Sunday, May 22, 2016

Honda Civic -- Unsupported USB Error Message

I was consistently getting the error message "Unsupported" on my Civic car stereo whenever plugging my USB flash drive into the USB socket found inside the center console. After reading through some posts online, I saw that the solution to reformat the USB was hit and miss; worked for some not others. The other solution was to uncheck the Quick Format option.

I tried to reformat using the recommended FAT32 file system and trying both format options. These didn't work for me. After further digging around of various posts, I remembered that the USB I was trying to use was temporarily used as a Windows boot-up USB and that it's Master Boot Record was written for this.

My solution was to use DISKPART, a disk partitioning utility that comes with Windows. I stumbled across the link http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-USB-Bootable and thought that it may work if I followed the instructions up to the point where I would install the OS onto the USB.

If you do this, you will need to be very cautious. I don't think it would overwrite your Windows OS partition but please be careful. The basic steps I took: I cleaned the USB (removed its partition), created a new primary partition, and formatted the partition to FAT32 file system, and then copied my music files back onto the USB drive.

Here are the details for the steps I took:
  1. Open a command prompt as Administrator
  2. Start DISKPART from there; type it in + hit enter.
  3. Type in select disk N + enter where N is the USB drive. You may have several partitions on your laptop or PC so this is where you need to be careful. It's most likely the highest numbered N in the listing. If you have any doubt, please stop here.
  4. Type in clean + enter. I had to do this twice since it gave me an error the first time. Once you see the DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk message, you can go on.
  5. Type in create partition primary + enter.
  6. Type in select partition 1 + enter.
  7. Type in active + enter.
  8. Finally, type in format fs=fat32 + enter.
From there, you can copy your MP3 files to the drive. If you want to be sure before you spend a lot of time copying a bunch of files, you can copy a small folder, go test it in the car, and then continue from there.

Good luck. I hope this helps someone as it did for me.

Richard

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