[grillmaster13]

Just bought a Clarion DB285USB[headbang] , it seems like a great choice, the main reason I chose the deck was it could read from a portable hard drive, so I could have up to 65,025 songs. It reads fine from the external drive it seems to take about 45 seconds to load when put on USB mode and there's 21,000 songs all in the correct format, mp3 with a bit rate from 8-320 kbps, as the booklet and Crutchfield website say, but it doesn't play in alphabetical order like the folders are ordered on the drive and it doesn't seem to have all the files (example: I cycled through using the folder up button til' it started repeating the order, which is nothing like how it's ordered on the drive. The booklet says that the deck may not read the files in the order displayed on windows. The deck is reading the tags fine, and I haven't seen any songs without a label on the deck. There's about 2,000 folders on the drive split into individual albums.

Does anyone have this deck and/or know what order the cd player reads from external drives, particularly a Western Digital Passport 250 gig? It would make it so much cooler if I knew the order so navigating the library could have some sort of order to it.

Help would be much appreciated! [headbang]

 

[mrfatride]

Well most of the time I know with aftermarket radios the HDD has to be formated in FAT32 so make sure that it is and check the manual and see if it has to be.

2,000 folders is a lot....check and make sure there is no limit on how many folders it can have since that might be causing an issue as well.....

 

[grillmaster13]

Yup, should be formatted as FAT32, and is. Yeah, 2,000 folders is too many, it'll read 256. thanks for pointing out what should have been obvious.

Still that kinda sucks I'll have to delete the folders, that'll take forever.

 

[mrfatride]

yeah i hear ya man.....i be willing to bet though that will eliminate a majority of the problems you are having

 

[grillmaster13]

Finally, got it cut down to 256 folders, and it's reading every track, almost 29,000, it takes 4 1/2 minutes to read the files before it plays, so I'm only a minute away from work or home when it begins to play. Bummer, but for the price the features on the deck are a good value. Just a lot of work to set it up to read every song, and it doesn't read folders in alphabetical order, so navigation sucks, but over 180 gigs is more than I'll ever listen to, so this beats a satellite radio subscription.

It has an instant recall source button too, so I can immediately jump to my first programmed station, so I can air check the station I work for real quick and then return right where I was listening off the usb.

Thanks for advice too.