USB drive issues on uconnect5. Can't be that hard to get it right, can it?

[DrTron]

I can't be the only one that has issues with playing mp3 files from an USB drive on uconnect5, can I?
I've tried different drives, both formatted in FAT32 and NTFS, with the same results:
- uconnect keeps indexing the drive, but when done, I see the folder structure of the drive under "browse", but can't select anything?
- uconnect plays songs, but only two from the first folder. Skipping just plays these two over again
- sometimes the "USB" button is greyed out. Ejecting and re-inserting the drive leads to re-indexing, with the same results as above

I tried using 32GB and 64GB drives. On the 64GB I have approximately 10,000 songs.

To be fair, USB drives didn't work well in my 2019 uconnect4, either. Surprising that they don't get that working, as mp3 players have been around for decades now.
I used to use my trusty old iPod classic, but sadly uconnect5 doesn't support that anymore. Last resort now is to use my phone via Android Auto, but somehow I'd prefer to do it "offline" from the USB drive...

 

[jebruns]

My wife had the exact same issues with her uConnect 5 in her 21 Pacifica. Have been fighting it for a year. Star cases, etc. I don't know what they did the last time we had it in, but it seems to working the last few days. I use exFat format with thumb drives over 16gb.

One thing you might try. Format the drive and then drop just songs on the drive. No folders. That was the last we tried before it started working. I had a little over 600 songs on the root of the drive with zero folders, and it found all of them. Then I tried some foldered up drives, and it started seeing all the contents of those too. One has about 3000 songs on it. All good at this point. You have to give it time to index the drive when you first install it, several minutes sometimes.

Oh, and the drives that have not worked so far will probably never work until you reformat them. When the system indexes it the first time, it actually writes some info to the drive. So if it's wrong, it will always be wrong. I think one is a "lost_dir" folder, but there might be another file too.

Good luck!

 

[DrTron]

I might try that with songs without directories. I have to admit that some of my "Misc" files are not perfectly tagged, so I sort them within directories and sub-sub-subdirectories. Still, any old music player on my phone has no trouble indexing that.
Maybe I'll write a script to copy the files out of the directories and into the root of the USB drive, far too many folders to do that manually.

 

[jebruns]

I might try that with songs without directories. I have to admit that some of my "Misc" files are not perfectly tagged, so I sort them within directories and sub-sub-subdirectories. Still, any old music player on my phone has no trouble indexing that.
Maybe I'll write a script to copy the files out of the directories and into the root of the USB drive, far too many folders to do that manually.

Or just do a search of your music folder for *.mp3. Then select all the results (ctrl+A) and copy them to a thumb drive.

My other uConnect systems, v4 and now v5, in my Ram 2500's have had no issues at all with folderized thumb drives. So many weird little problems with far too many of these uConnect systems.

 

[DrTron]

Or that.
Tried ExFAT yesterday, but uconnect doesn't like that format.
Now back to FAT32, and I'll see if it runs better now.

But funny how FAT32 shows it's age, copying ~50GB of files to the drive takes at least 5x longer than to the same drive with NTFS/ExFAT.

 

[DrTron]

For an update, it works better with all songs in the root directory, but far from perfect. First, it only recognizes around 3000 out of 10000 songs, and it resets itself rather frequently and then has to scan through the whole drive again...

 

[jebruns]

For an update, it works better with all songs in the root directory, but far from perfect. First, it only recognizes around 3000 out of 10000 songs, and it resets itself rather frequently and then has to scan through the whole drive again...

Yeah, we still have some glitches with ours too. It has improved, but is not totally fixed. Sometimes it will display that it's playing USB2 when it's actually playing USB1, stuff like that. But I think they've got the wife worn down enough to live with it. It was at the dealer for 3 weeks this last time while they worked the Star case, and no loaner. We were not allowed to take it home while the Star case was open or they'd close the case. And it's not the first time it was in for that issue.

