BMW 3-Series and 4-Series Forum (F30 / F32) | F30POST - View Single Post - USB Flash Drive

nv335 · 11-17-2015, 08:36 PM

Encouraged by several, successful "big" reports by other members, I decided to go a bit bigger: 480GB SSD Drive, with about 320Gb content on it.

The hardware worked well, got recognized, played music, etc. BUT: I did encounter a strange behavior with folders "randomly disappearing."
The behavior was not consistent so I decided to test more methodically.

Wiped the drive clean and filled it with "fake" music. I picked a 1Mb song and replicated it under a carefully-designed folder structure, which proves, likely, that the BMW song indexer has a 16 bit limit (65,536 songs).

The structure I created had:
16 Genres in the root (4 bits)
64 Artists under each Genre (6 bits)
8 Albums under each Artist (3 bits)
16 Songs under each Album (4 bits)

Total: 17 bits, 131,072 songs, occupying, as expected, about 120GB on the drive.

Each song has a unique file name and a corresponding ID3 tag specifying its "location." A file would look like "10.G06.AR18.AL06.mp3"

I connected the drive with the test data and something very interesting happened: for the first few minutes, while the indexer was active, I couldn't browse by artist/album, etc. - only through folders. And I was able to browse the ENTIRE tree and play it. I saw all the Genres/Artists/Album, etc.

BUT, once the indexer finished (took a few minutes there...) several folders disappeared. I could only see some of the Genres, some of the Artists under them and some of the Albums under each (visible) artist.

I couldn't seem to find any consistent "pattern" to which folders remained and which disappeared.

I wonder if any other people noticed a similar behavior with larger collections.
I am going to repeat this experiment with half of the collection removed (16 bits, 65536 songs). I will report any findings once I have them.

For the record, the car is a 2014 F30, with MN-003.001.002 / TN-003.001.002 (which appears to be the latest version as of today).

Even if I'm right and there is indeed an indexer limit, I wonder why such a limit prevents simple folder browsing, as such activity requires no index.

11-17-2015, 08:36 PM	#45
nv335 New Member 0 Rep 5 Posts Drives: 2014 335i Join Date: Nov 2015 Location: Mountain View, CA iTrader: (0)	Hit a new limit: 16 bit limit on number of songs. Encouraged by several, successful "big" reports by other members, I decided to go a bit bigger: 480GB SSD Drive, with about 320Gb content on it. The hardware worked well, got recognized, played music, etc. BUT: I did encounter a strange behavior with folders "randomly disappearing." The behavior was not consistent so I decided to test more methodically. Wiped the drive clean and filled it with "fake" music. I picked a 1Mb song and replicated it under a carefully-designed folder structure, which proves, likely, that the BMW song indexer has a 16 bit limit (65,536 songs). The structure I created had: 16 Genres in the root (4 bits) 64 Artists under each Genre (6 bits) 8 Albums under each Artist (3 bits) 16 Songs under each Album (4 bits) Total: 17 bits, 131,072 songs, occupying, as expected, about 120GB on the drive. Each song has a unique file name and a corresponding ID3 tag specifying its "location." A file would look like "10.G06.AR18.AL06.mp3" I connected the drive with the test data and something very interesting happened: for the first few minutes, while the indexer was active, I couldn't browse by artist/album, etc. - only through folders. And I was able to browse the ENTIRE tree and play it. I saw all the Genres/Artists/Album, etc. BUT, once the indexer finished (took a few minutes there...) several folders disappeared. I could only see some of the Genres, some of the Artists under them and some of the Albums under each (visible) artist. I couldn't seem to find any consistent "pattern" to which folders remained and which disappeared. I wonder if any other people noticed a similar behavior with larger collections. I am going to repeat this experiment with half of the collection removed (16 bits, 65536 songs). I will report any findings once I have them. For the record, the car is a 2014 F30, with MN-003.001.002 / TN-003.001.002 (which appears to be the latest version as of today). Even if I'm right and there is indeed an indexer limit, I wonder why such a limit prevents simple folder browsing, as such activity requires no index.
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