Loading music to hard-drive from USB Flash

Hello, would like to see if only I have this issue or not and if anyone offer any suggestions. I am trying to load music to hard-drive using USB Flash drive. 1st of all it is taking too long - 4GB loading more than 30 minutes. Second, if you turn off you car before the load finished, then when you try to load it again - it does not see that some music already present and load it again as a duplicate.

Yep, USB>HDD is a GLACIAL process. With a '10 E70 we haven't encountered the duplicate write problem with start/stop, as you describe. We DID encounter duplication [and other] problems when attempting to re-load from the USB stick after making edits to the USB stick. Because of this flaw in the iDrive HDD logic we abandoned HDD playback, and switched to center console USB stick playback - much more efficient for owners who routinely edit their onboard audio collection.

I did this today in my 2011 335. I have all my music in itunes, so I just copy and pasted all of my itunes music folders onto a blank USB drive. I copied about 5 gb worth of music. I then put the USB drive in the car and did an import. It took about 15 minutes to copy it all to the hard drive, and everything is categorized and named perfectly thanks to the Itunes organization.

In the future if I want to add new music, I will just copy any new music to a BLANK USB drive and do the import. Do not keep trying to import new music on a USB drive that has your entire collection on it. The first update into idrive will take the longest. Everything after that will be importing your new music only.

I really like the music collection. Compared to using my iphone, it gives much better sound quality, and compared to using the usb stick directly in the center console, it gives you voice search.

Set your voice command to "short" rather than "default" under the language/units in idrive.

Then say "Music Search" they say "new search." Then you can say:

Artist Elvis or
Album XXXX
or Title XXXX

(I am not sure if pre 2011 models allow you to say "artist" and then the actual artist name in one step. It might be 2 steps for 2010 models and earlier).

I find that the system pulls up what I want via voice 9 out of 10 times even for really funky track or artist names. It's pretty smart for abbreviations too. I can say "Doctor Dre" for "Dr Dre." and the lady comes back and says "Doctor Dre" and the music plays, or I can say "Drive Dre" for "Dr Dre" and the lady comes back and says "Drive Dre" and the music plays. It works either way.

I think the music collection is worth figuring out to get the voice search functionality, especially if you have a lot of music.

Originally Posted by the J-Man

I did this today in my 2011 335. I have all my music in itunes, so I just copy and pasted all of my itunes music folders onto a blank USB drive. I copied about 5 gb worth of music. I then put the USB drive in the car and did an import. It took about 15 minutes to copy it all to the hard drive, and everything is categorized and named perfectly thanks to the Itunes organization.

In the future if I want to add new music, I will just copy any new music to a BLANK USB drive and do the import. Do not keep trying to import new music on a USB drive that has your entire collection on it. The first update into idrive will take the longest. Everything after that will be importing your new music only.

I really like the music collection. Compared to using my iphone, it gives much better sound quality, and compared to using the usb stick directly in the center console, it gives you voice search.

Set your voice command to "short" rather than "default" under the language/units in idrive.

Then say "Music Search" they say "new search." Then you can say:

Artist Elvis or
Album XXXX
or Title XXXX

(I am not sure if pre 2011 models allow you to say "artist" and then the actual artist name in one step. It might be 2 steps for 2010 models and earlier).

I find that the system pulls up what I want via voice 9 out of 10 times even for really funky track or artist names. It's pretty smart for abbreviations too. I can say "Doctor Dre" for "Dr Dre." and the lady comes back and says "Doctor Dre" and the music plays, or I can say "Drive Dre" for "Dr Dre" and the lady comes back and says "Drive Dre" and the music plays. It works either way.

I think the music collection is worth figuring out to get the voice search functionality, especially if you have a lot of music.

Strange, for some reason in my 2011 X35I it takes much longer than 15 min to load 5GB.

how many songs are you guys putting on and can you load while you drive??

Say I have sirius playing while I wait will it still load while I am cruising around?

Originally Posted by samsonitep

how many songs are you guys putting on and can you load while you drive??

