In the owners manual for my 2013MY XKR, it says the car supports up to 256GB USB storage devices for the audio system.

Armed with this info, I purchase a Verbatim 256GB SSD USB thingie (about the size of a *** packet but a third of the thickness) and gleefully copied around 180GB of mp3s on to it.

I excitedly plugged it into the USB port on my XKR only to have the car recognise it being plugged in but failing to see any of the files or folders on it

I also tried a, non-iPod, hard disk mp3 player with a 160GB hard disk in it and exactly the same thing happens.

Both devices work fine when connected to a Linux PC or MAC - that's how I copied all the music onto the drives. A 4GB USB flash drive works in the car (plays and allows me to navigate around the filesystem) but the large storage devices don't.

I've checked the formats (All devices have one partition of type C and are formatted WIN95 FAT32 LBA).

I've tried sticking an mp3 in the root folder of the SDD but that makes no difference.

Any ideas?

 

Ruffle,

You got me as soon as I saw your location. I can't imagine anywhere in the universe with a more intimidating name than Peatboghorror, UK! It conjures up images of ... well, I'll leave that to everyone's imagination! Do you know how it got its name? I couldn't find the answer on Google.

I had the same problem a couple of years ago and was curious if anything changed since the 2009 MY, so I pulled up the online Owner's Handbook (UK, 2013). I was puzzled by: "Do not plug non-audio devices into the USB port." (Page 99). Does this mean that a USB memory stick, like yours, won't work at all? For the USB port to play music, must an "audio device" (i.e., a non-Apple MP3 player) be used, and not simply a memory stick? I think so.

Here's what the Handbook (p.99) says about geting your non-iPod MP3 player to work through the USB port: "Note: Some MP3 players have their own file system that is not supported by this system. To use your MP3 player, you must set it to USB Removable Device or Mass Storage Device mode. Only music that has been added to the device in this mode can be played."

I know how frustrated you must feel, since I've been through what you are now going through. After I got my 2009 XKR, I copied MP3 files to a USB stick, plugged it into my ACM, and tried to get it to play. I tried various settings to no avail; I couldn't get it to play music. So I gave up and bought an iPod Nano 5th Generation that works great through the touchscreen and steering wheel controls.

I would call the dealer and ask him about it.

Stuart

 

Not that it helps, but my 2010 didn't acknowledge any of the mp3's on my 500 GB Seagate portable hard-drive, even in the root directory. Maybe that result was to be expected, but I had to try it. It does fine with recognizing my off-the-shelf 8 GB USB memory stick. It is certainly not an "audio device." Folders, songs, everything shows up. Mostly I just leave an old 32 GB iphone in the console plugged in through the iphone connectivity port and set to "airplane" mode. None of that helps when you have 180 GB of music, though.

 

The image it conjured up isn't too far from the mark

It's a derogative nickname for Peterborough; a city on the edge of the East Anglian fens... which is a large area, mostly below sea level, of peat. Very fertile but very flat and boring.

Well that's exactly what my SSD and non-iPod player are 'set' to. Hence my disappointment that they don't work.

I guess that's a last resort but I dislike the way the Apple 'organise' music by tags and it also means playing with iTunes instead of simply copying files onto a disk.

 

Same problem as me then

Doesn't the iPhone's battery go flat? I'm sure I read somewhere in the manual that one should unplug iThings when not in use - which sounds a right PITA.

I could purchase a large USB stick but who knows if that'll work.

I'll take it up with Jaguar and report back. If they say the car's audio will support USB storage devices then it should.

 

It takes about two weeks for my battery to die on airplane mode. At some point during that time I've most likely brought the phone in to load more songs, at which point it has been recharged again. I just bought an adapter that lets it charge through the 30 pin connecter when the car is running, but its acting finicky. I will be interested in hearing what you figure out.

 

I also have had no luck with the USB port, although the only thing I've plugged in was my iPhone. It charges from that port just fine, but the audio system doesn't recognize that anything is plugged in.

 

The issue is that the device you are using is drawing more than .5 amps (500ma) from the USB port. This exceeds the maximum amperage allowed for the USB 2.0 spec. If your device supports 2 USB leads you can try plugging each into separate USB ports or 1 into the USB port and 1 into a USB Charger.

 

On the issue of Itunes. You can eliminate using Itunes on a Windows OS by using CopyTrans Manager to copy/sync audio files and it's free. I use it with my Ipod Classic 160GB.

 

Errr..... yes, you can avoid the iTunes application (I've used Gtkpod for Linux in the past) but you still get the iTunes/iPod database indexing your music collection.

My stuff is organised into a simple set of directories (folders) that makes sense too me and having to use playlists or artists is something that I find annoying. I've also got quite a lot of stuff that doesn't have IDTags which makes it pretty useless on an IThing.

The bottom line seems to be that Jaguar say you can use a USB Storage device of up to 256GB but in practise you can't. I wonder what the limit is and what Jaguar are going to say.

 

Well I received a reply from Jaguar...... "Please consult the Service Dept at your Dealer"

Hmmmm.... that's really not impressive support from Jaguar.

Anyway, I've now sent the same query off to my Dealer.

 

Have a look at this thread:
https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...y-s3-xf-82325/

They recommend using a Kingston DataTraveler. I have a generic USB memory stick. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I have yet to use the Kingston though.

Mike

 

Actually there are 2 problems:

1. Amperage for HDD needs to be higher.
2. Partition format.
Only FAT32 is open format and supported by 99% of the hardware players.
FAT 32 has some limitations:
- max partition size 32 Gb
- max file size 4 Gb

On bigger storage devices you use NTFS (Winfows), EXT3 (linux) or HFS+ (Mac).
Those formats are not read by the car.

So... get a 32 Gb USB Stick and format as FAT32.

 

Incorrect. The 32 gb max partition size is a Windows OS limitation. There are windows based formatting tools that will allow you to format a large disk beyond the 32GB limitation. The 4 GB file size cannot be increased.