MFT indexes and builds media commands every time I start the Explorer

[pcitycoug]

I have a 2011 XLT with MFT. I have all of my music on a USB thumb drive (about 900 songs). Almost every time I start my Explorer it begins the process of indexing and then building media commands. It only takes about 5 min to complete the process, but it slows down MFT during that time and doesn't play my music where I left off before I turned off the car.

I think it is only supposed to index once unless any changes to your library are made.

Has anyone else had a similar issue? If so, do you know of a fix?

 

[Saffer]

Mine does the same thing, but only sometimes.

I have a Zune 120 GB player with about 12000 songs and a Lexar USB with a few hundred songs on it.

This is very frustrating, it should only index when you plug in the USB IMO

Another thing that I have noticed is that it sometimes jumps between the two USB devices, even if the radio was last on Sirius.

 

[VinceL]

I'm hoping that the big update to MFT that is coming down the line fixes this, and I think it just might. The reason I say that is because one of the videos about the update said that the system will no longer be cold booting every time the car is started. Instead, the system will go into standby/sleep/hibernation when the car is turned off. If that is the case, the initial indexing should stay in memory until the system is restarted, battery cable disconnected, or the USB/device is unplugged.

 

[HDJulie]

I'm hoping that same change will fix the playlist issue where when playing a playlist on shuffle, everytime the car is restarted the playlist resets the count to 1, causing some of the songs I heard the last time I was in the car to cycle around again before others that have not played.

 

[suzook]

I think there is a setting to turn off indexing every time you start the vehicle.

 

[pcitycoug]

I think there is a setting to turn off indexing every time you start the vehicle.

Please tell me how this is done. I have looked and haven't found anything like that.

 

[pcitycoug]

Update: My Thumb Drive May Be the Problem

I think there may be some storage devices that MFT has difficulty with. I had previously used a 4GB Sandisk thumb drive that indexed once and then worked great. The problems I have been having with regard indexing have been with an 8GB Kingston thumb drive which I got because I needed more space for more music.

I finally got fed up with the Kingston indexing every time I started the car. I transferred my music library to an old iPod touch and now it works great (so far). It took longer to index (about 20 min), but so far has not had to re-index when starting up the car. It also plays where I left off before.

 

[jrmexplorer]

This is fixable.

1.) make sure the directory structure on your jump drive is flat - that's right, all songs in one directory.

2.) I've found that it helps MFT to index faster if you rename all your files to shorter filenames with no special characters (8-10 chars).

3.) Get a MP3 tag editor. Remove all information but the Artist, Track Name, Track Number and Genre. Also make sure none of that data is corrupted. Finally, unselect any "part of a compilation" boxes - Synch doesn't like those.

4.) Finally, what worked for me when I recently had this problem is that I waited until synch finished its indexing (after turning on the car), then went into the options menu and had it refresh the index. Once it finished, it stopped re-indexing everytime I started the car. I think the index it was building was corrupted and forcing the refresh cleared it.