Taz Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 I have windows 7 with Windows Media Player. I once recorded some music to thumb drives to play in the car but now can't seem to do it. I got a 120 gig thumb drive and want to use it to for listening to music in my car, but can't get it to record. I want to take music I have on external hard drive and put it on the thumb drive. I have spent many a night beating my head on the wall over this and that did not help. Anyone have any suggestions? John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajoker2c Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Check the properties when connected to laptop. You might have to reformat it to another format. If it's NTFS then format to FAT32 or exFat << not sure if that spelled correctly. I had same problem with video media player. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Huh? You're using analog terminology for digital file storage. If you have the music on an external hard drive already, just plug both the hard drive and the thumb drive into your computer and copy it from one device to the other. there's no need for windows media player or any sort of "recording" activity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Good Thad. That was my problem. Can't tell if he is saying the drive isn't being recognized at all or there is a permissions issue or what.If there is nothing on the drive now, best thing is to just format it. If it isn't showing so you can format it, click on "Start," right click on "computer," choose "Manage>Disk Management and see if it is shown. If it is, assign a drive letter by right clicking on it and choosing "Change drive letter and paths" or format it if it isn't showing as Healthy or is unallocated. Note those in my image here are all Healthy and show assigned drive letters.Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajoker2c Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 "Can't tell if he is saying the drive isn't being recognized at all" That's what I'm saying. I have put a thumbdrive formatted to NTFS, then loaded files onto drive then attached to video player and it did not read it at all. I reformatted that same drive to FAT32 and reinstalled the same files and the media player recognised it and played it . I guess i have to do my homework. I don't recognise any terms I used as "analog" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taz Posted January 15, 2014 Author Share Posted January 15, 2014 External hard drive is NTFS and thumbdrive is FAT. I wanted to put all Rock on 1 thumb drive but had no luck even when I transferred music back to computer and then tried to put it on thumb drive. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 You really have to give us more detail dude. what exactly are you doing, what exactly makes you think it's not working, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 You really have to give us more detail dude. what exactly are you doing, what exactly makes you think it's not working, etc. Because they won't transfer I'm assuming. Thad, is there a step by step he could go by? If Taz is as computer challenged as I am that's what he may need. BTW, Taz isn't a dude, more of a "sir" to you whippersnapper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mustang guy Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 I have some questions before I can help. What make model and year of a car are you trying to play music in? Is the stereo stock, or aftermarket, and if aftermarket, which stereo head unit do you have? How do you know the files are not transferring to the thumb drive? Did you try going into the thumbdrive from the computer to see if there were files there? Different car radios support different file formats. I think the standard is still MP3. If the files you are copying are other than what the stereo supports, then that may be the issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taz Posted January 15, 2014 Author Share Posted January 15, 2014 You really have to give us more detail dude. what exactly are you doing, what exactly makes you think it's not working, etc. Well I used to be able drag the thumb drive on to Windows media player and record to it instead of to CD. Now it won't drag and drop with this 120mb thumb drive. I tried copying directly from the external hard drive to the thumb drive and it did not work. I moved files to computer hard drive and tried to copy to thumb drive and still did not work. Banged head on wall and jumped up and down, no help. Margarita made with Mescal did not help either, but I did feel better. You can call me almost anything you want if you can help. There are a few exceptions such as references to my mother. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taz Posted January 15, 2014 Author Share Posted January 15, 2014 I have some questions before I can help. What make model and year of a car are you trying to play music in? Is the stereo stock, or aftermarket, and if aftermarket, which stereo head unit do you have? How do you know the files are not transferring to the thumb drive? Did you try going into the thumbdrive from the computer to see if there were files there? Different car radios support different file formats. I think the standard is still MP3. If the files you are copying are other than what the stereo supports, then that may be the issue. Aftermarket stereo, Alpine. I have other smaller thumb drives that I play all the time. I checked and nothing copied to the thumb drive, I deleted the password encryption that was on there but left the FAT format. The stereo supports FAT, MP3, AND WMA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 You can call me almost anything you want if you can help. Thad can help. He talked me through setting up a sub folder in I-tunes. It required a LOT of patience on his part. Mustang guy is pretty sharp too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mustang guy Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 You really have to