# "Unknown Artist" And Out of Order Folders With Flash Drive



## Dragonsys (May 27, 2013)

Welcome to the forums!

The USB interface on these cars is not the best. It actually causes my iPOD to freeze up from time to time, and sometimes songs won't play (it displays them on the Radio, then after about 1sec skips to the next song).


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## Miek (Apr 29, 2014)

I had opted to use the USB interface for a couple reasons.
1. Sometimes, Bluetooth audio playback would be so choppy that I couldn't understand anything coming through my speakers, let alone listen to a song in full.
2. Bluetooth can really put the drain on a phone's battery, so I had thought USB would be a better choice.

I also read in this same forum that apparently an updated-for-2014 version of the MyLink software has either just rolled out or will soon be here. Would that perhaps help things? I just dunno what to do to make this work. I'm the kind of person where I just want everything to work, and if it doesn't, it drives me nuts.


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## Jim Frye (Mar 16, 2011)

I have seen posts by others regarding Lexar flash drives and all complain about various issue with them. It's not limited to any auto/stereo maker. I also have not had any luck with drives by that maker. I have had good luck with SanDisk Cruzer drives. I have seven of them of various sizes and all work perfectly. Not all flash drives are made the same and some require special firmware (drivers) to work even with a PC. Car audio systems are not as sophisticated as a PC and the special firmware is lost on those systems. A couple hints for using flash drives with automotive systems.
1. Make sure the drive is completely formatted in FAT32 format and do it with a hard format, not a quick one. Most flash drives have firmware loaded on them in the root directory and that can play havoc with the audio system's firmware.
2. Load the drive folder by folder, or file by file, so the tracks are contiguous on the flash drive. 
I build an image on my PC and then drag/drop each artist's album folders to the flash stick one by one and I wait for each to finish the transfer before I start another one.
3. You didn't state how many tracks you loaded, but older Cruzen had a 10,000 song limit. 
4. There was another thread here about indexing times with large flash drives. Just thought I'd mention it in case you experience it.


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## Dragonsys (May 27, 2013)

Miek said:


> I had opted to use the USB interface for a couple reasons.
> 1. Sometimes, Bluetooth audio playback would be so choppy that I couldn't understand anything coming through my speakers, let alone listen to a song in full.
> 2. Bluetooth can really put the drain on a phone's battery, so I had thought USB would be a better choice.
> 
> I also read in this same forum that apparently an updated-for-2014 version of the MyLink software has either just rolled out or will soon be here. Would that perhaps help things? I just dunno what to do to make this work. I'm the kind of person where I just want everything to work, and if it doesn't, it drives me nuts.


The update might help. I don't have MyLink and the USB is still hit or miss. TBH I don't know if it is the connector in the car, the cable used, the headunit connection or just the software which reads the USB, but something is not right with the USB connection on these cars.


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## Dragonsys (May 27, 2013)

Jim Frye said:


> 3. You didn't state how many tracks you loaded, but older Cruzen had a 10,000 song limit.


I wonder if that limit is only on Flash Disks, as I have not seen that with over 16k on my iPOD. Maybe that is part of why the car/iPOD have issues...


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## Miek (Apr 29, 2014)

@ Jim
1. The first thing I did was format the drive to FAT32 with a 4096 Byte allocation unit size.
2. That's what I also do (folder by folder, with one forder per artist and each album in a sub-folder).
3. I have about 5500 songs on my drive.
4. I do experience a long indexing time, yes, but it seems to go faster once the initial indexing is complete. It seems like it does have to re-index everything if I add anything, though.

I would view everything by the folder view, but like I said, my Cruze can't quite seem to figure out alphabetical order. Also, a lot of the time file names are cut short in this view.


@ Dragon
It seems like every USB connection in any car I've ever used has been plagued with problems of some sort.


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## Jim Frye (Mar 16, 2011)

Dragonsys said:


> I wonder if that limit is only on Flash Disks, as I have not seen that with over 16k on my iPOD. Maybe that is part of why the car/iPOD have issues...


Check your OM, it was listed there in '11 and '12.


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## Jim Frye (Mar 16, 2011)

Miek: Try a Sandisk Cruzer drive. I've seen others with issues have them go away with a Cruzer. Can't be sure with the MyLink system, as mine is made by Mitsubishi originally for Porsche and it works with absolutely no issues with the Cruzer drives.


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## Miek (Apr 29, 2014)

I'll look into SanDisk. It's a good thing flash memory is so cheap these days! This Lexar drive only cost me $35, so it's not a big loss. If the SanDisk works, great. Then I'll have an extra drive kicking around. If it doesn't, then I guess it's back to square one.

Another question, though, about Bluetooth. Is there any way to view music by folder using MyLink so I don't have to use my phone to change songs? It lets me skip forward and back between individual songs, but it'd be nice to be able to browse through all the music I have. When I try the folder view, it just says "List Empty". If it matters, I have my music stored on a 64GB microSD card in my phone since it only has 16GB of onboard memory (it's a Samsung Galaxy S4). I think the SD card is, again, a Lexar. I've never had any issues with it, though.


