2010 rust bucket!

I had my head under the dashboard on my 2010 the other day because I'm going to add a portable hard drive to the second USB port on my SYNC system...figured it would be cool to have my ENTIRE CD collection with me at all times

Anyway, I was shocked at the amount of rust I saw on my relatively new and garaged 2010. Did that 50 cents Ford saved by not painting the interior metal really help the bottom line...or do they want it to rust out and the dash to fall apart as soon as it's out of warranty so that I will be forced to buy another new car?

stanmckinney said:

Why don't you put your CD collection on an iPad that you can play through the system yet take it with you if you like?

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Why?

I've got 16gb on my phone that I can take with me everywhere and/or stream through Bluetooth or USB to my SYNC system when I want.

I can buy a USB Hard Drive for $70 that will add 320gb of music, I don't have to use i-Tunes or any proprietary software, and I'll always have a HUGE music collection available for me to listen to in my car at all times...I don't think you can top that solution for $/gb.

jaybertx said:

A little bit OT but where is the second usb port in the Sync system?

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Behind the glove box, next to the first USB port.

If you open the glovebox and squeeze both sides, it will flex inward and the stops will clear allowing you to drop it down completely. Behind the glovebox there's a control box where the main USB cable is plugged in...and next to it there's an empty USB port (USB 2). You can plug whatever you want into the spare port and access it by saying "USB 2" instead of USB when you push the SYNC voice button.

Being directly behind the glovebox makes it convenient to plug in an external USB powered drive and keep it in the glovebox. The drive has to be formatted FAT32 for the SYNC system to use it. SYNC can index (for voice access) around 15,000-20,000 songs. If you exceed that you can still navigate the drive with menus but not voice.

-That's about all the info on it I know....I'll post more after a (hopefully) successful install!

PS: I believe the USB port on the SYNC is a mini-5pin "B" style female USB connector...not the standard size as is in the center console so you'll need a 'male mini B to female USB A' adapter.

Madguitarist78 said:

Who has more than 20,000 songs on a hard drive??

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-Pretty sure I won't!
IF every CD had 15 songs (which some have half that) you'd be looking at 1333 CDs! I think I have around 500. I'm not sure how many (or if all) of those will fit on a 250gb HD but I'm going to try and find out.

This is a reply someone on the SYNC forum got from Ford regarding the indexing limit:

"While there isn't an exact number for the maximum amount of songs that SYNC can handle, the capacity for SYNC is about 20,000 songs. This is assuming that the compression rate for these tracks would be at 128-Kbps. The higher the compression rate (192-Kbps, 320 Kbps) the smaller the number of tracks Sync can handle.

Just as with any other device, we cannot guarantee compatibility (because it is not on our device list). But as long as the device is formatted FAT32 and can be powered through USB (or you have some other way of powering up the device) it should work like any other mass storage device. NTFS does NOT work as a partition, it was thought to have, but was discovered not to work. Note the recommended maximum capacity for any media device is 100GB (again, not saying anything more will not work but that is the recommended maximum for reasonable SYNC performance).

SYNC has a limit of 15,000 grammar objects. After SYNC completes the indexing of songs, it begins creating the set of grammar objects or voice commands. Each song can have up to 4 commands associated with it, one each for: Genre, Artist, Album, and Track. Repeats are not counted, so if you have 100 songs by the Beatles, the Artist name "the Beatles" only counts as 1 toward that 15,000 total.

If the total number of voice commands would be over 15,000 at any time, the least specific group gets removed first. This is why your Track commands were disabled. Having 17,000 tracks would instantly put you over that limit, but grouping things by Genre, Artist, and Album gives less than 15,000 total. Depending on the diversity of your collection, reducing the track count to somewhere between 10,000 and 13,000 should restore the ability to use track commands."

jaybertx said:

That's interesting because I would venture to say that 95% of my MP3s are at least 192k, so I'm guessing dumping the full lib would bork the system. Ah well... do I REALLY need all 20k songs with me at all time? Prolly not......

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I have 20K+ songs and five that I'm not sick of listening to!