Bolero - can it really handle 32GB cards?

[Simon Cobb]

I have this - Integral 32GB SD Card (SDHC) - Class 4

Filled with my collection, loads of sub folders, no loading delays work instantly with no problems.

Well, this is downright weird then. GentleGiant's comment regarding a possibly dodgy cards would make sense, but for the fact that I have no problem loading 32GB of music onto the card (formatted FAT32) via my PC and - again via my PC - I can browse the entire contents, play tracks from anywhere on the card, it works perfectly. (The cards are ADATA brand, Class 10 SDHC cards by the way, a brand I've used for many years in my daytime IT role). It's only when I put the card in the Bolero that it refuses to see more than 16GB of data.

Hyperviper34, can you give me a more detailed idea of your folder structure? How many top level folders? How many sub-folders in total? Do you have any sub-sub folders? How many files in total?

Edited 15 October, 2010 by Simon Cobb

[GentleGiant]

OK, I HAVE heard of problems with some older SD cards, certain brands wouldnt work with certain players, but I have not heard of anything recently.

Having said that, if they work elsewhere, that might be the problem; try a 32GB card of a different make, and see if that works. Will your supplier swap them for a different brand?? I find Transcend work well, I have had trouble with Kingston ones in the past though.

[CEPi]

You don't have a dodgy fake card.

But Class 10 SDHC is part of SD Card Specification Ver.3.0, i.e "very new", so probably Bolero is having a problem related to these new specifications. Class 2 (old) or 4 is good enough.

Class 2 - Minimum of 2 MB/s performance. Lowest speed for SDHC cards.

Class 4 - Minimum of 4 MB/s performance.

Class 6 - Minimum of 6 MB/s performance.

Class 10 - Minimum of 10 MB/s performance.

Songs are encoded as you say at 320kbps which class 2/4 are more then capable to serve.

Edited 15 October, 2010 by CEPi

[GentleGiant]

You don't have a dodgy fake card.

But Class 10 SDHC is part of SD Card Specification Ver.3.0, i.e "very new", so probably Bolero is having a problem related to these new specifications. Class 2 (old) or 4 is good enough.

I hadn't thought of that, but go for a Class 6 if you can; all the cards can play back fine, but a faster card means not waiting an hour or two to load the music from your PC!!!

I would still see if you can borrow a card to try before you buy.

[Simon Cobb]

Thanks again for the advice and interesting suggestions. I'm lucky through my job to have easy access to a range of cards, so will grab a 32GB Class 6 card on Monday and see if this is indeed the problem. You're right though - I went for Class 10 because I thought this would save waiting hours for the files to load from my PC. A Class 10 32GB card takes around 40 minutes to be filled, which is bad enough!

[Skumseeker]

I have a 16 gb card, that i want to use in my new one when it arrives, However I was loaned an octy vRS 10 plate fl with a bolero & after running the program on here that sets cards up for for the slot, when i put it in it errored, however when 1 took out the 9 sub directories & put everything on root, it started to read it, however after 5 mins of reading it I got bored & cancelled.

Coming to the conclusion that it doesnt seen to like a 16gb SDHC card, its only got 5.75 gb used & that includes playlists.

I will do some serious checking out when i get the car to sort it out.

I really want this working as my current car has usb slot with media player on the H/U, & its loads better that messing around with CD's. - Although I will probably seriously miss the controls on the steering wheel , never mind its worth the sacrifice

I have a 16gb card fat 32, it has worked perfectly for me, I have set each artist up with an individual folder, that workes perfectly, its just a bit fiddly, so i use my ipod on the mdi mostly, but control of the ipod on the new bolero isnt brilliant.

Try various ways, it will read a 32gb card i have tried a mates and its fine with it

[Hyperviper34]

Well, this is downright weird then. GentleGiant's comment regarding a possibly dodgy cards would make sense, but for the fact that I have no problem loading 32GB of music onto the card (formatted FAT32) via my PC and - again via my PC - I can browse the entire contents, play tracks from anywhere on the card, it works perfectly. (The cards are ADATA brand, Class 10 SDHC cards by the way, a brand I've used for many years in my daytime IT role). It's only when I put the card in the Bolero that it refuses to see more than 16GB of data.

