Maximum size USB Drive For Music

[Corolly Poly]

Hi,

I have a Corolla TS 2.0 MY24. Reading the Navigation system manual is says max size is 32Gb in the spec. That seems poor. Even my beat up old i10 will accept 128Gb. Has anyone got experience of successfully running bigger drives for storage?

Thanks

[Paul john]

32Gb is a hard stop limitation of the Fat32 file system which the head unit requires so it can recognise the usb stick. ExFat does not cut it with Toyota Head Units.

Why not use a cheap iPhone with a large capacity as an ipod ?

alternatively format the stick with multiple 32gb partitions formatted as fat32 they will appear as separate “sources”

[Corolly Poly]

Thanks. I do have all the stuff on my phones as well but it is nice just to have everything available via another source. Will go with the multiple 32Gb partitions then thanks. Shame a modern head unit can't se ExFat

[Cyker]

7 hours ago, Paul john said:

32Gb is a hard stop limitation of the Fat32 file system which the head unit requires so it can recognise the usb stick. ExFat does not cut it with Toyota Head Units.

Why not use a cheap iphone with a large capacity as an ipod ?

alternatively format the stick with multiple 32gb partitions formatted as fat32 they will appear as separate “sources”

Sorry but that's untrue - Case in point: I have a 256GB SD card for my Dashcam which is formatted to FAT32; FAT32 can actually go up to 2TB IIRC, but Microsoft deliberately hamstrung it in, I think Windows XP or Vista onwards, because they were trying to make interoperability between operating systems as awkward as possible, and FAT32 was the most common filesystem for all OS.

Windows 2000 down to Win95, and any other non-Windows OS (e.g. Linux) that supports FAT32 can format it up to 2TB; It's only (Ironically) later versions of Windows that can't do it natively. However, there are many utilities for Windows to get around this and allow formatting larger volumes than 32GB.

I find limits like that are usually software-based; Either the developers were being lazy or used rubbish drivers; I have a lot of stuff that's only rated for 32GB or 64GB because that was the biggest SD card or USB stick available when they were made, but they seem to work fine even with 512GB cards.

Usually, if you use a bigger card/stick, it'll be able to use it but just won't be able to use its full capacity - e.g. If you use a 256GB USB stick and it only supports 32GB then it'll only format it up to 32GB.

However, there are also some limitations with specific hardware - e.g. With SD cards, there are 3 types - SD, SDHC and SDXC; SD is limited to 2GB (Or 4GB with some bodges), SDHC is limited to 32GB and SDXC is limited to 2TB, and sadly these are actual hardware limits due to repeated shortsightedness of whoever wrote the specs originally, so if the device ONLY supports SDHC then it'll not work with a higher-capacity SDXC card.

 

[Paul john]

1 hour ago, Cyker said:

Sorry but that's untrue - Case in point: I have a 256GB SD card for my dashcam which is formatted to FAT32; FAT32 can actually go up to 2TB IIRC, but Microsoft deliberately hamstrung it in, I think Windows XP or Vista onwards, because they were trying to make interoperability between operating systems as awkward as possible, and FAT32 was the most common filesystem for all OS.

Windows 2000 down to Win95, and any other non-Windows OS (e.g. Linux) that supports FAT32 can format it up to 2TB; It's only (Ironically) later versions of Windows that can't do it natively. However, there are many utilities for Windows to get around this and allow formatting larger volumes than 32GB.

I find limits like that are usually software-based; Either the developers were being lazy or used rubbish drivers; I have a lot of stuff that's only rated for 32GB or 64GB because that was the biggest SD card or USB stick available when they were made, but they seem to work fine even with 512GB cards.

Usually, if you use a bigger card/stick, it'll be able to use it but just won't be able to use its full capacity - e.g. If you use a 256GB USB stick and it only supports 32GB then it'll only format it up to 32GB.

However, there are also some limitations with specific hardware - e.g. With SD cards, there are 3 types - SD, SDHC and SDXC; SD is limited to 2GB (Or 4GB with some bodges), SDHC is limited to 32GB and SDXC is limited to 2TB, and sadly these are actual hardware limits due to repeated shortsightedness of whoever wrote the specs originally, so if the device ONLY supports SDHC then it'll not work with a higher-capacity SDXC card.

 

Are you not sure that it is formatted with exFat?

dashcams may but toyota head units do not support exFat

do you use “third party tools” to add that extra effort to format as fat32

https://www.androidauthority.com/ntfs-vs-fat32-vs-exfat-1211649/

 

 

 

[BillWicker]

FAT32 formatting will work on 256GB 3.1

Bought a 2021 Camry XSE and it played my existing 128 thumb drive with 12,000 songs. Switching to a tiny SanDisk Ultrafit 3.1 (that fit in the USB slot with the cover closed), it was not 'seen' because of the exFAT formatting.

Found two YouTube with 800 upvotes and none down. Not a perfect way to rate freeware safety but it is a helpful measure. I used the guiformat. The 256GB now with 17,000 songs seems to work fine. I run it on shuffle. Search function works but it takes time to load. And yes, I am a pig for needing so much music.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU3f8Pwo8PAWebsite- http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0No8NzWSSXo Website: https://rufus.ie/en/

[Red_Corolla]

Yeah, the 32GB limit for FAT32 doesn't actually exist, it's just a limitation of the Windows built-in formatter, not the file system itself. Those interested in how it came to pass can hear it from the horse's mouth on YT (see below). The real limitation with FAT32 is the max individual file size (around 4GB, IIRC), but that's not an issue for mp3 audio tracks. Use a different formatter or, better still, a different OS altogether 😆.

 

[Tristan]

If I may add, maybe it will help someone. I have the same issue with my motorcycle SatNav, RaspberryPi and other SDCard devices. It usually comes down to partition (as long as size is supported), I can guarantee that FAT32 support partition over 32Gb, understood there is a 4Gb per file size limit. In most of my cases, I have come right creating partitions and formatting with MiniTool or similar program.