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can the Ford Sync system read/use USB Hard drive

82K views 29 replies 17 participants last post by  Martin69 
#1 ·
Can the USB port with the Sync system recognize and access a USB hard drive?

I know the port is designed for like USB flash drives and connecting phones to it via USB cables, but can it also work with a portable USB hard drive?

I have a 2010 Focus with Sync factory installed. Reason I'm asking is because I have about 30GB of music, and want to be able to take the drive with me on trips (and I don't currently own an MP3 player with 30GB of space unfortunately--mine is only an 4GB).
 
#4 ·
ive recently acquired a 2012 ford focus and done just this!

it works perfectly.

bought a 250GB segate portable usb drive; formatted it as FAT32 (very important, as SYNC wont recognize NTFS >:| ) put about 180GB of music on it and voila! the only drawback to a large library is SYNC told me that voice selection for music is disabled.
 
#5 ·
That's a bit stupid that Sync can't read NTFS drives... seeing that NTFS is explicitly (and I think the only operating system) that uses by Windows operating systems only. It was designed by Microsoft, so as to why their own software can't read it puzzles me (maybe to prevent people from porting around gigantic drives of stuff--possibly overload the Sync system because after a point, maybe Sync can't read stuff from the drive--you know because for MP3s, it assigns an IDE that is uses to sort out the data on the drive, etc.)

But at least I can use a decent sized drive. And yes, my drive is USB powered rive, as are most laptop portable external drives. It's that or spend a lot on a 32GB flash drive, which costs about as much as a 160GB external hard drive, which was caused me to ask.
 
#6 ·
This also makes me wonder why Ford just doesn't charge maybe an extra $100 for the Sync option, and then just have built-in flash memory that you can only copy music to (From CDs for USB flash drives), but not allow you to copy it off the car's internal flash memory (for copyright reasons--to prevent people from sharing music illegally).

I think this would also make the Sync system a good seller, not that it isn't already in Ford vehicles, but it would make it that much more desirable... At least for me, I have maybe only a fraction of my music collection that I listen too.. And it would be nice if I didn't have to port around a USB drive or hard drive, and just be able to upload my favorite music directly to the car, and to know that it'll be there whenever I drive the car (no more forgetting my flash drive on long trips, and having to listen to satalite or local radio...)
 
#7 ·
I just bought a couple of 8gig thumbdrives and loaded them with the music i wanted. sync hates my 120gig ipod classic full of tunes.
anyone notice when you do a play all it randomly selects songs but seems to have a few thats its favorites, and will play them 3 or so times within half an hour? annoying as hell when you have 8 gigs of music...
 
#21 ·
I noticed this and i was only running off 750mg of songs (i used to always keep 1 mp3 cd up to date with my recent downloads) but it kept hitting the same songs on random, i also noticed some of the songs i edited that play fine on everything else have a 12-14second period of silence at the start
 
#9 ·
I'm guessing the reasoning behind not having flash memory in a car has something to do with licensing and the fact that almost everyone has a MP3 player. FAT32 is fine for car audio - I would suggest getting a mobile laptop drive and formating it into FAT32 and copying your music on that.

This guy would work perfectly -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148407
 
#10 ·
that's the exact one i got... works quite well. if the drive isnt being accessed, for say 5 minutes (you switch from AUX to AM/FM for example) the drive will power itself down. the 5 minute timer can be set from some bundled software from within windows. great reviews too [thumb]
 
#17 ·
Has anyone compared the system's responsiveness with a hard disk vs. with a flash drive? I have around 300 GB of music, debating if I should use a portable HD or trim it down and put it on a 32 GB SD card/thumb drive. Or the more expensive option-- 128 GB SSD.

Good call on tons of electronica.
 
#18 ·
These are music files, not movies. I think the number of files vs the size is going to kill things. There may be a slight difference in speed with the sd vs hd vs ssd - but it depends on how fast the Sync system is as well...

Don't over think it -
 
#19 ·
Well, if the Sync system is sluggish with larger sets of files, you'd think maximizing the speed of the device it's accessing would be advantageous. I will try to test this with a smaller HD vs. flash memory once I get to play with my MFT system. Any sort of lag on a device you're using while driving is really bad...
 
