[MASHCT]

I finally got fed up with new music not showing up in iDrive after adding it to my USB stick, and the constantly-disappearing album art every time I turned off the car. The music on my USB drive is copied from my iTunes library. iTunes shows over 6500 songs; iDrive only shows 5300. Every time I added a new album to iTunes, I would add it the USB drive. But, as I found out from all of this trial & error, iDrive didn't always "see" newly added music.

I've seen a lot of posts about issues with music & album art in iDrive when using USB drives, so I know I am not alone in my frustration. And, my previous post about a fix didn't work in the long run.

BUT - after lots of searching in Windows & BMW forums, this time, I think I've found the right fix!

I can't tell you what step - if any - fixed these issues, but I can tell you after doing this, I can see my entire library & I no longer lose album art after turning off the car. (Where you have to reboot the head unit, change mode or just wait for songs to cycle for album art to come back.)

Here is everything I did. I don't know which step or steps fixed it all. But since doing this, I can now see my entire music library in iDrive - all 6.543 songs - and I've not lost album art once after shutting off the car.

I will be curious to know if anyone else experiencing the disappearing album art, or missing, newly added music resolves these issues with this fix.

First, I reformatted my USB drive using a 3rd party application that would format to FAT32 (iDrive only reads FAT32). Windows 10 does not have an option to format FAT32.

I think that step is optional. Just make sure your USB drive is FAT32 (not NTFS, or FATEX). If it's not, you'll need to reformat it to FAT32.

After reformatting, I copied my iTunes library back to the USB stick.

But, iDrive would only see either the first album or the last - even though my entire library was on the drive, and even after driving around or leaving the car on for a while.

Several posts in Windows forums said to look for particular Windows system files (extension .txt or .dat) and delete them. And also look for a system folder, "System Volume Information". If you see that folder - delete it.

BUT Windows will not allow you to delete it using Explorer. You have to do it from the CMD prompt.

Do the following:

1) Type CMD in the Windows search box & run as administrator.
2) Change the directory to whatever Windows shows as your USB stick (mine is F
3) Type the following after your drive label (e.g.: F:\) exactly as shown, no space before the "rmdir":

rmdir "system volume information" /s /q

4) Then eject the USB stick & remove it from your computer.

Sure enough, I deleted that folder & voila - my entire library showed up in iDrive (aftter iDrive read the USB stick) & I've not lost album art after shutting off the car since. And many of my CDs are so old there is no album art - I had to save an image from google or amazon, and add artwork via iTunes. iDrive even retains the art on those CDs now!

NOTE: every time you insert your USB stick into your computer, Windows will add that folder (you can edit the registry to prevent that) and you will have to delete it each time.

[Almaretto]

MP3Tag

Keep art to 500 x 500

[MASHCT]

Originally Posted by Almaretto

MP3Tag

Keep art to 500 x 500

yep, my album art is at most 500/500; a lot of it 350/350.

didn't matter. i would still lose album art on music from the usb drive when exiting the car & restarting.

plus, i had the missing 1000 or so songs. there was more going on here.

[Almaretto]

Originally Posted by MASHCT

yep, my album art is at most 500/500; a lot of it 350/350.

didn't matter. i would still lose album art on music from the usb drive when exiting the car & restarting.

plus, i had the missing 1000 or so songs. there was more going on here.

Not sure how exiting the car would affect. I can even pull drive and put back in and music will start where I left off.

Number of songs in directory can affect indexing.

[MASHCT]

Originally Posted by Almaretto

Not sure how exiting the car would affect. I can even pull drive and put back in and music will start where I left off.

Number of songs in directory can affect indexing.

Lots of folks post about this issue - this forum & other model's forums so it's out there. I found that any time I (and others) turn the car off (where I would see album art) and then restart, 50/50 chance the album art does not reappear.

Sometimes, the album art would appear when the very next song started; but not always. Sometimes, you can just change mode (FM, Sat, CD) and the art will reappear; other times that won't work, or you have to do it multiple times. Sometimes, you have to reboot the head unit to get it to reappear.

I am going to guess it had something to do with the USB formatting, and/or the existence of that system volume information directory (but can't say for sure).

What I can say for sure is, now that I have reformatted my USB drive and making sure I used FAT32, and deleted that SVI directory, my album art no longer disappears when I turn off/on the car. (I didn't do any resizing of art.)

[havinfun]

Originally Posted by MASHCT

I finally got fed up with new music not showing up in iDrive after adding it to my USB stick, and the constantly-disappearing album art every time I turned off the car. The music on my USB drive is copied from my iTunes library. iTunes shows over 6500 songs; iDrive only shows 5300. Every time I added a new album to iTunes, I would add it the USB drive. But, as I found out from all of this trial & error, iDrive didn't always "see" newly added music.

I've seen a lot of posts about issues with music & album art in iDrive when using USB drives, so I know I am not alone in my frustration. And, my previous post about a fix didn't work in the long run.