Hyperviper34, can you give me a more detailed idea of your folder structure? How many top level folders? How many sub-folders in total? Do you have any sub-sub folders? How many files in total?

Yup -

Music - Richard or Ruth - Artist - Albums – Songs

Audio Books - Author - Book – Chapters

Pod cast - Author - Pod Cast

[Simon Cobb]

So, as promised, I grabbed a new Class 6 32GB SDHC card, formatted FAT32, and loaded it up with music (about 30GB). This made absolutely no difference :( . The 32GB card is recognized by the Bolero, but only the first 16GB of music is accessible. It's enough to drive you bonkers, because it takes about 90 minutes to load this amount of music onto a card, only to discover in about 2 minutes that it behaves no differently to the Class 10 cards.

If someone can categorically confirm that they have a 32GB card, fully loaded with 30GB+ of music and all of it is accessible from the Bolero, I'm going to report my head unit as faulty.

I seriously wish I'd gone with an MDI cable and something like a 250GB USB hard drive. I'd imagine retrofitting this solution would be an expensive exercise - even if possible at all?

[Evening Star]

Try partitioning it.

[Hyperviper34]

So, as promised, I grabbed a new Class 6 32GB SDHC card, formatted FAT32, and loaded it up with music (about 30GB). This made absolutely no difference :( . The 32GB card is recognized by the Bolero, but only the first 16GB of music is accessible. It's enough to drive you bonkers, because it takes about 90 minutes to load this amount of music onto a card, only to discover in about 2 minutes that it behaves no differently to the Class 10 cards.

If someone can categorically confirm that they have a 32GB card, fully loaded with 30GB+ of music and all of it is accessible from the Bolero, I'm going to report my head unit as faulty.

I seriously wish I'd gone with an MDI cable and something like a 250GB USB hard drive. I'd imagine retrofitting this solution would be an expensive exercise - even if possible at all?

Simon, I currently have around 24gb (all accessable) on my 32gb card so I will fill it up and try it then get back to you.

Rich

[GentleGiant]

I suppose it might be worth asking if there is a firmware update for the Bolero.

[Raglits]

I suppose it might be worth asking if there is a firmware update for the Bolero.

There is, but it depends on how good your dealer is as to whether you get it or not. I asked them to update the firmware on mine when the car went for it's service about 3 weeks ago after reading about the new firmware and was tld there wasn't one even after I bent the truth a little and told them I'd seen the new firmware in action.

Result? I still have a slow Bolero and a delaer has just had their last business from me (should mention, it was also the first business they got from me...)

[CEPi]

Try partitioning it.

I doub't Bolero can handle multipartitions, but worth a try doing 2 x 16Gb.

[Simon Cobb]

As I understand it, it's difficult, if not impossible. to partition an SD card in Windows. You might be able to do it with a 3rd-party tool, but even then, Windows wouldn't see both partitions, so there's no point in going down this route.

This is a brand new car, built in week 30, presumably with the latest Bolero firmware (although I have no idea how to establish the firmware version). To me it makes no sense that Hyperviper34's (Rich's) Bolero can see >16GB of data on his 32GB card, but mine can't. I'm running Windows 7 64-bit and copy data to the SD card via Windows Explorer. I've tried multiple ways of storing the data, specifically:

1. Creating a flat folder structure consisting of 160 albums, one per folder, in the root of the SD card, with no sub-folders

2. Creating a folder for each letter of the alphabet in the root and then putting all the "A" albums under A and so on (this gives 4 top level folders, A, B, C,D, with around 50 sub folders under each letter).

3. Using Danish Viking's tool to create a 9 folder deep structure with playlists in the root and all the actual music in the 9th level folder.

All methods hit the same 16GB limit. :( .

[CEPi]

Last hope, give it a try with a Class 2 SDCard?

[Simon Cobb]

Last hope, give it a try with a Class 2 SDCard?

Thanks for the thought, but I wonder if you could even buy a new 32GB Class 2 card? My normal supplier sells nothing below Class 6.

Rich, what class is your 32GB card?

