Music to SD card for COMAND using a Mac problems

[Ari]

I have COMAND in my car (Mercedes) that has a slot for an SD card and for the last four years I've been happily putting music into files on an SD card with my PC which allows me to access them in the car via the COMAND unit.

I've recently updated to an iMac. All my music has been brought across to it, so wanting to use this from now on, I formatted a memory card and dragged a duplication of the car SD card onto it.

When I formatted it there were a couple of options. The default was ExFAT so I tried that. The COMAND unit wouldn't recognise the card at all. So I looked up the correct format in the COMAND instructions and it says to use FAT16. So I had another go, this time I formatted to MS-DOS (FAT) which was the only other FAT option.

This time it recognises something because it says 'Reading memory card' with the rotating circle thing, but gets no further.

Any suggestions?

[marshalla]

El Cap doesn't do FAT16 in DiskUtil any more - your card will be FAT32.

Try these instructions to format it from the command line : http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/226975/ho...

[Ari]

Thanks.

Can I just format it in the PC and then plug in in the Mac and use it, or doesn't it work that way?

[marshalla]

Ari said:

Thanks.

Can I just format it in the PC and then plug in in the Mac and use it, or doesn't it work that way?

Yes, that should work OK too.

[Ari]

Brilliant - I'll give it a go. Thanks!

[Ari]

Nope - doesn't work at all that way. Doesn't even recognise that there's a card in it...

[marshalla]

How big is the new card and how big is the old card ?

Did you force the PC to use FAT16 ?

[Ari]

Just reverted to formatting the card in the PC and loading the music direct from the PC and it still doesn't work!

Starting to think it's either a dodgy card, or I've buggered it up somewhere along the way...

[Ari]

marshalla said:

How big is the new card and how big is the old card ?

Did you force the PC to use FAT16 ?

Both 32GB. It was formatted to the default FAT32 which, to be fair, has always worked before (unless I never formatted the previous card before, I suppose that's possible, but unlikely as I think it came out of a camera initially).

[Ari]

Formatting options on the PC are NTFS, FAT 32 (default), exFAT.

[marshalla]

4GB's the official upper limit for FAT16. I think you may be hitting the limits of compatibility between technologies.

[Ari]

Weird, I've been using a 32GB SD card since I got the car four years ago and it's stuffed with music - so stuffed, in fact, that I decided to use this second card to put playlists on to free up the other for albums.

[Tinkshusband]

sounds like a knackered SD to me - ive had similar problems with usbs and microsd cards ( which are electronicly the same) in the past. try another card ( make sure its a decent brand ) and format it to fat32 and you will be on to a winner.

[duckwhistle]

Contact apple support, they are brilliant at sorting out this type of problem. I spent 2 hours on something similar today, gave up and contacted them, they phoned me within minutes and a nice Irish bloke talked me through the snag in no time.

[NugentS]

marshalla said:

4GB's the official upper limit for FAT16. I think you may be hitting the limits of compatibility between technologies.

4GB is the limit for a single file - not the whole unit

Sean

[marshalla]

NugentS said:

marshalla said:

4GB's the official upper limit for FAT16. I think you may be hitting the limits of compatibility between technologies.

4GB is the limit for a single file - not the whole unit

Sean

Nope. Partition size. Officially, it's 2Gb, but it can be stretched to 4.