BUT - after lots of searching in Windows & BMW forums, this time, I think I've found the right fix!

I can't tell you what step - if any - fixed these issues, but I can tell you after doing this, I can see my entire library & I no longer lose album art after turning off the car. (Where you have to reboot the head unit, change mode or just wait for songs to cycle for album art to come back.)

Here is everything I did. I don't know which step or steps fixed it all. But since doing this, I can now see my entire music library in iDrive - all 6.543 songs - and I've not lost album art once after shutting off the car.

I will be curious to know if anyone else experiencing the disappearing album art, or missing, newly added music resolves these issues with this fix.

First, I reformatted my USB drive using a 3rd party application that would format to FAT32 (iDrive only reads FAT32). Windows 10 does not have an option to format FAT32.

I think that step is optional. Just make sure your USB drive is FAT32 (not NTFS, or FATEX). If it's not, you'll need to reformat it to FAT32.

After reformatting, I copied my iTunes library back to the USB stick.

But, iDrive would only see either the first album or the last - even though my entire library was on the drive, and even after driving around or leaving the car on for a while.

Several posts in Windows forums said to look for particular Windows system files (extension .txt or .dat) and delete them. And also look for a system folder, "System Volume Information". If you see that folder - delete it.

BUT Windows will not allow you to delete it using Explorer. You have to do it from the CMD prompt.

Do the following:

1) Type CMD in the Windows search box & run as administrator.
2) Change the directory to whatever Windows shows as your USB stick (mine is F
3) Type the following after your drive label (e.g.: F:\) exactly as shown, no space before the "rmdir":

rmdir "system volume information" /s /q

4) Then eject the USB stick & remove it from your computer.

Sure enough, I deleted that folder & voila - my entire library showed up in iDrive (aftter iDrive read the USB stick) & I've not lost album art after shutting off the car since. And many of my CDs are so old there is no album art - I had to save an image from google or amazon, and add artwork via iTunes. iDrive even retains the art on those CDs now!

NOTE: every time you insert your USB stick into your computer, Windows will add that folder (you can edit the registry to prevent that) and you will have to delete it each time.

I am also struggling with no USB artwork display (2018 M240i). I ripped one CD via itunes. When I copy that album to a thumb drive formatted as FAT32, nothing plays in the car. If I re-format the thumb drive as exFAT and then copy, the album plays correctly but no artwork is displayed. The music folder shows three .jpg files all of which are artwork but in different resolutions. The highest resolution is 200x194. If I delete the System Volume Information directory from the thumb drive, I can see it disappear, but playing the thumb drive still provides no artwork. When I plug the thumb drive back into my computer, a new System Volume Information directory is created for this album as you warned.

Any other suggestions on how to see the artwork??? By the way, I only have the 6" display screen, but I presume that should not prevent artwork from displaying and satelite radio artwork displays perfectly on this screen.

[Beartato]

Originally Posted by havinfun

I am also struggling with no USB artwork display (2018 M240i). I ripped one CD via itunes. When I copy that album to a thumb drive formatted as FAT32, nothing plays in the car. If I re-format the thumb drive as exFAT and then copy, the album plays correctly but no artwork is displayed. The music folder shows three .jpg files all of which are artwork but in different resolutions. The highest resolution is 200x194. If I delete the System Volume Information directory from the thumb drive, I can see it disappear, but playing the thumb drive still provides no artwork. When I plug the thumb drive back into my computer, a new System Volume Information directory is created for this album as you warned.

Any other suggestions on how to see the artwork??? By the way, I only have the 6" display screen, but I presume that should not prevent artwork from displaying and satelite radio artwork displays perfectly on this screen.

Use the previously mentioned mp3tag to embed the art into the file's metadata. I think the max resolution is 500x500, not sure on the file type but I stick to jpeg and it works fine with mine.

[crabu2]

Originally Posted by Beartato

Use the previously mentioned mp3tag to embed the art into the file's metadata. I think the max resolution is 500x500, not sure on the file type but I stick to jpeg and it works fine with mine.

Because I grab a lot of album art online, I've got some that's way larger than 500x500 and they display fine in iDrive.

[mrfattbill]

I do nothing with iTunes and I have ZERO issues with music and album art, lol, happy that the car plays FLAC files with no issues too.

Bill

[havinfun]

Originally Posted by havinfun

I am also struggling with no USB artwork display (2018 M240i). I ripped one CD via itunes. When I copy that album to a thumb drive formatted as FAT32, nothing plays in the car. If I re-format the thumb drive as exFAT and then copy, the album plays correctly but no artwork is displayed. The music folder shows three .jpg files all of which are artwork but in different resolutions. The highest resolution is 200x194. If I delete the System Volume Information directory from the thumb drive, I can see it disappear, but playing the thumb drive still provides no artwork. When I plug the thumb drive back into my computer, a new System Volume Information directory is created for this album as you warned.

