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Hi there, first time poster here. Hoping to troubleshoot this frustrating issue that's arisen with music files on the SD card I use in my 2017 E300.
I bought my car in January and have really enjoyed it. One of the first things I did right away was buy an SD card to load with a ton of my personal music files. They only occupy about 30 GB of data on the 128 GB capacity card, so storage space is not an issue. I also only have folders organized to something like 4 tiers in the file directory (I believe the maximum is 7).
Anyway, for the first 7 months of its ownership, I had no issues navigating through the media on the card, making playlists, and generally enjoying the whole experience. Audio quality was great, and it always picked up the song where it last left off when the car was last operated.
3 weeks ago I was involved in a hit-and-run where someone caused cosmetic damage to the rear bumper. My insurance covered the repair cost; I took it to the MBZ certified Caliber Collision center nearest me, and they fixed it in about 3 days.
Upon its return to me, this annoying issue has surfaced: sometimes (perhaps depending on how long the vehicle has been turned off...) when the car is started, the media center behaves like it is reading the SD card for the very first time. It has no recollection of what song was last playing. Instead it loads alphabetically file 1 of folder 1. It also considers all media on the SD card in 1 bulk folder; i.e. the display shows it's playing track "1 of 3,805" instead of track "1 of 12" of that particular album folder.
I took it back to Caliber. They ran the remote diagnostic again, which found no issues with the vehicle's electronic or media components whatsoever. In my brief time with the gentleman at Caliber, we turned the car on and off several times, and we could not replicate the issue in front of him. We hoped running the diagnostic itself may have re-calibrated whatever was wrong. He sent me on my way.
When I used the car again the next morning, the issue resurfaced: alphabetically track 1 of folder 1 played instead of the last song file that was playing the prior day.
Any idea what's causing this? Extremely minute and frustrating issue. Any help is welcome, thanks.
How old is your primary battery? When my car sits idle for days/weeks, the media center does not restart when the car is started. I have to start it manually. Charging the battery restores the auto functions.
For now (knock on wood) this seems to have just been a problem with the SD card itself, as bishop64 suggested.
I was using one of those "micro SD to standard SD" adapter card combos, like this...
It worked fine for 7 months, but maybe that had something to do with the sudden trouble the card slot had reading it.
So I replaced it with a proper standard SD card and it seems to have rectified the issue. Music plays exactly where I left off, even if the car has been off overnight.