[CEPi]

Of course you can:

http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Class-Flash-Memory-TS32GSDHC2/dp/B002PU9Q2G

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Standard-Flash-memory-Class/dp/B002OWHZMI

But if you can find it somehow on "borrowed" terms to try it for a test first

Edited 18 October, 2010 by CEPi

[eccleshill]

In the Bolero manual there is a line that says you are limited to 8 levels of directories and that has been mentioned already

BUT

It also says there is a limit of "1000º data"

does anyone know what is meant by "1000º data" and is this the problem here?

[Hyperviper34]

Thanks for the thought, but I wonder if you could even buy a new 32GB Class 2 card? My normal supplier sells nothing below Class 6.

Rich, what class is your 32GB card?

Class 4, the link to my purchase is on page 2.

[Hyperviper34]

I'm now up to 26GB of music files and all is fine, have noticed the speed from flipping from folder to folder on the Bolero has a slight pause now as I head towards the 30.?GB max the card is showing on my PC.

[Simon Cobb]

Thanks for letting me know. I'm at a loss to explain this. No matter what file/folder structure I tried, I could not see more than 16GB of music on the card in the Bolero (of course, it was all fully accessible when the card was accessed from my PC).

In the end, I've decided I've invested more than emough time in trying to figure this out and have opted to go down the 10 x 16GB card route rather than 5 x 32GB card route. It's less convenient, but at least it works for me. Neither option is ideal, and I wish I'd opted for the factory-fitted MDI cable, but hindsight is a wonderful thing :( .

[Hyperviper34]

Thanks for letting me know. I'm at a loss to explain this. No matter what file/folder structure I tried, I could not see more than 16GB of music on the card in the Bolero (of course, it was all fully accessible when the card was accessed from my PC).

In the end, I've decided I've invested more than emough time in trying to figure this out and have opted to go down the 10 x 16GB card route rather than 5 x 32GB card route. It's less convenient, but at least it works for me. Neither option is ideal, and I wish I'd opted for the factory-fitted MDI cable, but hindsight is a wonderful thing :( .

It is very strange and I have no suggestions as I've only tried the one 32gb card that I first purchased and don’t really fancy buying another 32gb make/model to try at £50 a go....... sorry Simon.

I'm impressed with your collection though if you need 10 x 16gb cards.

[Simon Cobb]

So, here's an interesting development to my 32GB SD card problem. As I've posted elsewhere on this forum, I was experiencing an occasional weird sound distortion problem where - completely randomly - sound was over-amplified, causing clipping and poor audio regardless of volume. Yesterday my dealer investigated the problem but found nothing, however as a precaution, they swapped out the Bolero head unit from another brand new car (on enquiry, it turned out to have come from a new Superb, with slightly different graphics for displaying the parking sensor function, but who cares?). Anyway, I have not heard the sound problem since the head unit was swapped, but also - guess what? My 32GB cards are now recognized in their entirety . So, whether the original Bolero head unit was a bit flakey or the one from the Superb has subtly different firmware allowing better high capacity card support, who knows, but it's a good result for me . My thanks go out to Miles Continental in Christchurch for being willing to swap the head unit out, even though they had not actually experienced the problem I was describing.

[jongreen]

I have had my brand new octavia SE Connect estate for a week now and just recently loaded all my music onto a Transcend 32GB SDHC card (class 10). I have experienced the same as most people in that not all of my music is shown in the list. My music is divided into folders by artist and subfolders for each album. I am only able to read artists beginning with "A" up to the letter 'O'. This is a total of 3347 music files in 573 folders (13.9GB in total size). I thought in my wizdom maybe dividing my collection into two subfolders for artists beginning "A-O" and "P-Z" might fix this. Unfortunately it would only show the folder "A-O". I have MDI but I thought I would buy an SD card instead as it was cheaper than buying the cable from Skoda. My SD card only cost £15 from Amazon. I may just buy an additional card to cover artists from O-Z but its a tad annoying. IF it says it takes 32gb cards then it should cope with the capacity of files it holds. The idea you can only listen to half your music on your card seems utterly ridiculous and should certainly be mentioned in the manual. My mobile phone will happily read 32gb of music from a micro SD card so I dont see why the same cant apply for a car stereo. I might speak to the dealer about the issue soon so will update if i do. I dont hold much hope though.

[TDIum]

Hello Jon

Which head unit do you have?