Russ1974

Hi all,

Had my LCI 535d for 4 days now and love it, can't stop driving it. One issue though, with the USB option. I find that every now and then, approx every half an hour or so (but it's not time-able, it is intermittent), the USB stick "stops". In mid song, it will drop back to FM radio and if I try and select USB, the option is greyed out. I open the centre console, look at the little LED on the USB stick, and it's not lit ! So, pull out the stick, push it back in, the light comes back on, I select USB again, and it starts playing - from the same song and same place it stopped... !

My wife has an E70 and doesnt have this issue. We both have identical memory sticks.

I know some people have had problems with hard-drives which power down ... I wonder if my 16Gb Memory Stick is drawing too much power somehow?? I've got a 4Gb "old" stick lying around somewhere, I will put that one in the car and run it for a couple of days and see if it does the same thing. I was just wondering, has anybody else experienced the same thing?

I'd like to leave this in the E60 forum if possible please moderators, as I believe it's specific to LCI E60 only.

yayankee

The latest SI B61 14 03 September 2007; refers to the problem. Review the "Sticky". Set up an appointment with service to have software installed.

Russ1974

Thanks .. but I'm not sure that is the same issue. It states iPod rather than USB, not sure if there is a difference in the hardware/software relating to that. Also, I took delivery of my car 5 days ago, it was built after that service bulletin was issued ... I'd have thought it would leave the factory with the latest software?

I've been running a different memory stick, 4Gb, for the last few hours and it hasn't experienced the problem (yet). If it continues to be ok, then it looks like the other memory stick is drawing too much power, which is what seems to be happening to some of the people running hard-drives. I am going to install a small powered USB hub inbetween my device and the car and see if that helps, and see if it will let me run a big drive.

If the problem happens again on this current memory stick, then it does indeed look like my car left the factory without the latest software, and I'll get it booked in. My only worry is that other than the intermittent USB, everything is 100% perfect, so I'm a little reluctant to have them start messing with it, if you know what I mean !!

pitshanger

This won't help but...

Even low power 2.5" hard drives will be drawing at least 300mA in read operation, and up to 1A as they spin up.
I haven't experienced any dropouts yet with such a hard drive.

For comparison, a Corsair Voyager 16GB stick draws 60mA in read operation.

Russ1974

Ok - thanks It might just be a dodgy memory stick or corrupt files or something. I took my trust 4Gb stick and formatted it and recopied all of the MP3s. Still working so far. I'll run it for a few more days, if it doesn't fail, I'll assume it's the 16Gb Corsair.

Thanks again for the mA readings, very useful.

bardel

Not had any trouble with my USB stick, but it's only a measly 512MB stick. Haven't used it a great deal to be honest, but it's been on for at least an hour or so I think.

Interesting reading about the current draw, I'd already assumed that a memory stick can't really be drawing much current no matter the size.

Pitshanger, what drive / caddy are you using and is it working reliably? I had a spare 2.5" drive lying around but that won't spin up in the car.

Cheers

Barry

Russ1974

I've done quite a bit of travelling today, probably 150 miles in total. Used 4Gb USB stick constantly and not once has it jumped or failed - looks like it is a faulty 16Gb stick rather than car problems which is great news. If I do experience any glitches with the 4Gb I will post here for future readers - but if there are no further fault reports from me in this thread then it means it was the stick and not the car. Could be useful for somebody to stumble across this thread in the future with the same fault ... change your USB stick before taking your car in to the garage.

pitshanger

I'm using a Fujitsu HandyDrive 120GB. Inside is a Fujitsu 120GB 4200rpm drive MHV2120AT, which is one of the lowest power 2.5" drives available, ideal for the car. A possible negative is that, if you plan to use it for other things, it has slow read/write performance for very small files compared to other drives. So backing up a laptop might be slow, but when writing MP3s there isn't such a big difference.

The drive is currently full - 14118 tracks. It has been working fine for the last 2 weeks, apart from an iDrive glitch on day 1 probably unrelated to the drive (the drive kept playing while iDrive 'rebooted').

The current sourcing capability of the USB socket is obviously lower than typical PCs. I suspect the problems with not spinning up are related to the inital current drawn as the drive starts. The device might be spinning up/down even when the car is running, so intermittent failures might be seen. In any case a slow drive should be more reliable. All wild speculation of course !

Russ1974

I've just ordered one ... I'll report back on reliability & performance. UK price around ?60 inc. I paid ?85 for my 16Gb memory stick so this is great... !!

Russ1974

Just a quick update. Got my 120Gb Fujitsu handydrive this morning. It doesn't work for me. It plays songs, but cuts out and stops - same as my 16Gb memory stick. My 4Gb stick continues to work with no problem, so I'll just stick with that!