said:
I apolagize ahead for bumping the post.
Does it happen even if the flash drive remains plugged in between the car starts?
Click to expand...
I doesn't make a difference. Again this 30 min thing is not normal (around 1 min - while the last song playing resume and play and you're all set)
JoshTRD said:
or just be a normal person and buy an iPod for 40$ :I
Click to expand...
Normal ? Not everybody is you... I find it much less fussy to have a usb permanently plugged in and control it via the touchscreen.
 
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