Say I have sirius playing while I wait will it still load while I am cruising around?

Yes, I can use other audio sources while the music collection is loading. I put about 800 songs on my car the other day in about 15 minutes.

Wait till you try and make a back up of the music files, Plan on at least an hour and you have to have the car running or it will stop after about 10 to 15 minutes if the car is not running.

I use BT audio with my iPhone 5 and just plug it into my power cord from the center console. No issues whatsoever.

Read my mind, I was ready to post an issue with my USB, anyway, I can't get it to load at all. I loaded my cd's with no problem, I wonder why it won't load my USB songs??
I just put 5 songs on the stick as a "test", and it displayed the artist and song title and even played the song, but when I moved it over to download the songs, it gave me a command to make sure the cable was in the USB slot, which it was,,I clicked OK and it took me back to the playlist without downloading anything. I have got to be doing something wrong but can't figure out what it is!

Originally Posted by buckeyewalt

Read my mind, I was ready to post an issue with my USB, anyway, I can't get it to load at all. I loaded my cd's with no problem, I wonder why it won't load my USB songs??
I just put 5 songs on the stick as a "test", and it displayed the artist and song title and even played the song, but when I moved it over to download the songs, it gave me a command to make sure the cable was in the USB slot, which it was,,I clicked OK and it took me back to the playlist without downloading anything. I have got to be doing something wrong but can't figure out what it is!

well im getting the car soon, so will try.
Did you read this post -

http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=417311

anyway please let me know if you have any updates
thanks

Originally Posted by nastaad

well im getting the car soon, so will try.
Did you read this post -

http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=417311

anyway please let me know if you have any updates
thanks

I did not read that post..and after reading it,I think I have found my pproblem. The USB in the glove box does not work!!! The one in the center console does work and will play my songs,BUT it won't import them...I thought that it would but I guess I was wrong,,never given the glove box a thought. So I guess its back to the dealer to get it fixed!
Thanks for your help

sure, let me know if you figure out how to upload and to use voice search?
thanks!

Looks like something is more serious with mine instead of loading issues. Took it to the dealer and worked on it for the better part of a few hours to the point where they say that the USB in the glove box is not working at all. Didn't want to leave it with them so I just took it back. $%$#@*&^%...with all of the electrical issues that I have had, it feels like I have a Fiat at times!

For me, the loading issues are not time (transfer time isnt fast, but it's manageable.. i moved 700+ songs over pretty quickly), nor over-writing (it doesn't do this, it just adds the new songs -- I was surprised it did this given its other stupidities!).. it's the fact that some mp3's decide not to play (but show no error, it just skips them) and that if i put my usb drive in the glove box usb jack, it doesn't recognize it / import music right away. I usually have to drive it, turn it off, get back in, then try again... I thought maybe you needed to have it in before you turn the car on, but that is not the case. Just seems to "decide" it's ok to read from it all the sudden.

Personally, I miss my aftermarket stereo's solution from my last truck (08 4Runner) -- an SD card of whatever size I choose that I put into the SD slot in the head unit and it reads right away, problem free. Having a 32 gig SD card to load music onto is super helpful.

For those of you who have a usb port in the center storage compartment (option 6FL?), why don't you get an external hard drive and just use that to play your music?

In my X5, I use a 1 TB drive and have all my music in WMA lossless format. Simple and easy and I don't need to clog up my internal HD.

Not saying all drives work in all cars btw.

I recently tested a 2TB drive and it worked in the X5. Also not saying anyone needs anywhere near that capacity if all you have is compressed music.

maybe thats a great use for my currently unused, dust collecting 250gb hd!

Remember BMW data storage is based on 5300rpm HDD, a bit dated in today's standards.
The more media you place into the car's storage the more slow it loads data.

The best way to listen to your media through your car is to simplify your library to songs that you like to listen the most into playlist and if you want some flexibility, load your songs into your iPhone.
Or use Pandora :P

Good Luck!