Anyone familiar with MS DOS/Windows and the FAT16/32 file system?

[TurboMinivan]

I have aftermarket stereos in both the Jeep and the Suburban, both with USB input ports. Rather than buy iPods or the like, I instead use a pair of 16gig memory sticks (one for each vehicle) with my mp3 collection. IIRC, they are formatted to FAT16 (though it might be NTFS). In general, this works great.

As you might expect, I divide the music into folders. There is a folder for each artist, and then a subfolder for each album by that artist. When I initially transferred some data to the sticks, I simply plugged them into my Windows machine and did the old drag-n-drop routine. Windows always arranges my hard drive folders alphabetically (at least on screen), and it copies them in the same alphabetical order. My car stereos always seemed to read these folders in alphabetical order, which makes it easy when I skip around to find specific music. Fabulous. For the sake of clarification, here is a very small example of how the root directory might have looked with only ten artists present:

Aerosmith
Anthrax
Children of Bodom
Def Leppard
Halford
Judas Priest
Ministry
Ozzy Osbourne
Running Wild
Warlock

My sticks were only about half full, so (eventually) I ripped a large number of additional albums and decided to add those to the collections. I plugged each one back into my Windows machine and again did a drag-n-drop to add them to the sticks. After this new transfer was complete, I viewed them in Windows and saw that everything is peachy.

Now when I plug them into the stereos, there is a problem: everything is not alphabetical. As far as I can tell, the memory sticks number each folder as it is created (and I presume that's just how the file system works). I don't see this number, of course, because both Windows and the stereos instead display the name I have assigned to each folder. Unlike Windows, the stereos don't re-alphabetize everything but instead show the folders in this hidden numerical order... which puts them out of order alphabetically. Furthering my example for clarification, this is now how the root directory appears after I added five more artists to it:

Aerosmith
Anthrax
Children of Bodom
Def Leppard
Halford
Judas Priest
Ministry
Ozzy Osbourne
Running Wild
Warlock
Accept
Blind Guardian
Dio
Gamma Ray
Therion

Now when I go to find any particular folder, I may have to search all over the place since I don't recall if it is in the 'first' alphabetical section or the 'second' one. This is bothersome, especially when I should be paying attention to the road. I understand why the sticks number the folders in this manner--this is the order they were written. It would be really nice if I could just tell Windows to re-assign the folders in numerical order... but I don't know how to do that.

Okay, that's not true. I do know one way to fix it: delete everything off each memory stick, then start from scratch and copy them all again from the hard drive. There's got to be an easier, faster way. It seems like such a simple thing, so I figure there must be a way that I just don't know about.

Any ideas?

 

[Gravy]

wouldn't deleting everything and starting over only take like 15 minutes? Do it while you surf RME

 

[TurboMinivan]

wouldn't deleting everything and starting over only take like 15 minutes? Do it while you surf RME

I'm sure it'll take longer than that to transfer ~ 13 gigs onto each memory stick, especially considering I'll have to do it twice. Even still, it's coming down to the principle of the thing. There's got to be a better way... and I would like to find it.

Besides, that would mean that whenever I add more music in the future, I'll have to delete it all and start all over again. That's just stupid.

 

[Caleb]

I've never heard of such behavior for a device to organize files by. Why not try a move of the files/directories in the order in which you want them to display. A move should happen near instantly but may change the order it's written to just enough that the stereo sees it how you want it to. 13gigs on to a good memory stick should be about 5 minutes per (fwiw)

 

[johnsonbz]

Looks like it is sorting by creation date of folder, so by manipulating the date of the folders in the order you want them to appear, you could make that old stereo track correctly in alphabetical order.

This is digging pretty deep but, I think I remember doing this a long time ago.....

at a DOS prompt in the parent directory of the folders, type "copy [Folder Name] /B + ,, /Y" This will overwrite your file's old date stamp with the current system date and time.


Here is the source: I can t get it to format, scroll down and right

COPY [/A | /B] source [/A | /B] [+ source [/A | /B] [+ ...]] [destination  [/A | /B]] [/V] [/Y | /-Y]  source       Specifies the file or files to be copied.  /A           Indicates an ASCII text file.  /B           Indicates a binary file.  destination  Specifies the directory and/or filename for the new file(s).  /V           Verifies that new files are written correctly.  /Y           Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an               existing destination file.  /-Y          Causes prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an               existing destination file.The switch /Y may be preset in the COPYCMD environment variable.To append files, specify a single file for destination, but multiple filesfor source (using wildcards or file1+file2+file3 format).

Wow that is really too geeky,


​

 

[sLcREX]

First our cars start talking to us in Binary and now we're rewriting DOS? I like
where this is going....lol

 

[TurboMinivan]

Looks like it is sorting by creation date of folder, so by manipulating the date of the folders in the order you want them to appear, you could make that old stereo track correctly in alphabetical order.

Hmm, I may have to sit down and try that.

First our cars start talking to us in Binary and now we're rewriting DOS? I like
where this is going....lol

Hey--these are desperate times!

 

[mbryson]

I think Johnsonbz's solution will work. DOS is sorted by date written (if I remember correctly, and I think it does matter which version) and I think it would depend on which command your interface uses. (I've forgotten a LOT of DOS command line stuff over the years). If it doesn't, rewriting all files to the disk is your solution....

 

[skeptic]

Too many unknowns - does the stereo work by creation date? File Allocation Table location order? Last modified date? I'm guessing it's going off the order the folders show up in the FAT, which APPEARS to be the same as creation date right now, but if you start deleting and adding stuff a little here or a little there FAT order isn't going to stay the same as creation date order. I kinda doubt the date stamp on the directory (last modified date) is the order it uses, but I'm also guessing the way you added the music has the creation date order = FAT order = current (last modified) date.

I don't have any good solutions, just saying be weary of broad assumptions. I think the best chance for getting things in order is to do almost exactly what gravesdiggerxj suggested, get all the music onto your laptop, quick format the thumb drive, then copy it all back in alphabetical order. Other methods may work, but if your stereo doesn't sort by alpha it's going to be a hassle no matter what option you follow.

 

[TurboMinivan]

When I grab one of the memory sticks from one of the cars, the first thing I will do is verify which file system they use. After that, I'll experiment with the proposed solution and see how it works. Finally, I'll report my findings here.

Thanks, gang.

 

[TurboMinivan]

Initial findings:

1: the memory sticks are formatted to FAT32.
2: the stereo (at least in the Suburban) does not list the folders by date of modification. It follows some other as-yet-unknown format. On my computer, I can sort folders by the date of modification and when I do they are listed in a different order than on the stereo.

Now I'll begin fiddling around and see what happens.

 

[TurboMinivan]

As I was fiddling around unsuccessfully, the light bulb went off: why not see if anyone else has run into this problem? There is no way I am the only guy trying to do this. After about 10 seconds on Google, I found out that there are indeed countless others out there facing the same thing... and that led me to a little freebie Windows utility that re-sorts your flash drive in an instant.

I should have just started there.