USB folder sort order??

atv223

atv223

New member
I really love the idea of being able to have a ton of music loaded on a thumb drive hooked up to my 4Runner. This feature has even motivated me to finally rip our 350+ CDs to mp3 (what a pain).

The thing that is killing me is the sort order. When I plug the thumb drive in, it appears to sort the folder by the modified date, so the first folder I copied to the drive plays first, etc. I really don't like this since I would like to be able to scroll through alphabetically by folder name (seems reasonably logical to me). So I downloaded a program that actually allows me to change the modified date on the folders, but it appears to have had no effect.

Can anyone help me with this or at least shed some light on what I might be missing? No point in having 350 cds on there if I can scroll past my wife's music!

Thanks.
 
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I'm having the same problem. In Windows 7, I've sorted the folders in alphabetical order. But in the car, they are all over the place!
 
The order is going to be by file name. What you do on your computer will not matter to the head unit, it goes by file name.

Some more info here: http://www.toyota-4runner.org/5th-gen-t4rs/65621-how-use-usb-hard-drive-music.html

and per the manual:
The following device formats can be used:
• USB communication formats: USB2.0 FS (12 mbps)
• File formats: FAT16/32 (Windows)
• Correspondence class: Mass storage class

MP3 and WMA files written in any format other than those listed above
may not play correctly, and their file names and folder names may not
be displayed correctly.

Items related to standards and limitations are as follows:
• Maximum directory hierarchy: 8 levels
• Maximum number of folder in device: 999 (including the root)
• Maximum number of files in device: 65025
• Maximum number of files per folder: 255
Click to expand...
I hope that helps.
 
I should have check back 3 hours ago! After doing a lot more research, I realized that FAT32 puts folders/files in the order that they are added to the drive. No view in Widows with change that. Even after I changed the modifed date, it still didn't effect it. I could see the order that my SR5 was playing in if I went into the drive via a dos prompt.

As BigWhiskey pointed out, FoldeSort lets you change that order (I was coming back to post this, but he beat me to it ;): )

Well that problems solved!
 
Seriously?!? I have never noticed since I have it on shuffle most of the time, but what an epic oem stereo fail.

Hey you can play music from a USB drive! Nevermind it is super kludgy.

Another check in the aftermarket stereo list.
 
Yes, seriously.

I now know more about all this than I ever wanted to. Apparently there are a lot of basic flash MP3 players out there that work this same way, that's why that little application was developed.

Something else very interesting I noticed. If you remove the flash drive, and put it back in again, it picks up right where it left off. If you remove it and put a different flash drive in it starts at the very first song in the first folder. Take that one out and put the first one back in and it starts from the beginning, first folder first song, essentially it resets the system. Why this is important:

I took my flash drive out, added some new music, used FolderSort to get everything in alphabetical order again. When I plugged it back in, surprisingly it started mid way in a song. When I scrolled through all the folders, a lot weren't showing up. I plugged it back into my computer and all the files were there. Back out to the 4Runner, plugged in, still not showing up. Took that one out plugged a different one in (reset), put the original one in and viola all folder and songs are there and in the correct order.

Clear as mud?
 
I find it funny the manual states USB 2.0FS 12mb/s. That's actually the speed of USB 1.1. USB 2.0 is 480mb/s which is what I'd figure a 2010 model would have. USB 3 (4.8gb/s) is out now...
 
BigWhiskey said:
You can use the following software to sort your USB drive into alphabetical order: FolderSort
Click to expand...

I can't seem to find this utility anywhere. Would you still happen to have it, and could you make it available somewhere? If it's gone for good, does anyone know of another utility that does the same thing?
 
jreiter said:
I can't seem to find this utility anywhere. Would you still happen to have it, and could you make it available somewhere? If it's gone for good, does anyone know of another utility that does the same thing?
Click to expand...

Looks like that folder sort utility is gone for good, but I did find an alternative that seems to be a bit more powerful. It's called DriveSort.
Anerty's Lair - DriveSort

Worked like a champ. Sorted all of the files on my flash drive alphabetically, so now the 4runner nav unit plays them in order, too.
 
any app that will allow you to manually arrange the files in a folder (like allow you to drag this file and make it before that file and drag another file and make it after the other file)?
 
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MeetJoeAsian said:
any app that will allow you to manually arrange the files in a folder (like allow you to drag this file and make it before that file and drag another file and make it after the other file)?
Click to expand...

I believe that DriveSort utility will allow you to do custom ordering in addition to alphabetical. I think the idea is to create your own "playlists" by ordering things in the order you'd like to hear them. I've only used the basic alphabetical ordering feature, though.

Honestly, after playing with the usb feature a bit, it seems like using an external player of some sort (like an iPod, phone, etc) hooked into the aux input is a better option, since the phone or iPod interfaces will be so much faster than the slow nav unit interface.
 
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Sort by USB

I have a ton of music on drives, I've been an avid MP3 collector for years and I have em in folders. It's nice, when you're on a PC you just select the folder you want and play by folder, but now that I have a 2019 4Runner with the stock deck in it, I have the same problem that everyone on this thread has described. I'm only able to browse by genre, artist, or song. No browsing by folders is allowed. So now, my wife's folder called WifeJams, full of 200 assorted songs from all kinds of genres, is no longer accessible to us on flash drive in this 4Runner. I could use another flash drive and put her folder on it, to make that work, but boy that sure does sound sucky compared to a 128GB tiny USB drive with folders and folders fulla all of both our favorite jams, with no need to switch drives (while driving) to switch genres.

Over on the Tundra forum, they complain about the same thing with the stock deck:
USB Music - Play by Folder | Toyota Tundra Forum

This guy posted that his workaround is: Use a program called mp3Tag to remove all existing tags (artists, composers, albums, genres, etc) and then mass-assign a genre name to everything by folder. So now the Genre category basically is broken down by folder.
USB Music - Play by Folder | Toyota Tundra Forum

A reasonable solution to a crappy missing feature on the stock deck, sure. But It sure doesn't sound as easy as just simply being able to browse by folder, does it? NOPE. Sorry, I'm a PC guy, I'm used to the ease of playing by folder and not having to sort by genre or "search" to find what I'm looking for. Nope, I just click my folders and hit that Between the Buried and Me - Automata one, and it plays both CDs in order as expected. On my PC that is. I still haven't found the solution for this problem on the Toyota stock deck, but I wanted to chime in with my displeasure at this signifigant missing feature. I'd like to submit this as a feature request, but I doubt doing so on these forums will suffice. Maybe I'll write a program to send a billion emails about it to Toyota, I dunno.

I expect that the solution, in the end, will be replacing the stock deck with something smarter with a browser folder option. What I"m hoping I also get when I do this is the ability to view longer filenames as I browse, because as is currently I can only see "Between the Buried and me - Automata 1 - and that's about it, no song titles as I play the album because this dumb stock deck OS didn't think we'd ever want to hear a song that had more than 32 characters in the name I guess. Frustrating. Looking for ideas.

Anybody?
 
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