USB Hard Drive not detected in 2011 M37

[drewsky]

Hi again, guys--
As I've mentioned in another thread, I just bought a 2011 M37 last Tuesday, and immediately dropped it off at the dealership to have a few warranty items done such as updating the nav software.

While the car was in the shop over the weekend, I was given a 2011 G37 loaner to drive around in, so this past Sunday I drove to my local computer shop and bought a 500gb external USB drive to use as a jukebox for all my tunes. Took it out of the box in the parking lot and plugged it in to make sure it would work, and sure enough it worked great -- I loaded 25 gigs of music in that drive and I was able to browse and play all of it. Audio nirvana!!

I assumed, of course, that if it worked in a 2011 G37 that it would certainly also work on my M37 of the same year. Bad assumption. Picked my car back up today and it does not recognize the drive and only says "Check USB or iPod"! WTF??

[GQM45s]

I wonder if the Nav Update may have updated something in the system's firmware, where it would not detect the hard drive that large

[drewsky]

That crossed my mind, but I can't be sure since I never tried the drive with the nav system prior to the upgrade. Also, last night I tried another smaller external 2.5-in USB drive (80GB) and still no go.

My next step is to swing by the dealership and ask to try that drive in other 2011 M37's in the lot to see if it consistently fails. If it works on another car, I'm going to drop it off with them to get it "fixed".

[insanex1]

try and format the drive as fat32 instead of ntfs and see if it works.

[drewsky]

Thanks for the tip, but unfortunately all drives tested had already been formatted with FAT32 all along and like I mentioned earlier, worked as expected in a 2011 G37. If it makes a difference, the G37 did not have nav, while my 2011 M37 does have nav, and won't recognize the drive.

Incidentally, I also thought maybe the drive needed more power that that single USB port on the M37 could provide, so I also tried a USB cable with dual USB ends (see pic below) and plugged the 2nd end on a USB adapter plugged into the cigarette lighter right next to the USB port in the center console. Still no bueno.

[GQM45s]

try using like an 8 gb USB flash drive and see if it reads, I am curious if there was some firmware update on that Nav you got that it can only read to a certain amount.

[drewsky]

I only had 2GB USB flash drives at home and those still worked fine, so I decided to go swing by my local computer store again today, this time buying 1 64GB flash drive and 1 128GB flash drive, both of which worked just fine in my M...

I still plan to take that 500GB hard drive by my dealership tomorrow to test on a different M37 to see if it's a normal issue tho. I'll post my findings here when I know more.

[stm37s]

I had the same problem with my external hardrive, I took my ride to my local Infinity dealership in Duluth Georgia and they infomed me that only the iphone hardrive will work in my m37, he said they were built or programed for them only and that the 2012, 2013 model years wold any all models. Go figure, you would think a car of this Quality would be able to be plug and play, guess not. Hope this helps man

[drewsky]

So after spending some time at my local Infiniti dealership this afternoon, the verdict is in, and it's disheartening.

I tested the USB hard drive I had bought and successfully tested in a 2011 G37 in the following cars today:

(3) 2011 M37, including my own
(1) 2012 M37
(1) 2013 M37

and the drive DID NOT WORK IN ANY OF THEM!

So obviously, the USB port on the G37 is compatible with a wider array of USB devices than its bigger, more expensive brother. C'mon, Infiniti, WTF???

[insanex1]

Did they all have NAVI? Maybe the cars with NAVI don't work but cars without NAVI work with larger hard drives? They probably have different software and hardware.

[stm37s]

So after spending some time at my local Infiniti dealership this afternoon, the verdict is in, and it's disheartening.

I tested the USB hard drive I had bought and successfully tested in a 2011 G37 in the following cars today:

(3) 2011 M37, including my own
(1) 2012 M37
(1) 2013 M37

and the drive DID NOT WORK IN ANY OF THEM!

So obviously, the USB port on the G37 is compatible with a wider array of USB devices than its bigger, more expensive brother. C'mon, Infiniti, WTF???

Well, I guess the local Infinity dealership is full of !!!!!, again, for a car to cost this amount of cheddar, you would think they would have made it with a better universal port oh well, on to the next thing