[Safari_Beast]

Hello All

I would like to inform Bhpians and all readers of teambhp forums about the problem with HP , Sony , Transcend pen drives which are not getting recognized or making the headunit hang at times . In the past days i have used kingston , hp , transcend on my Alpine iXA-404E headunit , and only kingston was able to work flawlessly without any issues . My headunit used to get hanged at times or reading the HP , Sony , Transcend pendrives , and it used to get hanged completely . Then i tried kingston and it worked flawlessly , then i contacted my bro who runs audio business in bhopal and came to know he had also seen same issue with his customers complaining about same . Kingston , san disk pen drives are working without any issues . I inserted my HP pendrive in chinese headunit called Megaaudio , i observed it took around 5 minutes to read the pendrive and it was having issues while playing as well through my pendrive . ICE gurus please let us know your observation what can be the issue behind all this problem of pendrives specific to brands .

[SDP]

Is this problem for all capacities of the pen-drives from these manufacturers?

I have 3 HP ones: 4GB, 8GB and 16GB. The 4GB works, while the bigger 2 don't. I tried the 16GB HP one in my cousin's i20. It did not work there as well.

So, yes, there could be a problem.

Thanks for sharing.

[vikram_d]

Check your head units manual and see what file system formats it supports. Not all head units support Fat32 and NTFS. Try formatting the pen drive with Fat16 and check.

[Safari_Beast]

Yes i have 16 gb HP , transcend which are creating the problem in headunits .
Mods can we change the topic of thread to "16 gb HP , Sony , Transcend Pen drives having issue with Headunits" because the 16 gb ones are creating the problem .

Originally Posted by SDP

Is this problem for all capacities of the pen-drives from these manufacturers?

I have 3 HP ones: 4GB, 8GB and 16GB. The 4GB works, while the bigger 2 don't. I tried the 16GB HP one in my cousin's i20. It did not work there as well.

So, yes, there could be a problem.

Thanks for sharing.

[Safari_Beast]

Hello vikram_d

I have tried reformatting the pen drives , they are in FAT 32 format and manual says it can only run on fat32 format . This problem has been observed and felt by many people using 16 gb pen drives . If kingston , sandisk can work , why the other pen drives are creating a problem .

Originally Posted by vikram_d

Check your head units manual and see what file system formats it supports. Not all head units support Fat32 and NTFS. Try formatting the pen drive with Fat16 and check.

[latentpotential]

To add for other users as well:
The head units given by default in the new Maruti's (Ertiga/ Swift) support 16 Gb pen drives from any make, have used with Chinese, and also with HP and Sony. CUrrently using a 16 Gb Sandisk.
These headunits have another issue of not recognizing some MP3 files, and hence they tend to not play them without giving an error, I have not spent time on understanding the cause.

[vikram_d]

Originally Posted by Safari_Beast

If kingston , sandisk can work , why the other pen drives are creating a problem .

What head unit are you using? Can you give me the exact model details. Will try and do some research into this problem.

Would like you to try out a few experiments.

1. Format the USB drive using FAT32 and 32K cluster size and then copy the songs in the existing method that you are doing right now.
2. Format with FAT16 and default cluster size and see if this makes any difference.
3. Copy the MP3 files directly to the root of the USB drive without creating any folders.

If you could do this and let me know the results it will be of great help.

I have a 32Gb Transcend and it works perfectly with my JVC KW-AVX820 series head unit.

[sukiwa]

I have used 16GB Pen drive from HP (steel body, cap less design) on JVC 90BT without any issues. Pen drive had more than 50 folders & songs stored to almost full capacity of the drive, but never faced any issue while navigating through folders/songs & playing specific songs.

[phamilyman]

My 4GB transcend works just fine with pio 4050 ub. The 8GB newer transcend has some issues. i suspect a FAT vs FAT32 issue, but less to do with transcend since the pen drive works fine on the laptop.

[sgiitk]

I have had the problems with 8GB Pen Drives both HP and Sony in my Brio, The Transcend 8GB works fine. All three are Ok with my Civic. The system has a problem initialising the drives. Once initialised (multiple attempts) they work fine.

[SDP]

Today's Experiment: Formatted the 8GB HP drive using exFAT (as FAT32 is already giving problems). Copied just one folder with 10 songs (as I believe that sometimes a too complex or huge folder structure confuses the head-unit) and plugged into XUV W8's stock HU.

Result -> It showed "Reading USB" for about a minute (that's too long) and eventually showed "USB empty".

[StrangeWizard]

I have a Chinese HU in my Spark.
I use a SanDisk Cruzer 8gb and the head unit takes multiple attempts to read the pen drive and start playing.
and lately I've seen the pen drive doesn't work at all. I get an " error 13" or " no USB found"
the pen drive works fine at home though.

[DerAlte]

Never had a problem with Transcend 4GB or 16GB drives on my Kenwood HU in the last 3 years, even after changing songs >20 times (haven't formatted the drive ever).

The issue could be with the socket or the HU, not the drive(s). If they can be read on a PC (throw it away if it can't be), they should be read by the HU. There is no difference in reading the drives on either. Simple check - clean the contacts (OK, it is a tight squeeze to do it) using a hard-rubber eraser, and try once again. I have seen some pendrives work only when half-inserted - a sure sign of bad mechanical tolerances and / or warping producing good contact *only* in a certain position.

Reading slowly is another indication of bad or 'noisy' contact.

[anujmishra]

I have different brands of pendrive Transcend, Sony etc. but never had problem with any of such in my Pioneer HU. Also, I have used 4, 8 & 16 GBs as well.

Most of the old HU would not support 16GB Pendrive as during launch of HU, 16GB pendrive was not available in market. Some of them even fault with 8GB one.

[COUGAR]

een using Transcend 4GB pendrive on my old JVC R506 model and now on tmy Pioneer. No problems whatsoever.

I am told that problem is more with number of files than with storage capacity itself. Also number of folders/sub-folders in tree also seems to make a difference.