USB Mass Storage Question

[schatzy62]

Background:

I have a car with a built in USB port in the OEM radio. With this USB port i can play music as long as the USB deivce (USB stick, Hard Drive etc) is formatted FAT32. Previously I had a Droid X and with that set to USB Mass Storage it worked just fine. It would scan the removable SD card and find the music and then I would have selections on the radio for Artist, Genre, Album, Song and Random. If i connected the Droid X to my Windows Computer i only had one drive added and that had the contents of the removable SD card.

Now move to the Droid 4. If I set it for USB Mass Storage and connect it to my computer i now get three (3) drives show up 1. Moto Cast as a CD Drive format 2. MOT as a FAT32 format (internal storage) and 3. Removable Disk as FAT32 format (removable SD Card) So now my car is not seeing the Removable SD drive it is seeing the Moto Cast Drive which is in CD format and will not recognize either of the other memory locations (internal or removable)

So my question is. Is there any way to make the removable SD card the first storage device seen by the USB port in my car?

 

[Dave Lister]

Have you tried changing the USB connection mode on the phone through the notifications when it's plugged in to your radio?

 

[schatzy62]

Have you tried changing the USB connection mode on the phone through the notifications when it's plugged in to your radio?

YES

the only other options would put the phone into MTP mode or PC mode which do not show the drives as FAT32 format which is a requirement of the system in the car. So they will not work. And I also did try them just to make sure.

After a long conversation with Motorola Tech support the short story is that there are software limitations in the Android OS that natively will not allow for drive sequence changes nor for shortcuts from locations other than the HOME Screen.

So it looks as if it might be a software application design time. Now if i just new anything about doing that it might be feasible. But I don't know how to do any Android Programming at this time so it is time to learn.

 

[brad92]

I'm in the same boat. I used my X to do that and I tried with my Razr My Kenwood head unit won't play music off my USB. It actually worked on GB, but on the ICS leak/ROMs, it won't. I ended up putting all my music on a flash drive for now...

I'd be interested in an app like this also

 

[born2trance]

i'm having similar issues, but when connecting my droid4 to my desktop computer. i know they want you to use motocast but it's not working out for me, mainly because it makes you connect to wifi instead of using your 4g to uploaad files. the phone shows up in windows explorer on my sisters laptop running xp, however when i connect it to my desktop running win7 ultimate with all updates, it says 'device not recognized'. no matter what i try i can't get this phone to connect to my computer. i even tried at one point to find a driver on motorola's site and manually install, but that didn't work either. any suggestions?

 

[schatzy62]

i'm having similar issues, but when connecting my droid4 to my desktop computer. i know they want you to use motocast but it's not working out for me, mainly because it makes you connect to wifi instead of using your 4g to uploaad files. the phone shows up in windows explorer on my sisters laptop running xp, however when i connect it to my desktop running win7 ultimate with all updates, it says 'device not recognized'. no matter what i try i can't get this phone to connect to my computer. i even tried at one point to find a driver on motorola's site and manually install, but that didn't work either. any suggestions?

Not sure if this will work for you but is worth a try i would say.

1. connect phone to computer
2. pull down notification bar and tap USB mode
3. Select Charge only
4. disconnect phone and reconnect phone
5. pull down notification bar and tap USB
6. Select USB Mass Storage
7. let the computer run thru the loading of the drivers
8. check to see if you can see the two storage areas as drives on your computer.

if you can not see them then leave the phone connected to the computer and shut down the computer.
restart the computer with the phone connected via USB and see if after it goes thru the whole boot sequence if you can see the drives.

I had to shut down the computer once with the phone connected to get mine to see the phone as a USB Mass Storage Device. Not sure why that worked for me but it did