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      02-28-2011, 03:31 AM   #1
Bimmer65
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Supported USB storage devices...

Has anyone tried to use USB storage devices in your new X3. Officially only USB thumb drive is supported (plus mp3 players), and with mp3 files maximum bitrate 256 kbps. How large capacity of the thumbdrive is supported? Has anyone tried a 2.5" external HDD, and if so, which capacity (and make)? Anyone tried higher bitrate than 256 kbps? Please post your experience in this thread.

Last edited by Bimmer65; 02-28-2011 at 06:48 AM.. Reason: space missing
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      02-28-2011, 04:30 AM   #2
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I am in the process of putting some music together at 256kbps onto a USB Seagate 500 external drive. I also have a USB stick to try. Will post some results later.

Re. >256, not sure but will try an album at a higher bitrate to see what happens.

Playing direct from an iPod Nano works well and I like the BMW picture that appears on the iPod when connected
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      02-28-2011, 07:59 AM   #3
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My 2011 Z4 supports >256k bitrate mp3's (320k to be exact) so I would expect my 2011 X3 to handle >256k as well. As for external USB drives, TECHNICALLY the owner's manual says not to plug these in, but I did try it on my Z and it worked fine. I used a 500g Western Digital brand.

I believe the largest supported thumb drive is 16gig.

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      02-28-2011, 03:21 PM   #4
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I posted on this a few weeks ago. I was able to play music on a WD MyPassport drive with a capacity of 320GB. The music was mostly MP3 at 320Kbit/sec and was organised in folders for artist then album. I had several GB of music on the drive and whilst it took a short while to index playing was seamless. The iDrive interface is rudimentary - no artwork etc even though many of the folders contained thumbnail images.
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      02-28-2011, 03:32 PM   #5
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I was reading on another site, that it's not recommended to put in any other USB Thumdrive (i.e. - one you can pick up from Best Buy/Office Max), other than the BMW approved one. Is that true?

It got me thinking, that's just a gimmick to sell their BMW USB Stick but I wanted to be asb sure. Thoughts?
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      02-28-2011, 03:37 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by flash3 View Post
I was reading on another site, that it's not recommended to put in any other USB Thumdrive (i.e. - one you can pick up from Best Buy/Office Max), other than the BMW approved one. Is that true?

It got me thinking, that's just a gimmick to sell their BMW USB Stick but I wanted to be asb sure. Thoughts?
That's complete nonsense.
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      02-28-2011, 03:40 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TuffLittleUnit View Post
I posted on this a few weeks ago. I was able to play music on a WD MyPassport drive with a capacity of 320GB. The music was mostly MP3 at 320Kbit/sec and was organised in folders for artist then album. I had several GB of music on the drive and whilst it took a short while to index playing was seamless. The iDrive interface is rudimentary - no artwork etc even though many of the folders contained thumbnail images.
A colleague has the new 5 series and USB sticks with MP3 at 320kbps work perfectly. He has used 16 and 32GB sticks.
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      02-28-2011, 04:26 PM   #8
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As other people have posted you can both play direct and transfer music files from both a USB stick and USB hard drive. I did all 4 this evening at 256 and 320Kbps. All worked very well but when transferring it seems to be all or nothing so be careful
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      02-28-2011, 07:44 PM   #9
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Tuff, how long do you estimate it took to index? Did it matter whether the car was on or off when you first plugged in the drive?
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      03-01-2011, 03:07 PM   #10
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It felt like minutes but was probably tens of seconds ... that apprehension when you don't quite know if something is going to work or not seems to stretch time.

My recollection is that I had the electrics on but the engine itself was off because I was just messing about on my driveway and I'd specifically gone in the car to tinker with stuff. This was the second week of Jan and at the grand old age of 40 I find things harder to remember

One other thing I should mention ... the car was pretty well loaded with options and it definitely had the professional media package.
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      03-01-2011, 03:49 PM   #11
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I connected a USB drive with 20GB of music on it and it indexed the lot after about 1-2 minutes. I'm not sure if it will "remember" the index so that this is one-off per connection or whether it has to re-index every time. Will have a play soon as I need to sort out some tunes.
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      03-01-2011, 03:50 PM   #12
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Obviously if you transfer music files to the internal HDD there is only a one-off indexing
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      03-03-2011, 02:56 AM   #13
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I think the indexing may actually take longer to complete than I thought. 10 mins+ for 7GB of music but most importantly you can connect up to 4 USB devices and the indices are saved for up to 25,000 tracks (I think). E.g. Plug in USB device A, wait for indexing to complete. Listen to music. Switch car on and off. Listen some more. Unplug A and plug in USB device B. Wait for indexing to complete. Now switch back to A, no wait for re-indexing. A's index is "remembered".
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      03-05-2011, 04:04 AM   #14
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Whats available space on internal HDD, and am I right to presume this space is shared for Music and Navigation data (eg.POI etc...)?
I wonder if upgradeable.

Can you drop AVI's on the internal HDD, and play on screen?
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      03-05-2011, 04:48 AM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by VikingOne View Post
Whats available space on internal HDD, and am I right to presume this space is shared for Music and Navigation data (eg.POI etc...)?
I wonder if upgradeable.

Can you drop AVI's on the internal HDD, and play on screen?
60GB altogether, 12GB allocated for music. It gives you % used/remaining for music. Poor considering how cheap 600GB HDDs are now

avi files: no from HDD as it only imports music files and ignores other files on the device (except album artwork). Not 100% sure on this though, or if it's possible direct from the device. Unlikely I would say
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