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## Ger8mm (Mar 13, 2014)

Yea the USB only likes certain formats and if its a cheap USB stick forget about it. Same with the IPOD the car doesn't like the old ones.


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## Miek (Apr 29, 2014)

I was out, and I grabbed a SanDisk Cruzer. It was even on sale! Now. It comes with this "SecureAccess" program that all SanDisk drives seem to have. Should I remove this from the drive (keeping a copy of it on my hard drive) or remove it? I'd sort of like to have 100% of the space on the drive available for music. As far as I can tell, SecureAccess is just a security program that allows the creation of a password-protected folder on the drive. It also looks like it can be downloaded from SanDisk's website at any time.

EDIT: For now, I just moved the SanDisk software off the drive. To test it with MyLink, I'm going to copy over one of the music folders that was coming up with "Unknown Artist" on one of the songs and see if it's fixed. Worst case scenario, I spent $30 on something I can probably use anyway, so it's nothing to cry about. Will report results.

EDIT 2: That's one big, fat, NOPE. The "Unknown Artist" issue is persistent. Still don't know exactly what causes MyLink to decide to categorize something as such.

I do think, however, that I'm going to keep using the SanDisk over the Lexar for my car. The read and write times seem to be faster. I'll use the Lexar for general purpose stuff (I've managed to lose all my other flash drives because I can be a winner like that).


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## spacedout (Dec 7, 2010)

I always format the drive after I get them to remove all that unnecessary software. I will also say I have had the best luck with sandisk drives.


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## Miek (Apr 29, 2014)

The SanDisk came formatted in FAT32 already, and everything except for the same songs as before works flawlessly. I'm starting to think that somehow MyLink isn't able to read the tags, and I'm not quite sure why.


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## spacedout (Dec 7, 2010)

Miek said:


> EDIT 2: That's one big, fat, NOPE. The "Unknown Artist" issue is persistent. Still don't know exactly what causes MyLink to decide to categorize something as such.


This has nothing to do with mylink and everything to do with the song information(tagging) of your MP3 files. Just because the file is named correctly doesn't mean the tagging is correct. I use a program called mp3tag to edit & correct any of mine that were missing info, though I'm sure there are better programs out there. 

You just need to figure out which songs/cds of yours are missing this key information.


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## Miek (Apr 29, 2014)

That's actually the program I use. All the information's there. I can provide screenshots if you want, just in case I've missed anything.


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## spacedout (Dec 7, 2010)

I have found instances where all the info is there, but seems to have become corrupt/unreadable by some devices. I would try to figure out a cd you hare having issues with, open with that program and change something with each song(the entire CD). Saving the tag info again should fix the problem.


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## Miek (Apr 29, 2014)

I'll try clearing and re-saving the tags on the entire folders that contain songs that go into Unknown and see if that works. I should also mention that the songs do still play in my Cruze. They just don't get sorted into the folder with the rest of the albums' songs and don't have a proper title-- just a filename.

Thanks to everyone that's helped so far. :biggrin:


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## Jim Frye (Mar 16, 2011)

FWIW, I use RealPlayer to rip CDs to my PC. It goes to the web for album, artist, and track information and also converts everything to MP3. The resulting files seem to be complete and have no issues with the car audio system.


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## Miek (Apr 29, 2014)

All my music is through digital download, majorly from BandCamp. The amount of music that up-and-coming artists put on there for free is awesome (though it never hurts to choose to pay for it when there's a "choose your price" option).

And as for the music issue... I think my id3 tags must have gotten corrupted somehow. I used mp3tag to clear tags on problematic songs and then re-tag them and now they all work. *shrugs*

It was strange, though. Windows would recognize all the tags in full (as well as every media player I loaded said songs into), but MyLink wouldn't. But, I think I fixed it.

However, I'm still having an issue with my folder view. The folders just don't want to display in alphabetical order. It picks a random letter (it seriously changes every time I pull and re-insert the drive) and puts it at the front. First it was M, then W, then N, and recently it was Z.


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## Jim Frye (Mar 16, 2011)

Miek said:


> However, I'm still having an issue with my folder view. The folders just don't want to display in alphabetical order. It picks a random letter (it seriously changes every time I pull and re-insert the drive) and puts it at the front. First it was M, then W, then N, and recently it was Z.


That's just bizarre. The system in my car displays the folders in the order they are on the flash drive. It does not sort, nor rearrange, them. Are you loading the stick in alphabetical order? Just checking.

GM has a media support center that might help you with this issue. PM the Chevy Customer Care folks here and they should be able to connect you with that group.


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## Miek (Apr 29, 2014)

They're all in order on my PC, yes. Folder view is the only view to do this. Everything is in order when look by artist or album.

And I might have to fire off a PM, then. Thanks for the help!


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## Jim Frye (Mar 16, 2011)

Remember, Windows automatically sorts the files and subfolders into alphabetical order when displaying them regardless of the physical order on the drive.


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## Miek (Apr 29, 2014)

I do realize this, but I loaded them on in alphabetical order... not to mention how it's a different letter each time that's out of order.

EDIT: Now multiple letters are out of order. It's filing M first, then A, then Z, but then the rest are all in order. Strange. I might just phone my dealership and ask about it.


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