USB Music Structure for 2013 Tacoma

Hello all,

I finally bought a 32 GB flash drive to use for music in my 2013 Tacoma. I used the same file structure that I have for iTunes and Winamp (I know old as fuck).

It goes like this, Artist name (folder), album name (sub-directory), and then the song(s) files under the album folder.

The problem is, when hooking it up the folders are all out of order (non-alphabetical) and the folder names are jacked.

If anyone knows how to properly arranged the folders/song files to put it in alphabetical order with albums underneath each artist it would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

 

This is what I use:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/DriveSort.shtml

 

When I had my GLI before my Taco, I liked how the radio would lemme select folders I created, "House, Techno, etc.". When I nought my tacoma, I literally copied the same SD card to a USB drive and was perplexed to find the same results as you. Apparently, the head unit doesn't respect the file structure and shows everything in one big folder. The only way to "fix" it is to set up correct "Album and artist" conventions. At least that is what I've seen. I never bothered to do it again.

 

I have a USB drive that I use. It lets me have several folders I created on the drive. All the music is .mp3 format and I have no problem selecting which folder I want to listen to. Now I can not set up a specific play order bet can do random selection by the head unit.

I set it all up on the USB drive after I formatted it. Using Win 7 Pro.

 

I literally just drag and drop my library from iTunes, which uses artist/albums/songs file sorting, to the USB source folder. It sorts everything out for me alphabetically and have never had an issue sorting things out before.

 

This has bothered me too. The order is all mixed up. When you add a new folder, it just drops it to the bottom of the list instead of putting it in alphabetical order.

 

This is what works.

 

Another app to get USB music in alph. order on the radio head unit, visit www.cnet.com, and search in Downloads for CopyInOrder. This is a freebe app. that will copy music in the order in which it's drag/dropped into the application window. It basically makes a batch file forcing a specific make-directory, copy-file order one item at a time. As we get thousands of files on these USBs, it's impossible to do this manually. This has annoyed me from day one and is esp. helpful to have them in order as the USB fills up.
I've used it on my Tacoma and my Rav4. It works very well but is obviously quite a bit slower in the copy process.
Remember to format the USB drive first. (quickformat worked for me). It's an old program, but it works on my Win 8 system.

Additional Info: I drag and drop the files one at a time from the sorted source directory to the app window; Sometimes i want an different order than is absolutely alphabetical... e.g. if you want Zac Brown Band to be the name of the folder, it can be copied to place it under the 'B's.
Good luck!!!

Below is better desc:
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From CompulsiveCode (Author):
This is a program for copying files and folders in alphabetical order. Windows rarely copies files or folders in the order you would expect. And normally this isn't a problem. But, on a flash-based MP3 player, the device may very well play the songs in the order they were copied, instead of alphabetically, or by track info. This program allows you to specify a source path (or paths), a destination path, and a file-type to copy. Then, either click COPY FILES and wait patiently, or click WRITE BAT, which will write out a .BAT file with all of the MKDIR commands, COPY commands, and DEL commands in it for reviewing/editing/running. The program has an option to overwrite existing files, and an option to remove files from the destination which no longer exist in the source.

 

Awesome, I'll give this a shot tonight. Thanks!

 

The USB drivers on most HUs, OEM and aftermarket, use a "very basic" driver that does not sort alpha, but rather just reads the USB drives directory table. that table is created in the order that the files are dropped onto the drive. IOW, date order. You need something like the already mentioned "drivesort" to reorder the USB drives table into an alpha look.

 

I've got a '14 and this last weekend set up a 32GB flash drive using NotPod (based on another post on here somewhere). It sets up your flash drive as a "playlist" within iTunes; just drag-n-drop songs into it and sync. I'm not seeing any problems with things not being in alphabetical order. It's only been a couple days but it seems to be working as expected.

 

I am trying to use the link you provided. I don't see any option to rearrange the files according to their folder structure alphabetically.

The only two options I see are "largest files" or "newest files"

 

I'm having this same problem with my 2013 Tacoma. I want two types of sorts:

1) Folders should sort alphabetically.
2) Songs within the folder should sort by track number.

Did you ever figure out a solution for this yet?

There are a few comments in this thread, so I'm trying to figure out how this should work. Are you guys saying that the sort order is always by date/time stamp, whether it's folders or songs within the folders?