Mini USB ports, can you use an old iPod?

[cheezemonkhai]

Frankly, that’s a horrible arrangement if that’s what they use in the mk 4 Octavia.

[nickcoll]

10 hours ago, cheezemonkhai said:

Frankly, that’s a horrible arrangement if that’s what they use in the mk 4 Octavia.

Not necessarily. You can get tiny little USB memory sticks. The only downside would be that you only have one free port because the other is occupied full-time by a memory stick.

[cheezemonkhai]

It’s just a cost saving too far/bodge with a cable or little thing sticking out wait to be damaged.

 

An SD card and slot costs pennies and means you can just chuck your music safely away in the car for when you might not want to take your phone.

 

USB c saves pennies, but means the car goes back to cables everywhere.

 

Hopefully there will be one hidden away in the glovebox.

[SimonCambridge]

I have a short cable, about four inches and a small usb stick. Just tucks away in the storage area under the dash. Not the most elegant solution but fairly discreet. Of course you can just run the music off your phone via Bluetooth too if you don't want a physical drive. 

[cheezemonkhai]

2 hours ago, SimonCambridge said:

I have a short cable, about four inches and a small usb stick. Just tucks away in the storage area under the dash. Not the most elegant solution but fairly discreet. Of course you can just run the music off your phone via Bluetooth too if you don't want a physical drive. 

Then have a cable to charge the phone...

 

Its just a big backwards step.

[SimonCambridge]

No, you are right. I had a six cd changer and the sd slot on my Oktava, nice and convinient and tidy

[cheezemonkhai]

18 hours ago, SimonCambridge said:

No, you are right. I had a six cd changer and the sd slot on my Oktava, nice and convinient and tidy

I can cope without the 6cd, and yes things move on but:

 

mk1 was a changer in boot

mk2 was a changer in dash or boot

mk2 FL was CD and SD

mk3 was single cd plus SD

mk3 FL was SD

 

mk4 = nothing, just use the USB.

 

In 2007 cars came with a USB in the dash/hidden in the glovebox for an iPod.

 

Hence my comment that its a backwards step, especially if not at least hidden away.

[nickcoll]

I entirely agree that it is a big shame to lose the SD card slot, but probably there were reliability problems and it simply became easier for VW/Skoda to simplify things down to just one connector and USB is the most flexible.

 

Here is a nice little device that is quite tiny but couples a USB-C connector with a USB-A for connecting it to computers which don't have USB-C for loading music onto it.

 

£18.99 for 64GB at present (cheaper I am sure in the future and there will be more devices like this on the market).

 

Edited 6 May, 2020 by nickcoll
Replace PDF with JPEG

[SimonCambridge]

You have to be very careful with big capacity drives like that. I've found 64gb ones don't work in the car. 32 seems to be the max. Something to do with the way the data is stored and logged or something very technical above my pay grade!

[PetrolDave]

11 minutes ago, SimonCambridge said:

You have to be very careful with big capacity drives like that. I've found 64gb ones don't work in the car. 32 seems to be the max. Something to do with the way the data is stored and logged or something very technical above my pay grade!

I'm using a 256GB SD card for my music with no problems - the key is to make sure the card is formatted FAT32 which Windows won't do for large SD cards (in their "wisdom" M$ have decided to make 32GB the maximum they will format to FAT32) , so I use a downloaded app which will format up to 8TB as FAT32...

[SimonCambridge]

Haha, there you go, well above my technical pay grade as I said! Thanks PD

[nickcoll]

59 minutes ago, PetrolDave said:

I'm using a 256GB SD card for my music with no problems - the key is to make sure the card is formatted FAT32 which Windows won't do for large SD cards (in their "wisdom" M$ have decided to make 32GB the maximum they will format to FAT32) , so I use a downloaded app which will format up to 8TB as FAT32...

 

Quite right. MS as always a law unto themselves. There is no real technical limitation that they limit FAT32 to 32GB except probably to encourage people to move over to NTFS (which is also supported by the head unit). It may also be that the operating system code is old and venerable (like a lot of Windows) and they don't want to risk meddling with it!

 

The major consideration is the sector size, which for small volumes up to approx 2TB is 0.5kB - that is even the smallest file will occupy 512 bytes as a minimum space on disk. FAT32 can go up to approx 16TB, using a 4kB sector size, but whether that is supported is unclear as the manual doesn't specify a maximum size for volumes.

Edited 6 May, 2020 by nickcoll

[cheezemonkhai]

I would imagine a nice compact and well proven (in so many devices) SD card is a lot more reliable than something hanging off a USB port and liable to be knocked.

We shall see, but I'm not impressed at all with VW.

[crisdevis]

Hi everyone! I am  not British but I am the happy owner of Octavia iV. USB-C type are the only ports available on this car. There is no SD or AUX or anything else.