#20 ·
I have a few issues with the USB in my 2012 focus sel, seems the system plays the songs (when shuffle is off) on alphabetical order by SONG NAME wtf!!! all the songs are mixed together, i would rather it sort by mp3 file name, anyone know how to change this? or do i havbe to make separate folders for everything??
 
#22 ·
I want to get a small portable hd for a friend who has a 2011 Focus w/Sync for xmas this year and this thread is raising some concern over useability of the HD in the event that it doesn't play back the music correctly. BigJay, I'm particularly interested to hear if you come up with a solution to your problem. Nobody wants to hear the same song every couple minuets because the Sync's random feature doesn't work correctly, or the HD is too big, or...?

I think a SSD would be the best way to go since it's larger than a flash drive and has zero moving parts.... won't be effected by imperfections in the road. But for those of you running the regular portable USB drives, let me know if this is a non point.
 
#26 ·
Are your tags for your files correct? I've found that some files have the song composer listed as the artist, which totally screws up sorting. SYNC uses the artist tags along with the album tag to group song files properly. It doesn't care about folders or folder names.

dbpoweramp will display and reset tags for a group of files at once (album) if you need something like this.
 
#24 · (Edited)
Not sure why no one is using exFAT instead of FAT32. Sync does run exFAT (the replacement for FAT32) without any problems and it's native to win7 and 8 but I guess the choice is yours.

For others still having difficulties, I have some observations for you.
First the drive enclosure can cause difficulties with Sync recognizing your drive. I have an Ultra (tigerdirect) IDE drive enclosure with a 40g re-purposed hard drive formatted to exFAT that worked right away. But since I live in a colder climate that hdds can take, I put together a 250GB SDD drive in a USB 3.0 SATA enclosure. Sync would not recognize it. I tried formatting to FAT32, a USB 2.0 enclosure (same brand), repartitioning, no luck. Only after I removed the drive and connected it directly to the SATA port on my PC motherboard and started over using DISKPART, then Sync recognized the drive. As long as I add/delete files while directly connected to the PC outside of the enclosure, then it works quite well. If I add files while the drive is in the USB 3.0 enclosure, Sync fails to see the drive again.

This could be the brand of enclosure (Nexstar) or SDD (Samsung EVO 850) or combination of the two. I had a similar problem formatting a 3TB Seagate drive to GPT in an HP Media enclosure for my PC and found I was limited to 980GB. Connecting the drive directly, partitioning and formatting then reinstalling the drive back into the enclosure eliminated the problem which is why I tried the "direct connection" technique once more.


Update: July 20 2014.

I went out and bought a third hard drive enclosure, this time an ULTRA USB 2.0 from Tigerdirect. It's plastic and it's a no-tools enclosure so I thought at the worst it would be easier to remove the drive for updating. My assumption on brands was correct.
The ULTRA and the Samsung SSD works perfectly now. I can add and delete music files with the drive in the enclosure and still have SYNC recognize the drive afterwards. I haven't tried reformating the drive within the enclosure to see if it will still work, but at this point I'm not that curious. I currently have 270 albums and about 2600 songs loaded so far and SYNC indexes all of it without difficultly.
 
#25 ·
Are your tags for your files correct? I've found that some files have the song composer listed as the artist, which totally screws up sorting. SYNC uses the artist tags along with the album tag to group song files properly. It doesn't care about folders or folder names.

dbpoweramp will display and reset tags for a group of files at once (album) if you need something like this.
 
#27 ·
Might as well dig up an old thread -

I have a 500gig USB drive that my 2014 Focus' Sync is refusing to read. I bought it formatted Fat32 for just this purpose, but it's not recognizing it at all.

Any hints?

(Just for the record, I've been in radio for 40 years and have acquired quite a library over the years. Though not enough to fill 500gigs. Yet.)
 
#28 ·
We're talking HDD or SSD? Like, external hard drive or flash drive? Does it require or can it accept an external power source in addition to the USB connection? Because you can bet that Ford USB port doesn't supply more than 0.5A @ 5V.

Also as was mentioned in here, try exFat format? Read Capt Marvel's multiple posts just above yours.
 
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