Just wondering - I have a 2gb USB stick which I use for some tunes in the mongrel, but I couldn't turn down an offer of a 32Gb one from play.com for £13. Loaded it up quite high with a shedload of music thinking it would make the ultimate random play jukebox, but the head unit won't recognise it. I know its a bit slow, but is there a reason it won't recognise? Is there a limit of size a head unit can read? I have an Alpine CDE113BT fitted.

USB stick works fine in my laptop

Yeah most do have a limit on what they can take, though I'll be the first to admit I don't know why!?!?

Try formatting it as an 8GB drive and see if the car picks it up.

A lot of players will only "see" up to 2GB, the limit for the "SD" standard, beyond this is the "SDHC" (High Capacity), standard which works up to 32GB, and rumoured to work with some 64GB cards; and beyond this is the SDXC standard.

Try formatting it as a FAT (or FAT16), drive, rather than the default FAT32, and see if it works.

I have the 103BT unit in one of the cars. I found the speed of the stick could also be an issue. I had two 4GB sticks, (IIRC PNY Attache) one was a faster USB speed than the other. The slower one worked perfectly, the faster one jerked its way through the first couple of tracks, then packed up.

In the end (as I kept catching the stick) I got the iPhone/iPod cable and an old iPod, and ran it into the glove-box.

Says in the manual that the HU should supports FAT32, which is upto 2Tb, so 32Gb should be OK.

It states it can handle 100 folders, and 100 files per folder

Also states no single mp3 track should be longer than a hour playlength

You may need to do some cutting and pasting !

I suspect more folder with fewfiles in each will aid the units speed. I guess it'll try to read the m3u metadata from each file on opening a folder, hence sluggish performance.

As I put 27Gb of music on there, I think its more than 100 folders and quite a few "loose" MP3s in the root folder.

I shall try thinning it out gradually, and see if there is a limit when it becomes acceptable to the car.

Also states no single mp3 track should be longer than a hour playlength

I know of only one that is that long. Clocking in at 60:01: Amarok by Mike Oldfield.