What's the best format for a USB stick to be used to import Music into the Music Library?

I use a MacBook Pro & in the M5 just copied files from my iTunes Library onto a USB stick (think it's ExFat format) & that could be copied without issue onto the Cars Media Hard Drive.

My Wife's XC60 was more troublesome, as following the same procedure ghost files (tracks) were created so i needed to copy the Music files across to my Windows 10 (Parallel's) partition & use Windows to format the USB stick (pretty sure it was still ExFat) & that worked fine.

I'm struggling with the FFRR as using MacOS i'm getting strange scenarios of some ghost albums & this increases the size of the overall files to be copied so they exceed the media library size. I've tried the Windows 10 route & that's coming up as unreadable. Only other option i can think of is formatting to NTFS, but i'd be surprised if this is the correct format as is quite an old form nowadays.

Question is, how've you formatted a USB stick to then be read by the car & imported into the Media Library? Can this be done on a MAC & if so what format should the USB stick be? If it has to be done on Windows 10, again what format should the USB stick be to allow it to be read (correctly) in the car?

Thanks.

I've not used it for music, but have for loading speed cameras - I use a program called SDFormatter (on my mac) which seems fine.

For music, I just bought an old 160Gb iPod & put a load of music on that.

I believe the RR will only properly read FAT and FAT32 formatted media devices. So try formatting the USB stick to one of them?

Thanks, i'll try those 2 formats although i'm sure my 1st attempt was using FAT32.

I've got a 256GB SSD Drive that i'll set up to be permanently connected to one of the USB slots, but i just wanted a selection of my favourite albums on the cars Media Drive in case the SSD fails or starts playing up. I'll keep trying as am baffled as to why my attempts so far are failing. AM i better using Windows 10 for the import/copy onto the USB Stick or should MacOS also work in the FFRR?

Anyone know what the size of the Media Drive is on the MY17 as i can't find any confirmation online?

<------------ i had some USB sticks with FAT32 - some work and some don't - funny thing on the backseats every single stick worked but not in the front....  All my spelling errorz are belong to me!

2023 FFRR L460
2021 AM new Vantage

These ghost files maybe Mac specific. If you copy your music to a freshly formatted USB (as you have been doing from the Mac) but then open the USB on a Windows Machine and ensure you have the "Show Hidden Files" option set in Windows Explorer. You may then see these "Ghost Files" and should be able to delete them from the USB before then importing your remaining music files into the FFRR. It's a bit of a long winded process, but worth a shot perhaps?

Of course if you have the desired music on a Windows machine then just copy that straight to USB as an alternative as I don't think Windows generates these ghost (meta) files?

Paul

Download this little prog called Clean Eject

http://www.javawa.nl/cleaneject_en.html

Macs leave lots of litle files on USB stcikcs as you say but if when you remove the USB stick from your mac by dragging it nto the Clean Eject icon it will not write thes efiles making the stick easier to read in all sorts of other devices.

It's perfectly safe, I've used it for years.

Thanks for the tips but although the USB stick is now readable, other strange things are happening.

During an import I get a corrupt files message but the music does import onto the Media Drive. That said, further strange things happen as some of the Albums have no tracks in them, some albums split, some duplicate with one actually triplicating. A couple of the duplicate albums have the same tracks within them & a couple split tracks across both albums. Lastly a coup,e of albums duplicate but the album name changes slightly.

Any suggestions on what to do next as this is starting to drive me nuts?

Is it possible it's the USB device that's not fully compatible? They're a couple of years old now but are USB 3.0 & i've 32gb & 64gb.

Has anyone had a positive experience importing music onto the Media Drive & if so how exactly did you do it & what exact USB device did you use (make/format/type & size).

I was having problems with music files copied from my Mac onto a USB stick (FAT 32) but as someone has said already the Mac creates files that the car cannot read sometimes causing the music not to play. I deleted the spurious files using a clean eject type program ( Clean my Drive 2) which detected and deleted them before it ejected the device - I now don't have this problem.  Geoff

Thanks, i've got that programme on my Mac so formatted the USB stick in a Windows environment to Fat32, then switched back to my Mac & copied the Albums across & then cleaned the Stick using Clean My Drive.

Was all going well as the USB device was now recognised in the car & the albums displayed, however some albums (appears to be specific to Compilations) display 'No Songs" when selected, so back to the Lappy but these albums DO have the songs in them.

Does the Media Player in the car not like Compilation albums, as can't for the life of me work out why they're showing as having no songs in them when in fact they do.

Seems insane that i've a Media Library & USB player, but neither work correctly & older systems as per my M5 & the Wife's Volvo are seamless.

Any idea as to why i can now see the USB stick & can see the Albums (albeit some of the album names are displayed in the car differently to how they're written on the USB stick) but some of these albums the car's saying have no songs within them when clearly they do, as above this appears to be just Compilations of which i have hundreds. Paul

MY17 TDV6 Autobiography In Carpathian Grey With Cirrus Interior

Mine is an older system (MY2010) so that might be it but the other thing I always do is delete any files that are not relevant JPGs for example Geoff

I'm slowly losing my mind & this car certainly isn't for anyone with even a sniff of OCD.

So the car won't recognise any Compilation albums as displays that the Album has no songs within it, which clearly isn't the case. It doesn't like certain single artist albums as will either split or duplicate those albums & now a further oddity has arisen.

Now feeling defeated i reduced the number of albums to remove all compilations & all those other albums the car didn't for whatever reason like so now down to about 30. Here comes the new problem & what's making this worse & as above, i can find no justifiable reason why this is happening, it just doesn't make any sense.

Please don't judge based on my music taste. As only 'certain' single artist albums can be recognised or handled correctly i now have what resembles normality, albeit a vastly reduced collection, however this additional oddity is as follows:

Copied David Guetta's Nothing But The Beat Ultimate which is a 2 disc Album, on the USB stick in either Windows 10 or on the Mac it displays as you'd expect, 17 track on one disc & 13 i think not he other. Now i take said USB stick to the car & it displays just Disc 2, but all the tracks (20ish) are in there, how can this be. I then import the album onto the Media drive & again the same thing happens, all the tracks are in 1 album referred to as Disc 2 with no disc 1 present. I then think perhaps i can edit the album on the media drive, but no that's not possible, only the option to delete it. I then select view as folders (rather than albums, sons or artists) & low & behold the album is presented correctly as 2 discs with the right tracks within & named correctly. So why are they correct in the file structure on the Media drive but then displayed & treated differently on the standard GUI when viewing albums? Paul

MY17 TDV6 Autobiography In Carpathian Grey With Cirrus Interior

i gave up and use my Iphone over Bluetooth or cable. All my spelling errorz are belong to me!

2023 FFRR L460
2021 AM new Vantage

Would it be worth modifying the ID3 tags of the album music files to make it look like a single album, make identical as it were all the ID3 fields except track title and track number (increment this from 1 to the number of total tracks). Try this at least with your David Guetta album as a test. It looks like the issue is with how the FFRR reads this info, as you can see all the files in file view.