USB thumb drive problem

Hello, I've got a 2021 JBL system and have been using 2 different thumb drives (32 and 64gb) with no issues for 9+ months. On a long drive two weeks ago while listening to the USB drive when I skipped a track it shut the audio off, I turned it back on and it worked fine the rest of the day. It did the same thing a few days ago but this time it won't work/play music. I tried reformatting the drive and reloading the songs and it still doesn't work, tried my other drive and it's also not working. The weird thing is it recognizes and displays the name of the drive but it stays "grayed" out on the source screen. My phone when plugged into the USB plays my music fine. I tried resetting the head unit several times with no luck. Any ideas? Thanks

 

Get Spotify…
In all seriousness, it seems like an antiquated way of playing music.

I don’t have the JBL head but wondering if there is a firmware update.

 

I'll check to see if there is an update but I'm not interested in listening to ads or paying to listen to the music I already own, so Spotify is a non starter.

 

Spotify plays local files too, but at that point idk why you would use it over the native media player…
You just have those two drives? Tried any others or a new one yet?
Super weird problem. Are they cheapo drives that could have been corrupted while reading?

 

I just tried a third drive that I use in my Goldwing, same thing, it recognizes the name of the USB drive but it stays grayed out. My main one is a Samsung, my secondary is a Verbatim, and the one from my Goldwing is a Sandisk. I also tested all three in my Wife's HR-V and my Goldwing, they all work fine except in the Tacoma. Frustrating...

 

Is there a way to do a hard re-start of the head unit on a 3rd gen? Mine (2nd gen) freezes occasionally and nothing works. On mine (Entune+) you power down the unit, wait a moment and then push the button again and hold it down until it re-starts.

So far it has always cleared the issue.

 

You can restart the 3rd gen JBL by holding down the power button (left knob).
It’s crazy that the usb just stopped working and won’t read drives but plays from a phone just fine…

 

All my music is on a USB stick!

 

He's an old hippy and he don't know what to do ...

 

Give this old fart some credit, at least i don't listen to music on CD's, LOL

 

When I got my 23 I bought some new thumb drives off Amazon. I loaded up my music files and put it in the usb slot, I got nothing. Turns out the format of the thumb drive has to be FAT32. Toyota uses the old format and the exFAT that my new thumb drives were worked on my computer but not the Tacoma. I found some old thumb drives that were formatted via FAT32 and tried again, it worked.

I’m not a computer guru so just relating what happened to me hoping it helps you.

 

exFAT is a little problematic. Format exFAT on Winblows and a Mac may not write to it. Format exFAT on a Mac and Winblows may not write to it. Something about default space-block sizing. No guarantee this occurs, but it can. And the truck uses ... well ... who knows. FAT32 limits the amount of allocatable space ... 128GB USBs cannot be done that way.

 

anything the entune HU does requires FAT32. usb updates, pics, music. toyota cutting edge tech.
format a usb stick with FAT32 to see if that is the problem. probably is.
if you are using windows, it won't even let you do that but you can download a great little partition manager (free version is fine)
and it will format in FAT32.
https://www.partitionwizard.com/
edit: you may want to read up on FAT32 size limit wars once you see if this is the problem.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/summarize-size-limitations-for-MK0krybORaGvufcb3.KqVg

 

A little more information from my testing last night. All 3 of my drives are FAT32, so no problem there. No updates are available for my head unit, so no joy there. I do have a USB CD player I have used in this truck to listen to CD's on occasion, that no longer works. My phone plugged into the USB still works like a charm but unfortunately it only has a tiny fraction of my music. Is there a hard reset you can do on the JBL head unit? Would disconnecting the battery for 20 minutes possible help? I'm thinking it has to be a software hiccup since the phone works. Thanks

 

Could it be a particular file on the flash drive? I could see an unrecognized character in the id3 tag or filename making it crash when it tries to build an index or something.

 

I'll give that a try tonight, I'll only put a single album on a brand new thumb drive

 

Simply postulating: Why wouldn’t the cd player work if it was software related with the drives? And why would both drives work for months, then just stop? My guess is it’s something hardware related with the usb port itself or the wiring coming from it

 

Here’s what I have on resetting

 

I'm kinda going back and forth on it being hardware vs software, seems weird that it will put the name of the drive up on the screen but not play. Yet it still works with a phone.

 

in the distant past i have had usb sticks partially recognized with factory formatting. reformatting cleared it up. it does not take much to violate some standard or expectation and have things not work.
as i remember, I had the most trouble with PNY brand.

edit: damn - just lost a big edit. stupid fingers.
gist of it was look at full owners manual section titled "USB MEMORY". it was page 367 in my pdf. lists limitations like USB2, FAT32, folder depth and extensions, etc.
if you are getting grayed out stick name then it is HIGHLY unlikely there is a hardware problem in the HU. i say reformat but double check your content for compatibility.

edit 2: i hope u don't take this as offensive, but i bet there are still some people out there that don't know reformatting will wipe out your contents. make sure you can reload you contents after you reformat, ie have a backup of the contents to work with.