Any other suggestions on how to see the artwork??? By the way, I only have the 6" display screen, but I presume that should not prevent artwork from displaying and satelite radio artwork displays perfectly on this screen.

Here is an update. I don't understand the technical rationale behind my solution but it seems to work. First, I downloaded a free copy of Stamp ID3 Tag Editor. I then opened a number of albums that I had ripped years ago with iTunes onto my thumb drive. Stamp ID3 shows the metadata associated with each song in the albums such as song title, artist, and any associated artwork. I discovered that about 2/3's of my thumb drive albums had NO metadata and these albums would NOT show up when I used idrive to search my albums by artist, genre, or album title. HOWEVER, they WOULD show up if I just did a browse search with idrive, and when the album opened, it would play correctly and the artist, album title and song titles would also appear. These album file folders were always missing the artwork .jpg files.

Next, I ripped my CDs using Windows Media Player (instead of iTunes). With the Media Player, ALL by albums had metadata associated with them (per a review via Stamp ID3), and also had 99% of the artwork as .jpg files. However, the artwork was not part of the metadata. Using Stamp ID3, I "stamped" the albums with the artwork .jpg file I selected from the album folder (also adjusted the genre titles to my preference), and SUCCESS! Now all my albums from my thumb drive appear and all have artwork. I cannot explain why iTunes gave inconsistent results, but Windows Media Player and Stamp ID3 worked well together to get all my albums displayed and all with nice artwork.

[Mike240i]

Originally Posted by havinfun

Here is an update. I don't understand the technical rationale behind my solution but it seems to work.

To use your phrasing, there needs to be a technical rationale as to why all of these methods get so many varied results. There should be a whitepaper from BMW with all of the requirements (format, size, resolution, tags, etc.) for reading music files and metadata on I-Drive.

And wherever that information is kept perhaps we can find out why I-Drive doesn't display the contents of the connected device when we re-enter our vehicles. It's bad enough we have to "confirm" for the nthteenth time, we also have to manually select the iPod that's just started to play where it left off previously. LOL

[Mike240i]

Originally Posted by MASHCT

I finally got fed up with new music not showing up in iDrive after adding it to my USB stick, and the constantly-disappearing album art every time I turned off the car.

Hi. Here's what I got working on I-Drive:
- 32 GB thumb drive
- FAT32 formatting
- 4,900 songs
- MP3 files with embedded album art
- Album art from 300 x 300 to 1500 x 1500
- No sub-folders and no non-MP3 files (no iTunes Library files)
- MP3 files copied using Windows File Manager (not iTunes)

It took about 15 minutes for I-Drive to recognize all MP3s so I couldn't see all the songs/artists immediately. After that initial read, everything was normal. All album art visible.

Using thumb drives, I-Drive will still display songs alphabetically on the dashboard scroll display even when I-Drive is set to random play. So you never see the next actual song on the scroll display. When playing from an iPod you see the next "random" song. Probably because iPods create a "random" playlist when you select shuffle play.

I hope this helps.

[TacosRule!]

Originally Posted by Mike240i

Hi. Here's what I got working on I-Drive:
- 32 GB thumb drive
- FAT32 formatting
- 4,900 songs
- MP3 files with embedded album art
- Album art from 300 x 300 to 1500 x 1500
- No sub-folders and no non-MP3 files (no iTunes Library files)
- MP3 files copied using Windows File Manager (not iTunes)

It took about 15 minutes for I-Drive to recognize all MP3s so I couldn't see all the songs/artists immediately. After that initial read, everything was normal. All album art visible.

Using thumb drives, I-Drive will still display songs alphabetically on the dashboard scroll display even when I-Drive is set to random play. So you never see the next actual song on the scroll display. When playing from an iPod you see the next "random" song. Probably because iPods create a "random" playlist when you select shuffle play.

I hope this helps.

Resurrecting. So no subfolders whatsoever? You just dumped all 4900 songs on the root folder of the usb drive?

[tbrown125]

Trying the System Volume Information delete trick I got accessed denied

F:\>rmdir "system volume information" /s /q
Access is denied.

So I did this in cygwin - a linux tool for windows

chmod -R 777 "System Volume Information"

And now the rmdir command worked. It was not enough to switch off the readonly flag in the properties of the drive in Windows Explorer

[mcmuney]

I did not have this issue on my 2017 and 2020 x1. When I got my 2024 x1, the old USB stick stopped working and I had to get a new one. Everything seemed fine at first, but on more than half of the songs the image art was wrong. They all displayed the same image.

I tried all the suggestions above, including deleting the "system volume folder" and reformatting the drive but nothing worked.

After much trial and error, I discover a pattern. The files that had this issue were missing album attributes. They were missing both Artist Name AND Album Name. As long as one of those values existed, I had no issues.

I used MP3Tag software to update all the missing Artist Name and vuallah... FIXED. No formatting or removing that folder necessary 🙂