 

[Scubaz66]

Not sure if my USB problem was similar, but I found once I added songs to a USB and the UConnect5 System indexed them, all songs played accordingly however, if I added new songs to the already indexed USB drive UConnect5 couldn't find the new added songs. I checked to make sure the songs were still on the USB drive by plugging it into my laptop and sure enough the songs were on the drive. UConnect5 would just never re-index the USB drive to identify the added songs.

In order to fix the indexing problem I had to erase all songs from the USB and add the old and new songs at the same time.

 

[DrTron]

May I ask how many songs you have on your drive? More than 3000?

 

[Scubaz66]

May I ask how many songs you have on your drive? More than 3000?

One USB Drive has about 50 songs, I use this as my favorite daily list of songs. The other USB has about 150 songs which gives me the music needed to make a 8-10 hour trip. Not sure the reason to have 3000-10,000 songs on a USB Drive to be used while driving, but I know some people practically live in their trucks and are constantly traveling.

 

[DrTron]

No, that's not it. I don't live in my truck, but I like to have my whole collection with me as I never know what I'll be in the mood to listen to ;-)

That being said, a simple Android phone from 10 years ago was able to handle that, and I'm betting that the (Android-based) system of the Uconnect5 has probably 100x the CPU power compared to that old phone. So a lack of power can't be the reason.

 

[Poolmonkey]

..glad to have no clue about what is being discussed here

 

[Scubaz66]

No, that's not it. I don't live in my truck, but I like to have my whole collection with me as I never know what I'll be in the mood to listen to ;-)

That being said, a simple Android phone from 10 years ago was able to handle that, and I'm betting that the (Android-based) system of the Uconnect5 has probably 100x the CPU power compared to that old phone. So a lack of power can't be the reason.

I would believe one of the main reason is both the Android and Apple Phones have fully functioning computer software installed so the phones can be used just like a Windows/McIntosh computer system to do pretty much anything from phone calls, messaging, web searches, talking, editing pictures and navigation. I believe Stellantis probably didn't want to pay for a fully functioning computer software package and opted for only the software associated with what was needed while driving.

Also, I don't believe the Software Package used in the UConnect5 system is 100% self supporting. I believe some functions piggyback off the Android/IPhone when attached to the UConnect5 System via Bluetooth. Think about your phone contacts. You can upload your Phone Contacts via Bluetooth capabilities and talk to individuals through the vehicles Mic/Speaker system. However, has anyone tried to make a phone call from your vehicle if you leave your phone at home? I bet you can't!!

Like you, I have a very extensive music collection (several hundred thousand MP3's on a 1 Terabyte USB Drive). I don't carry it with me in the truck for fear of it being stolen. I could never replace all this music.

I have several tiny USB Drives I carry in the truck. One has Oldies Rock, One has Oldies Country, One has Newer Country and One has Gospel. I have two others with a mixture of Rock and Country that usually stay in the two available USB drives. I change out as I feel the need.

There are probably several ways to do it based on the individuals preference so do what works best for you. Although I have never tried, I believe the system will play whatever music you have on your Android/Apple Phone as well.

 

[DrTron]

Well, about the call feature, obviously you only can make a call if the truck has its own cell connectivity, and even then a call would come from a different number. So it makes sense to use the phone for that, the same goes for any internet connectivity required. But the hardware is plenty powerful enough to manage hundreds of thousands of songs, it's just a bad implementation. Same as Uconnect4. But with the OTA update possibility, there's always hope.

But regarding your 1TB USB drive: man, that's dangerous. Are you telling us that that drive's is the only place you have that data? No backups on your computer, your NAS, the cloud? Believe me when I say that a drive, be it USB, SSD or HDD, can fail at any time without reason. I just had to replace a SSD in my computer which failed after 8 month's use. If your computer doesn't have the capacity, put another HDD in there. Plus get one, or better two external HDDs or SSDs and do an external backup. Keep one backup off-site, like at work or in a safe deposit box. And use that not only for your music, but for other digital documents you don't want to lose. Insurance policies, tax returns, whatever.

Not having a proper backup strategy is a sure way to lose your data at some point.

