[Jeff J]

New 2024 X5M here. I loaded my music files to a new Samsung Fit Plus 256Gb mini-stick (same model I’ve seen others here use), plugged in to the port by the cup holders / wireless charging. The first time I used it in the car, it worked fine. Since then I get “no music files found”. No change after removing and reinserting.

I strongly suspect user error, but what did I do?

[nZtiZia]

double check your settings in iDrive. I believe there’s a setting to enable/disable reading USB files

[roamio]

Check USB drive on your home PC. Maybe it got corrupted. Try reformatting it one more time and copy music again.

[Jeff J]

My USB stick opens right up on my desktop computer at home with all of the files visible and playable. They're mostly FLAC, but there are a few MP3s; I believe both formats are supported in iDrive 8...

I haven't found any settings to enable/disable the USB feature so far, but I'll keep diggin.

[rogerramjetx5]

Originally Posted by Jeff J

My USB stick opens right up on my desktop computer at home with all of the files visible and playable. They're mostly FLAC, but there are a few MP3s; I believe both formats are supported in iDrive 8...

I haven't found any settings to enable/disable the USB feature so far, but I'll keep diggin.

I have the same issue with a new Sandisk drive I bought recently but an older one works fine. I’m planning on the 30 second reboot next time I’m in the car to see if that helps.

[MJBradley1967]

It's said the USB stick has to be formatted in FAT32 instead of NTFS, tho I'm pretty sure I used NTFS on mine and it worked. You could check that.

[Jeff J]

I "long" reformatted (as exFAT, since that's been the defacto standard for flash drives for nearly 20 years). I loaded all MP3 files, and not very many of them (maybe a couple dozen albums). It worked exactly as expected.

Emboldened, I decided to add the rest of my files. Failure, but slightly different... It decided that there was only one file on the stick, and that one file worked normally. Bringing the stick back to my desktop computer showed that all the files were there, and there's nothing particularly unique about the one file that worked (Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, in case anyone's curious)

I noticed that I had over 8000 files on the stick, and read somewhere that this was a limit at one time, so I deleted a bunch that I almost never listen to and got it down below that number. Same behavior as before, and oddly, it's that same single file that still appears.

So perhaps I'll give it a go in FAT32 or even NTFS just to see what happens.

[IFlyX5]

Originally Posted by Jeff J

I "long" reformatted (as exFAT, since that's been the defacto standard for flash drives for nearly 20 years). I loaded all MP3 files, and not very many of them (maybe a couple dozen albums). It worked exactly as expected.

Emboldened, I decided to add the rest of my files. Failure, but slightly different... It decided that there was only one file on the stick, and that one file worked normally. Bringing the stick back to my desktop computer showed that all the files were there, and there's nothing particularly unique about the one file that worked (Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, in case anyone's curious)

I noticed that I had over 8000 files on the stick, and read somewhere that this was a limit at one time, so I deleted a bunch that I almost never listen to and got it down below that number. Same behavior as before, and oddly, it's that same single file that still appears.

So perhaps I'll give it a go in FAT32 or even NTFS just to see what happens.

There is a thread where people use 6-7 different USB drives to re-index the iDrive to recognize the newly added files

[TurtleBoy]

Originally Posted by IFlyX5

There is a thread where people use 6-7 different USB drives to re-index the iDrive to recognize the newly added files

This is correct, I use 6 different ones although 5 may work. The system caches the indexes so you need to use multiple USB drives in order for it to recognize changes. For drives 1 thru 5 I put two songs on each one, put the drive in and start playing a song. Drive 6 would be my original drive.

[Jeff J]

After reformatting in NTFS, the system recognized all of my files and their folder structure and behaved exactly like it should…for 2 days. Now we’re back to just that one track. We were driving on my wife’s fob for a road trip this weekend, and I was manually switching to my profile when driving; maybe that had an impact, but no idea why it would…

I did find in the Entertainment / Nav manual that EXFAT is the preferred format, for what it’s worth. I may have to go dig up TurtleBoy’s thread about multiple drives to see if I can figure this out.

This, plus Android Auto always auto playing media when connected, is my biggest gripe with the car (which admittedly are both minor things).

[TurtleBoy]

Originally Posted by Jeff J

After reformatting in NTFS, the system recognized all of my files and their folder structure and behaved exactly like it should…for 2 days. Now we’re back to just that one track. We were driving on my wife’s fob for a road trip this weekend, and I was manually switching to my profile when driving; maybe that had an impact, but no idea why it would…

I did find in the Entertainment / Nav manual that EXFAT is the preferred format, for what it’s worth. I may have to go dig up TurtleBoy’s thread about multiple drives to see if I can figure this out.

This, plus Android Auto always auto playing media when connected, is my biggest gripe with the car (which admittedly are both minor things).

Here are a couple of posts concerning people using multiple drives to reindex. When I did it I used drives by the same manufacture just named differently and did not have an issue. Good luck

https://g05.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh...8&postcount=28

https://g05.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh...2&postcount=36

[cardale97]

Originally Posted by Jeff J

New 2024 X5M here. I loaded my music files to a new Samsung Fit Plus 256Gb mini-stick (same model I’ve seen others here use), plugged in to the port by the cup holders / wireless charging. The first time I used it in the car, it worked fine. Since then I get “no music files found”. No change after removing and reinserting.

I strongly suspect user error, but what did I do?

Im having the same problem, except I-8 is not recognizing my movie/video files. Do happen to have videos files on your usb that are or arent visible?

[Jeff J]

Originally Posted by cardale97

Im having the same problem, except I-8 is not recognizing my movie/video files. Do happen to have videos files on your usb that are or arent visible?

Not intentionally, but now that you mention it, I think I do have one or two files that came with a matching music video. In my old Audi Q7, the video would play on the main screen if the vehicle wasn't moving, else just the audio played. I have no interest in or need for the video, but I can go looking to see if removing them helps at all.

Since my last post on the subject I re-formatted again and reloaded a slightly more curated subset of my files. It now recognizes and plays some of them, but the portion of the folder structure (i.e. Artist name) starting with letters H-S is missing. Everything A-G and T-Z appears to be present and working. I have no idea how or why.

[Jeff J]

I wanted to circle back to this thread and (hopefully) close it out with a solution.

It looks like the issue is total count of files. I had over 9000 initially. After purging down to around 6000, things appear to work as expected. I have no idea what the magic number is, and whether it's files or folders or what, but my USB stick is working now.

[rogerramjetx5]

I too have resolved my issue with “files not found” but I went a different route. I tested a couple of files moved to the root directory on the usb drive and they appeared, I then copied all 9,500 files to the root plus deleted all the folders and they all appear correctly. I can still find specific tracks, albums and artists though I can no longer use the folder search.

I’ve now got my music on shuffle from a low-profile usb drive and it starts every time I enter the car, very happy

[machop]

About to load my music files to 24 X5, found this thread. A slightly different question: does 24 X5 have internal storage so I can dump them in there?

[TurtleBoy]

Originally Posted by machop

About to load my music files to 24 X5, found this thread. A slightly different question: does 24 X5 have internal storage so I can dump them in there?

No it doesn't. BMW removed user accessible storage a few years ago.