give us more detail dude. what exactly are you doing, what exactly makes you think it's not working, etc. Well I used to be able drag the thumb drive on to Windows media player and record to it instead of to CD. Now it won't drag and drop with this 120mb thumb drive. I tried copying directly from the external hard drive to the thumb drive and it did not work. I moved files to computer hard drive and tried to copy to thumb drive and still did not work. Banged head on wall and jumped up and down, no help. Margarita made with Mescal did not help either, but I did feel better. You can call me almost anything you want if you can help. There are a few exceptions such as references to my mother. John Copying the files directly should have worked if you are using Windows Explorer and not Windows Media Player. Also, there is a possibility the thumb drive has become write protected. It could also be a bad thumb drive or bad USB port on the computer. Are you copying from Windows File Explorer? Try opening the root folder of the thumb drive and creating a folder there. Open the thumb drive in Windows Explorer. Click File, then new, then folder. Name the folder something like music. If that works, then you are writing to the thumb drive and I want you to now copy all of the music to that "music" directory. FAT formatting supports no more than 512 entries in the root directory. That includes files and folders. Perhaps the copy you were attempting had more files than that, and the whole thing cancelled when the 513th file failed. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 Its also possible that your thumb drive is 128MB and not 128GB so your file transfer is cancelling before it even starts since you likely don't have enough space for the bulk file transfer. additional detail will help. screenshots are super nice to have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 You really have to give us more detail dude. what exactly are you doing, what exactly makes you think it's not working, etc. Well I used to be able drag the thumb drive on to Windows media player and record to it instead of to CD. Now it won't drag and drop with this 120mb thumb drive. I tried copying directly from the external hard drive to the thumb drive and it did not work. I moved files to computer hard drive and tried to copy to thumb drive and still did not work. Banged head on wall and jumped up and down, no help. Margarita made with Mescal did not help either, but I did feel better. You can call me almost anything you want if you can help. There are a few exceptions such as references to my mother. John Try copying just one music file and report back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taz Posted January 16, 2014 Author Share Posted January 16, 2014 You really have to give us more detail dude. what exactly are you doing, what exactly makes you think it's not working, etc. Well I used to be able drag the thumb drive on to Windows media player and record to it instead of to CD. Now it won't drag and drop with this 120mb thumb drive. I tried copying directly from the external hard drive to the thumb drive and it did not work. I moved files to computer hard drive and tried to copy to thumb drive and still did not work. Banged head on wall and jumped up and down, no help. Margarita made with Mescal did not help either, but I did feel better. You can call me almost anything you want if you can help. There are a few exceptions such as references to my mother. John Copying the files directly should have worked if you are using Windows Explorer and not Windows Media Player. Also, there is a possibility the thumb drive has become write protected. It could also be a bad thumb drive or bad USB port on the computer. Are you copying from Windows File Explorer? Try opening the root folder of the thumb drive and creating a folder there. Open the thumb drive in Windows Explorer. Click File, then new, then folder. Name the folder something like music. If that works, then you are writing to the thumb drive and I want you to now copy all of the music to that "music" directory. FAT formatting supports no more than 512 entries in the root directory. That includes files and folders. Perhaps the copy you were attempting had more files than that, and the whole thing cancelled when the 513th file failed. Seems like something over 300 hours of music so possibly I am overloading the drive. I'll try to put just one album and see what happens Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taz Posted January 16, 2014 Author Share Posted January 16, 2014 Tried just one album from Windows Explorer to thumb drive and it did not work. Does each song count as one of the total files allowed. If so then I will be over the limit trying to put all that I want on thumb drive. Just printed up mustang guy's advice and will try that. If that don't work I'm off to bed for tonight. I see you guys have called it a night. Thanks for the attempts to help! John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mustang guy Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 One file is one file. I am only talking about the root directory of the thumbdrive. There is no such limitation in subdirectories. Make a subdirectory on the thumbdrive and try copying the files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 Try another thumb drive to see if the issue remains? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taz Posted January 17, 2014 Author Share Posted January 17, 2014 One file is one file. I am only talking about the root directory of the thumbdrive. There is no such limitation in subdirectories. Make a subdirectory on the thumbdrive and try copying the files. Tried it with no success. It said it is formatted with exFAT Try another thumb drive to see if the issue remains? I will when this one is through reformatting, It has been running for about 6 hours now and looks like another 6+ to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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