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USB Tips for X3 F25 using a Mac

4120 Views 2 Replies 2 Participants Last post by  hjno72
This may work for other Beemer models but I cannot gaurentee that. For instance I found that my sister's 2012 1 Series can playback music on a NTFS usb drive whereas my 2012 X3 F25 could only do FAT32.

I use a SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB formated FAT32. The tiny form factor makes it the perfect disk for the beemer's usb.
http://www.sandisk.com/products/usb/drives/cruzer-fit/?capacity=16GB

The entertainment option I chose was the 6NH, the cheapest of the lot but gave me decent features, plus... and this is really a plus the center compartment does not have extra phone connectors in it taking up space.

So here is the tips:
- Format your USB drive to FAT32 (NTFS does not work)
- When using a Mac all sorts of dot files are created, that the BMW interface can see. This is very annoying as you see these shadow files and they give you cannot play messages.
- the following commands when run from the root of thumb drive connected to a Mac will eliminate this problem
DO NOT RUN THESE COMMANDS FROM THE ROOT OF YOUR MAC
GOTO TERMINAL (if you don't know what this is DO NOT CONTINUE past this point)
cd /Volumes/[your disk name]
find . \( -name '._*' -o -name '.DS_Store' \) -exec rm {} \;
rm -r .*

You need to run this every time you connect the thumb drive to your mac.
Guys, I will write a program which I will post for free shortly for those with lesser abilities to cleanup these shadow files.
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Unfortunately I can't help, all I know is that it intermittently recognizes NTFS formatted drives. Fat32 formatted drives are always recognized.

I now use a 32gb Fat32 formatted drive and its working.
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