TheTechnician

I have a 2011 C350 Coupe and was wondering if anyone has had any luck with 32Gb or 64Gb usb sticks, for music. I currently have a 64Gb Kingston Data Traveller full to capacity although only a fraction of the tracks show on the display in the car.

I have read one forum post suggesting that there is a roughly 4000 file limit on the Comand Online system. Can anyone confirm this?

azarc

I don't know about a file limit... but I have tried the following:

1. A 1TB USB drive with about 15GB of MP3 files
--> It couldn't recognize it...
--> ... That probably means it isn't powered and has a max size limitation.

2. A 32GB USB Stick with about 3GB of MP3 files
--> It works just fine, although it seems to "forget" all the artist and track information after the car is turned off. So far it has required me to re-read it each of the 3 times I've had the stick in when I started the car after turning off the car with the stick in.

HTH!

TheTechnician

azarc are you able to fill the 32Gb Usb stick and try it? Or copy the 15gb of mp3s to it and test it?

azarc

You read my mind.

I hope to be able to do that today (assuming I can do it while working today). Hopefully some of my compile time will allow me to switch back and forth.

Also, have you had any luck (at all) with the Playlists feature? I have no idea how to make that work.

TheTechnician

Compile time

Great to see a fellow techie is on the case!

azarc

Likewise.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the time I was looking for today. Will report back asap.

pparker1213

Just an FYI for people using USB sticks. I tried a small 8GB stick and it didn't work. Further reading made me realize that the drive has to be formatted as FAT or FAT32. Mine was formatted as NTFS.
After reformatting as FAT32 and reinstalling the music the drive worked fine.

TheTechnician

Over night I copied about 16gb of music to a SSD in an external HD casing. Formated it to FAT32 and only half of the folders are showing when plugged in to the car.

nlpamg

That's pretty disappointing. Thanks for the clarification.

Who uses FAT these days? sheesh.

Has anyone tried it with HFS+?

TheTechnician

Formatted a 64Gb USB to exFAT and it recognises about 30Gb of music. The stick was holding about 50Gb in total.

Maybe 32Gb is the limit?

TheTechnician

Has anyone else had any experience with the larger sized USB sticks in their C Class Coupes?

jctevere

I have yet to try the USB stick in my car, but I do have some experience with the "pains" of using FAT/FAT 32.

First, most systems won't recognize (probably including comand) FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB (and you won't even be able to format it larger than 32GB anyway through windows, unless you use aftermarket software). But besides that limitation (so it appears 32GB is the limit) individual files can't be more than 4GB. So those of you reporting that only some of your files are showing up, it is probably because you have all of your files in one folder and it is bigger than 4GB (here is where I have some uncertainty. Perhaps the comand system treats Folders as "files").

I would assume that if you break your music down into separate folders (4GB in each - actually, slightly less, limit is 4,094 MB to be exact - 3.99GB) then you should be able to recognize up to 8 separate folders of 4GB of files in each, totaling the 32GB limit.

Also, use FAT32, no other (so no FAT16, Fat12). Plese post your results/findings after doing this. Hopefully it works, and if not, at least makes the situation better, we can collectively work from this starting point though.

jkyriakou

And don't forget to enable the music search through he engineering menu. Although MB only enable this on the s class it's built in to the c coupe comand with hdd.

Won't work with iPod/iPhone but will with USB.

TheTechnician

Engineering Menu? Where is that found?

jctevere

Its a "secret menu" accessed through the comand console.

Simply hold the red "end call button", the "pound key - #" and the number one on the center dash until the secret menu pops up.

Becareful not to mess around too much, only change stuff you know what they do. You can also enable internet browser (although its useless in U.S.A. as only a handful of phones - most old, support the required bluetooth DUN interface) and even with it, it is painfully slow.

TheTechnician

Hi I am in Australia so I may have the music search enabled already? How can I tell?

jkyriakou

It isn't enabled in Oz. I'm in Sydney.

If it is when you press the linguatronic button whist on USB or music register you get an expanded help menu including music search.

Easy to do however. In the engineering menu under HW config you will see SDS music search. Just enable it and re boot (by turning the car off for a few mins)

SDS = speech dialogue system

TheTechnician

Ok I will give it a go. Are you suggesting the Music Search may allow me to see more tracks on the usb drive?

jkyriakou

I don't believe so.

I will be playing with different USBs and file systems tomorrow and let you know if there is an optimum setup. It's the FAT32 system that has limitations.

It will search your tracks however through voice recognition!


James.

TheTechnician

Ok great. Thanks for the heads up James.

Let's see if we can find the answer together ... still no response from the dealership.

I have tried various 64Gb sticks and a 64Gb SSD so far. The best I can achieve is close to 28Gb of files being recognised. I have the music sorted in folders such as
Genre > Artist > Album name
so there are no problems having more than 4gb in an individual folder for me.

jkyriakou

Just thought of something.

Engineering menu has mp3 size limitation settings for comand's various inputs.

Might be worth playing with that

karl17

Here's a useful reference.

HDD Up to 500GB
http://www.mercedes-benz-mobile.com/.../compare/~hdd/

USB Up to 32GB
http://www.mercedes-benz-mobile.com/gb/en/c204:2011-06/compare/~usb/

FROM 2010_E_COMMAND_MANUAL:
Up to eight directory levels with up to 1,000
tracks are supported.
Must be formatted using FAT16 or FAT32

TheTechnician

Just looked at the Engineering menu and found this

IC MP3 FS(SD/USB): 20(MFS2)

It is possible to set this to 10(MFS2) or OFF

Any idea what this is?

tharsis

If it's based on windows CE then 4gb per folder limit would be correct, this is a generic lmitation in MS standard implementation of FAT32 hence the need to move to NTFS, however too damn hard to license NTFS to work on OEM systems like this, and only compatible with windows hence most don't go for it.

I'll check this out next week when I get my car.

jkyriakou

I forget the operating platform of comand but it is not windows ce. It was developed by Nokia.

This platform is pretty much going to be dated soon as manufacturers move to newer open platforms.

A google search may yield the answers as I have. Read it in a few ICE tech forums.

James