 

[jebruns]

Also, I don't believe the Software Package used in the UConnect5 system is 100% self supporting. I believe some functions piggyback off the Android/IPhone when attached to the UConnect5 System via Bluetooth. Think about your phone contacts. You can upload your Phone Contacts via Bluetooth capabilities and talk to individuals through the vehicles Mic/Speaker system. However, has anyone tried to make a phone call from your vehicle if you leave your phone at home? I bet you can't!!

I don't think your uConnect system will even display the contacts if you don't have the phone in the truck, let alone make a call with a phone that is not there.

This is just one of the many quirks of uConnect. It happens randomly, far from being a common issue. uConnect SW or HW is some quirky stuff. I've read a lot of threads about it's quirks and the thing that stands out is there are very few consistent issues, but lots of stuff like this where it only impacts a few customers. Of course, it could be much more wide spread than we know too. Not everyone has the motivation/time to pursue this stuff. Not everyone could be w/o their vehicle for 3 weeks like were just to try and diagnose the root of the problem.

 

[Scubaz66]

Well, about the call feature, obviously you only can make a call if the truck has its own cell connectivity, and even then a call would come from a different number. So it makes sense to use the phone for that, the same goes for any internet connectivity required. But the hardware is plenty powerful enough to manage hundreds of thousands of songs, it's just a bad implementation. Same as Uconnect4. But with the OTA update possibility, there's always hope.

But regarding your 1TB USB drive: man, that's dangerous. Are you telling us that that drive's is the only place you have that data? No backups on your computer, your NAS, the cloud? Believe me when I say that a drive, be it USB, SSD or HDD, can fail at any time without reason. I just had to replace a SSD in my computer which failed after 8 month's use. If your computer doesn't have the capacity, put another HDD in there. Plus get one, or better two external HDDs or SSDs and do an external backup. Keep one backup off-site, like at work or in a safe deposit box. And use that not only for your music, but for other digital documents you don't want to lose. Insurance policies, tax returns, whatever.

Not having a proper backup strategy is a sure way to lose your data at some point.

Oh Trust Me! I have backup!!

 

[DrTron]

Oh Trust Me! I have backup!!

Great! Sounded like you didn't since you were worried about losing the drive.

 

[jebruns]

My 22 12" uConnect started having issues with the USB drives too. Displayed "card read error" on both drives. These are drives that were already plugged into the system and had worked the last time I'd driven the truck. Reformatted as exFat, put music back on, same deal. So I formatted the as Fat32 and they started working, although the system displays a total count of songs which is a little low.

USB drives seem to be a weak spot for uConnect 5. I guess not a lot of people use them anymore.

 

[DrTron]

USB drives seem to be a weak spot for uConnect 5. I guess not a lot of people use them anymore.

Had you said that for CD's, or maybe SD cards, I would agree. But I still think a USB drive is one of the best solutions for getting music into your truck. Admittedly, bluetooth works a lot better on my Uconnect5 than it did on the 4.

 

[Scubaz66]

My 22 12" uConnect started having issues with the USB drives too. Displayed "card read error" on both drives. These are drives that were already plugged into the system and had worked the last time I'd driven the truck. Reformatted as exFat, put music back on, same deal. So I formatted the as Fat32 and they started working, although the system displays a total count of songs which is a little low.

USB drives seem to be a weak spot for uConnect 5. I guess not a lot of people use them anymore.

My USB Music Drive worked flawlessly with 40 MP3 songs on it. I have the 2022 8" Uconnect5 System. I removed the USB Drive from the UConnect5 System and added a couple songs to it. When I returned the USB Drive to the UConnect5 System the 2 added songs were not recognized by the UConnect5 System. I returned the USB Drive to my laptop and the songs played accordingly.

In order to get all the songs to play, I had to reformat the drive (Fat32) and add all the songs at one setting. Much like the old days when we burnt music CD's and had to add all the songs to the CD then close the session in order to get the CD to play.

You mentioned USB's as a weak link for the UConnect5 System, because of the possibility that not to many people use them anymore. Other than having your IPhone/Android Phone with Music connected via Car Play, what other methods are available?