I've got a 2012 MCS with the standard stereo, USB port in the center console. I'd like to load up a flash drive with music and just use that as a jukebox for the radio.

Problem is, it only works sometimes. I've read all the posts about formatting the drive as FAT 32, etc. and it occasionally works, but most of the time it just says "insert USB". It's always the same drive and I have no idea why it works fine sometimes and other times just won't recognize the drive.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the system is just junk. I'm hoping someone has found a way to make this work reliably? Any help appreciated.

 

Mine is an R53 without 3.5mm aux input jack, so I'm simply listening to playlists burned to CDs years ago vs same content burned to thumb drives. When I created those, I converted all my compressed file mp3 cuts into m3u playlist format with a program like described here (I used MediaMonkey). If you haven't done that, might be more compatible with the OEM audio unit while keeping selections sorted by your preferred genre. Curious what others with 2nd gen have done successfully...

 

I've got a 2012 R58 with HK and no nav, and I've got all my music on a SanDisk USB 3.2 thumb drive. It works 99.9% of the time. Once in a blue moon it won't automatically start the USB drive, but after a second or two it mounts and starts playing music. Otherwise it's flawless.

I did have a cheaper thumb drive years ago that started failing. It would either drop stop working randomly while driving, or would refuse to mount when I first started the car. I wonder if your USB stick is failing somehow? Maybe try a different stick, formatted to FAT32, with a bunch of MP3 or AAC files in the root folder, just to test it out?

 

Haven't gotten my R57 yet, but had this problem with my F150.
Main problem was using a USB3.0 [blue at the end of the chip] & the Ford Sync3 system didn't like it.
Moved everything to a USB2.0 drive & it worked flawlessly

 

What size drive are you using? I used a 16GB drive for both our Gen 2 Minis and never really had any issues (aside from the initial indexing, which can take some time).

What brand of drive are you using? I would recommend using a reputable brand like PNY or SanDisk vs a cheap no-name brand.

It's possible your USB port is failing, but I'm not sure how you would test that.

 

I think we have a winner. I tried an older USB 2.0 drive that I had and it worked right off the bat. Thanks man.

Before this I'd tried a wide variety of USB3 drives (from reputable brands) and it was totally intermittent whether one would work or not.

 

Yep, that was it. I bought a cheap, very tiny 64GB USB 2.0 thumb drive and it worked immediately. Kinda nuts: USB 3 should be backwards compatible, but maybe the power demands of the drives I tried were borderline, I dunno.

Anyway, thanks for the help.

 

Glad you got it working! I thought 32GB was the max for the Gen 2 Minis, but clearly that isn't true.

 

The USB3.0 I had used in the past also got very hot, compared to the 2.0
Glad it worked for you