Organizing MP3 Files on Sandisk Cruzer Fit USB Flash Drive

[WartHog]

Bought my brother an Alpine UTE-73BT Digital Media Receiver for his truck and would like to put a bunch of Classic Rock for him on a USB Flash Drive. Have never used a flash drive for this so could use some advice on the best way to organize the files on the drive, etc.

[oddball]

My Mazda Miata and Toyota Sienna both have USB ports and can play flashdrives. Not sure about my Sienna, but the Miata will play drives up to 64 gigs max, but I have heard some others have experienced playback with larger ones. The drive needs to be formatted in Fat32; I tried to use a drive formatted in exFat and it did not work in my Miata, seems Fat32 is universal enough.

I archive albums in various different computers, using AAC files in my Apple Macs and FLAC files in my main PC. Unfortunately, my cars do not support the FLAC files. My albums are song files and a cover image contained in a folder. I label the folders by artist and album title "Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street", and the songs "01 Rocks Off".

I then drag and copy folders onto my flashdrive. When I plug them into my cars, the info screen will show artist name, album and name of song. Both cars also have an option to choose folders by artist in alphabetical order. I also find that the fuller the drives are, the slower the artist lists come up on the info screen in the car.

Good luck. It is a nice way of having my own music on the road.

[EM2]

My truck has a USB and I plug in a thumb drive with music, plays it fine, but it will only play one album or music group at a time, cannot get it to shuffle the entire drive.
I would rather have it shuffle the entire drive.

[WartHog]

My truck has a USB and I plug in a thumb drive with music, plays it fine, but it will only play one album or music group at a time, cannot get it to shuffle the entire drive.
I would rather have it shuffle the entire drive.

Unfortunately, that also seems to be the case with using a thumb/flash drive with this Alpine DMR. Looks like it's back to the old ipod classic for true shuffle play - Bummer...