[UPDATE: I answered my own question. See the reply post below.]

I've searched the forum and read the manual and nobody has a short, clear answer to this question: Is the USB port in the center console of my 2010 FEH with SYNC/NAV a 2.0-compatible port? Will the SYNC/NAV radio accept a USB 2.0 Flash drive formatted as FAT32?

In addition to my (very good sounding) satellite radio I want to use a 16GB (or larger) USB 2.0 flash drive. I'd be very surprised if the port isn't 2.0, as the standard was updated in 2001 (and then in 2011 for USB 3.0). Thus far, all I've ever used my port for is charging my phone but I want to put some of my own songs on a USB stick.

Thanks!

P.S. ---> I'm working on an "omnibus" post day regarding my speaker upgrade, battery balance function results and findings, and trial with rubber rejuvenator and Honda special grease on the back hatch glass weatherstripping. I've been delayed by several things beyond my control, but hopefully this weekend and next week and I'll have them in the appropriate threads.

 

There is a forscan setting to enable USB2 but it didn't work as expected. I'm using a super short 64gb usb 2.0 drive right now so it will work regardless. Not sure if the speed would be USB 2.0 speeds if you were copying music to the navigation radio but it will play music.

 

It works. It's USB 2.0, or at least appears to be. Fast enough for playing music. I have an older USB 2.0 1GB flash drive I haven't used in a while and decided to try it out.

First I formatted the drive as FAT32, I did the full format not the quick format. Took about 3-4 minutes. Then I copied in all my MP3s from the "The Wall: Roger Waters Live in Berlin" album that I got when I purchased it through Amazon (I have the discs too) to the empty drive. No folders (yet) - I just wanted to see if it would find and play them. Turn car on wait for it to grab the phone, then put in the flash drive.

The friendly lady who lives inside the SYNC/NAV head unit informed me a new device was detected, I shouldn't futz around with it while moving, and then ominously said: "This device cannot play protected content through USB" or somesuch.

Well, nonsense (or maybe it doesn't apply in this case). I hit the "MEDIA" button, selected "USER DEVICE" and switched from my bluetooth phone and it picked up the album on the stick with no problem. I could see the artist, the track titles, etc., etc., and everything played.

Sounds great, and I finally found a use for that old 1GB drive. The album I mention is about 200 MB of MP3s (and it's a two disc set) so there's still plenty of room for other stuff, and I have a much bigger drive I can use as well. I thought I'd try the old one first.

 

It plays through multiple levels of folders when I enable shuffle. I filled 50/64gb. Haven't tried a 128g drive so not sure if there is a limit on maximum size. I get that same warning about copy protected content. Besides MP3 I wonder if it would play any other formats, supposedly it should play WMA at least but nobody uses that.

 

Good question I'll convert the files to WMA and see what happens. I'll see if I can do multiple formats, too.

 

Yeah it definitely scans through multiple levels of folders and doesn't present them as folders - for example if you select by Artist and have duplicate formats of the song in two different folders, it shows them pairwise... (Track 1...Track 1)...(Track 2...Track 2)...(Track 3...Track 3) and so on. And it *plays* them that way, so if you've got the same song in 2 or more places and you are just on sequential play (not shuffle) you have to manually skip over the "copy" song to get to the next song. This was a little jarring with "The Wall" because the songs were written and played live in Berlin to join seamlessly.

It looks like its folder-browsing functionality is limited or nonexistent, though it can find artists and genre and albums via metadata apparently.

It definitely picks up MP3 and WMA files and auto-indexes them but not Ogg Vorbis.

So it works, it sounds good, but it's quirky and a bit limited. Hey, it's 11 years old and a Microsoft product. For the time being I'm just pleased it works. I really didn't want the heartbreak 'n frustration of a USB port on a Microsoft device that wouldn't read my files.