Maximum USB Size?

Ford SYNC 3 Support
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Does anyone know what the maximum USB size is for Sync 3?

I have been using a 32gb USB stick for my music. I can’t get all my music on 32gb so today I bought a 64gb USB stick. I formatted it as exFat and put all my music on it.

When I put it in to the USB hub, I get a message saying ‘USB device not supported - please remove’.

The only reason I ask is because looking over various forums, I see people claiming to be using 64gb and even 128gb. They just say they have not done anything special to get it to work.

I even tried formatting mine as FAT32 just in case but got the same result.

I have not tried NTFS.

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SYNC should have no problem reading an exFAT drive. I have used a 256GB USB before and it has worked without issues.

The only other thing that might be causing an issue is if the USB is using GPT. You should be using MBR with exFAT.

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This same error happened when i formatted my sandisk 32gb usb drive on a chromebook. I grabbed my usb c adapter for my tablet and formatted it to fat32, worked just fine.

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Well that did the trick. No idea how these things are set from the factory, but I ran it through Diskpart, deleted it all, convert to MBR. Re-formatted, re-copied and now it all works.

Many Thanks

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I’m using a SanDisk 64gb USB (exFat) with no problems at all. Sync 3 also reads fat32 and NTFS for music, have tried this and it worked.

Not sure if any of these options is better, but since Ford recommends exFat to be used when updating, I’m sticking with exFat.

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Like mentioned it just needs to be Fat32 or ExFat not NTFS or HFS etc and most importantly needs to be Master Boot Record (MBR) not GUID Partition Table (GPT)

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This is noted on the sync 3 instruction manual.

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I would not use NTFS for a flash storage device, it is a bad idea compared to the other options.

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Agreed, that’s why I’m using exFAT. Just saying you could use a NTFS formatted USB for music playback on Sync 3 if you want… :wink:

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I agree, anyways exfat is more compatible to devices and more stable for portable stuff like USB devices. Ntfs is more for computer drives.

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The USB stick now works and I am not having any playback issues.

I tend to leave the USB stick in all the time. I never remove it unless I am adding songs. Is it normal that everytime I start the car, it indexes again.

It seems whenever I start the car up, I cannot browse for about 5 minutes or so because it is indexing the USB stick. I would have thought it would only need to do it once unless you change it.

It’s a pain if you are just nipping to the shop because I cannot use it at all if it’s just a 5 minute journey each way.

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you can add a DONTINDX.msa file but if you do that it won’t ever index

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I’ve seen that when it hasn’t indexed, the songs name default to the audio file name, but if it doesn’t bother you, go ahead. I also leave my music usb in there plugged in all the time. I think the delay is because it has to recognize the USB and then load up all the cache that it made to remember the songs (index).

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