USB drive not detected

What capacity drives have you tried?  Maybe there is an upper limit for drive sizes?   That's all I can think of.  Perhaps try formatting with FAT16 and try again?

Not much to contribute, but I have only used one stick (FAT32) with my Superuniti, but it was fine.  I have read where several others have used larger drives and had them recognized with no problem. 

Thanks for the reply guys.  I've not had luck with two 2GB USB sticks, and a 32GB Sandisk Cruzer stick. But a 4GB stick works perfectly.  So I don't think it's a capacity issue. I've also formatted the sticks to FAT32 on both my iMac and a friend's Windows 8 machine, but that does not make a difference. All the USB sticks are recognized by Mac OSX and Windows machines.

I have not updated my firmware, still on 3.0 so perhaps updating to 3.16 might solve the issue.

A bit disappointing, as I bought the 32GB USB stick specifically to plug into the UnitiQute.

Just a thought: with the drives you plug in that do NOT work, does the little light come on on the stick or drive?  If not, maybe it is an issue with the port not powering some drives.

USB sticks/ports seem to be a bit like clothes, not all quite the same size. I had intermittent issues with HP sticks (16 and 32GB) but none with Sandisk Cruzer 32GB, nor Lexar Echo MX 128GB. With the HP sticks wiggling up, or down, usually sorted it. The Lexar sticks are definitely recommended. Roughly 200 albums easily accommodated on one stick.

Probably doesn't make a difference but I do remove any backup software on the stick before use. Don't really need it and saves space, but also negates any possible issues with accessing folder structure.

The firmware version doesn't affect the Qute capability with sticks.

Andy

Certainly the san cruz sticks have a hidden partition for security measures, and the right royally confuse macs half the time because of this hidden partition, no doubt confusing the uniti as well as it will appear as two partitions, the uniti will presumably look at the first partition which is that hidden one.

There are lots of sticks with this 'usefull' partition on, so try to pick ones without security applications.

Thanks for more suggestions. The Sandisk stick does light up when I plug it into the Qute.

I did remove the security software that was on the Sandisk when I first got it. However I'm not sure if there is a way to see and remove the hidden partition (if there is one)

Would I be able to find a utility on the Sandisk website that could delete a hidden partition..? I doubt it.

I will try a few more USB sticks this weekend, To see if there is a pattern to this, or just bad luck.

Hi DomTom

I am having all kinds of problems with 300Gb, 500Gb, 1Tb and 1.5 Tb portable hard drives (USB 2 and USB 3) from Western Digital, Toshiba and Sony - bottom line, my UnitiQute won't see the FLAC or ALAC files on any of them.  None of them work.  Some are Mac formatted, so are PC.  Variety of different partition sizes and types - I've tried all combinations (I think).

The Qute just says:

USB

<Empty>

The annoying thing is that I can take a cheap, 25 Riyal (5 quid) 4Gb San Disk "Cruzer" flash drive (flimsy plastic design), plug it in to the Qute and it recognizes the music on this right away ...

So the question is, why does the Qute have an apparent allergy to all my expensive portable hard drives?  Have you, or anyone else, solved this problem?  Do I need to use a specific format, brand and/or drivers?

Any help appreciated, thanks

Paul Nicholson (in Saudi)

Paul,

The usb port is only designed for usb sticks, not usb-connected hard drives. It isn't built to power, or read, a 'full weight' hard drive.  Effectively you need flash style memory - solid state, not disc based. 

This is in the manual, though perhaps not as clear as it might be given the wide variation in what people consider to be usb devices.

Andy

Hi,

We only support FAT (or FAT32) formatted mass storage devices on the USB ports of our Uniti or ND series products.

As a USB device must be indexed by the product itself then if you have large quantities of music on a storage device then this can slow down significantly. Also USB attached hard discs do tend to be electrically quite a noisy load and their current demands can often exceed the 500mA rating for standard USB so we do not recommend using USB attached hard discs on our products.

The USB ports are intended for iPhones, iPods, USB attached MP3 players and USB memory sticks.

If you have large quantities of music then it would be normal that these would be handled by a UPnP server and the UPnP client functionality of the Uniti or ND product used to access that music.

Best Regards

Phil

What he said. For info a Lexar 128GB memory stick 'loads' in about 5 seconds. 

Andy

Hi,

The indexing time is mostly a function of how many tracks are on the stick (rather than the actual size of the stick) and to a much lesser extent the read speed of the stick and the format of the files (as we have to parse the headers).

i.e. a 128Gb pendrive full of uncompressed FLACs will index much more quickly that the same pendrive full of 128kbit MP3's...

Cheers

Phil

Andy and Phil

Thanks very much for your replies - very helpful and much appreciated

paul

It's much harder to produce a list of USB sticks as the hardware used in the sticks can frequently change without any external indication whereas hard disc models are more easily identified.

If there are specific sticks that are not recognised then it would be useful to know about them here so that we can look into it.

Cheers

Phil