F10 M5 forgets previously played track and indexed music

[M5Tom]

Hi all,

On Friday I bought my dream car, a lovely 2014 M5. It’s awesome.

However, the car has a slightly annoying issue where it is forgetting the last MP3 being played, as well as all of its indexed music. It does not do this if you briefly turn the vehicle off, but overnight or after a couple of hours it will do it.
When I say it ‘forgets’ the music index, I mean that you can only search folders initially, until it reindexes all the music and playlists a few minutes later.

I previously owned a 2015 m135i which played the same usb stick and music collection just fine. There are about 12,000 files on the stick.

I have researched the issue and struggled to find identical behaviour being reported. The best I could find was someone whose car would not complete the indexing process. I learned that the car will remember 4 different USB sticks and 36,000 tracks (I think, maybe it was more). I developed a theory that perhaps a previous owner has inserted a few USB sticks into my car, which have taken the total number of indexed file over the maximum the car can handle and this is the cause of the issues with it ‘forgetting’ last position etc. of mine.

So I decided to try to reset it…
I grabbed three spare USB sticks (all different models) and loaded a single different MP3 file on each, then had the car index each of these one by one. I then reinserted my main USB stick (again a different model).

This should mean all four USB sticks registered with the car are now mine and any previous owners’ USB sticks are now forgotten. Crucially, it should also mean the grand total of indexed files is 12,000 plus the 3 individual ones, well below the technical limit.

Did this fix my issue? Of course not!
I’d be really grateful for any other suggestions from you guys.

[M5_Raz]

Congrats on the car!

You could remove the battery connection and leave it unplugged for a few hours. That should reset everything. Make sure you block the trunk mechanism with a towel so it doesn't close.

[M5Tom]

Originally Posted by M5_Raz

Congrats on the car!

You could remove the battery connection and leave it unplugged for a few hours. That should reset everything. Make sure you block the trunk mechanism with a towel so it doesn't close.

Can’t hurt. I will try that and report back. Thanks.

[M5Tom]

Battery cut didn’t sort it. However after much experimentation, I have sorted it, so sharing for others here.

Solution was to format the USB stick as NTFS rather than Fat32. I also experimented with exFat which didn’t sort it.
My 2014 F10 M5 now has no trouble remembering exactly which track was last playing and resumes mid-track.

Some other info;

1. My other half has a 2014 f30 320d with basic nav and the strange thing is that I worked out hers only supports FAT32. NTFS and exFAT lead to an ‘unsupported’ message.

2. My old 2015 m135i also had basic nav and seemed to prefer FAT32.

3. I tried updating the car’s software and while it needed and update, it did not fix the issue.

4. While the F10 will read any file system, only NTFS has no issues and reads nice and quick. FAT32 would read quickly but last played was forgotten. exFAT was noticeably slow to read and last played was forgotten.

5. See my first post about clearing the memory/cache of the past 4 USB sticks. It didn’t sort my issue.

In summary, I advise that if your F-model BMW has basic sat nav, use FAT32 format. If you have widescreen sat nav (professional?) then use NTFS.

[TLK]

Great, you figured it out pretty well on your own. I had a write up I found somewhere years ago that went into some details about this.

The 2014+ M5 has the NBT (Next Best Thing) unit. It will track 4 USB devices, based on their USB vendor-id/product-id, and the mileage (km actually) when it was first inserted. The mileage is how it dates them and decides which is the one to replace when a new device is connected. The USB vendor-id/product-id key means that if you were to use multiple USB sticks of the same model, the NBT doesn't tell them apart and thinks they are the same. Beware. In ISTA, these 4 device slots can be seen when looking at the Combox section supposedly (I never tried it).

Some anecdotes are that the max for all devices is around 36000 files, with somewhat less than that (perhaps 26000 files depending on length of file names used) on any one device. Also NTFS is the best choice to format your media with. Not using NTFS apparently can result in not getting your device or files "memorized".

I use a slim SSD in my car so not only thumb drives are supported.