Are your flash drives USB 2.0 capable?

 

Yes. I plugged them to SUB 2.0 ports on my pc to get MP3 files for playing on cars.

As seen below, when a USB is plugged into the big USB 2.5A port of the CRV, the USB symbol appears on the top line of the screen, while the body says "No device Connected".

I don't know what "compatible USB device" does this CRV want. These USB flash drives are formatted with FAT32, NTFS.

Also, when I hit the USB symbol at the top right if the sreen, it shows:

They haven been working fine with other cars, but not with this new CRV 2024 ;-(

 

The issue seems to be the flash drive interface and not the file format. I would buy a new flash drive and see if that works USB specs have changed since 2017.

 

Here are the instructions for formatting a USB stick for garmin updates, the drive needs to be FAT32.

Formatting a USB Drive for a Honda Navigation System | Garmin Customer Support

Garmin Support Center is where you will find answers to frequently asked questions and resources to help with all of your Garmin products.

support.garmin.com

 

Hi, I had the same issue with Civic Touring 2024. I purchased PNY 64GB on amazon, product code B01LFV52Y6. Here is how to solve it:
1) you need to format it with Fat32. You build-in Windows formatting tools can not do that. You may want to search Google to find and download free tool guiformat. Once downloaded open this tool, select your drive, and make sure you select correct allocation unit size. For the above PNY I used 32768 (I initially tried 65536, but Honda has rejected it ). Format your drive, but do not use quick format.
2) do not copy your entire music collection, copy only one or two mp3 file, then check if this works in Honda. If does not, you may need to re-format you USB one more time, with different allocation size.

 

My 2024 Honda CR-V won't see a 128 GB flash drive but sees a 64 GB drive. Sorta sucks since I already bought a 128 GB mini so it doesn't stick out so far! My older Honda won't see the bigger drive either. Somewhere Honda should have written, 64 GB flash drive limit!

 

I have the same issue with my 2024 Sport-L and also with my 2025 Civic. 64GB is still a lot of music.

 

Tested a 2 Gigabyte and 1 Gigabyte Buffalo USB drive, works fine on all our Hondas, inclusive of all our CRV's, Hybrids also

 

Had this same issue, tried with a 128GB key. Have a CRV 2024.

Eventually figured it was because of format, so yes FAT32 is the solution. Windows won't format with this by default (for larger than 32GB I think) so use another tool to do that. I used Rufus a free util to format keys and make bootable drives, now it works fine, phew!! I wish there was a mention of this info in Honda's error message or manuals. Good luck!

 

Yes I have found the same problem with my 2024 Honda Accord ELX Hybrid. Any old Kingston flash drive will work in my car with a USB -A-C adapter. But I bought a flash drive on Amazon that had BOTH the A and the C so each end would fit my PC or my car. But the new drive would not be detected in ANY device other than my PC. Useless for my car, iPad, iPhone or Android phone. Frustrating. Tried formatting the drive with exFAT (default) then NTFS and added a song on the drive. Neither one worked. FAT32 is an older format and not even an option these days with Windows 10 or 11. I'll see what Amazon will do for me. If I have to ship it back, I'll just toss it or use it to back up files that will work on my PC—way too much trouble for the $15 cost. A simple A-C adapter I found in an old bag of wires, chargers, etc. allows me to use older flash drives in my Honda with zero trouble.

 

On 2023 CRV Touring Hybrid. The USB drive that worked for me was a 128GB USB 2.0 and formatted with FAT32. I also tried smaller flash drives such as 4GB, 32GB that were all USB 2.0 formatted with FAT32 and they worked as well.
When I tried a USB 3.0 or higher drives, they did not work

 

These problems are ridiculous. My 2025 CR-V top of the line gave me the same issue; I've posted about that elsewhere here. Some folks went the direction of explaining why Honda only working with FAT32 was reasonable. Well, I ssuppose this is a matter of what people expect when buying a 2025 model vehicle. My 2022 MINI works just fine with a 1 GB sstick with no special formatting required. As far as I'm concerned Honda stinks with regard to this.

I eventually bought a 1GB drive, formatted it to FAT32 (using Windows free command line prompts) and it "worked". Sort of. According to a local dealer Honda doesn't design their systems to use as many files as I trying to use so the car struggles to understand what I've connected to it. I displays SOME of the file folders on the drive and it also fails to play all files in a folder, at least if the folder contains sub-folders. It plays the first file but if I try to skip to the next it plays something else, as far as I can tell, randomly. The solution to have fewer files or use Android Auto or bluetooth isn't acceptable and I'll only resort to that if I'm forced to. I want my entire music library available and I want to use .flac files that don't compress and that play files in order. Another possible reason was that I'm using an unapproved drive.

I feel that the bose sound system is great, assuming it's fed great material (uncompressed).

I'm pretty sure I looked up what was supposed to work and what I bought was fine - a Samsung 1GB usb drive.

This total garbage and unacceptable in my opinion. I haven't yet called Honda corporate as suggested by the dealer but I plan to and will report back.

 

Here's how to format FAT32 via Windows command line if you happen to be forced to use an arcane file system that Windows itself won't give you as a formatting option:

1. Type cmd in windows search and right cick on it and click run as administrator

2. Next you can type the command diskpart in Command Prompt window. Press Enter to launch DiskPart utility.

3. Type the command "list disk", press Enter and all detected disks will be displayed with detailed information. Check carefully which disk is your USB drive. You may identify the USB by checking the size. n this example we are assuming it as disk 3

Step 4. Select and clean the target USB drive - type the command "select disk 3" and press Enter to select the target USB flash drive. Then type "clean" command and press Enter. DiskPart will wipe disk data.

Step 5. Format USB flash drive/pen drive with CMD (Command Prompt) - tip: Before you format USB using CMD, you can confirm again that you’ve selected the right disk, to avoid formatting the wrong disk. You can type list disk command again, press Enter, and the selected disk should have a “*” mark before the disk number. After that, you can type the command create partition primary, and press Enter.

Next type the command "format fs=ntfs" or "format fs=fat32", and press Enter to format the USB flash drive to NTFS or FAT32 format. Optionally you can add a “quick” flag after the command for a faster format.

Step 6. Assign a drive letter for the USB - type the command "assign letter=h", replace “h” with the preferred drive letter you want to assign to the USB drive. Press Enter to assign a letter for the USB drive and make it visible in Windows File Explorer.

Type exit to close DiskPart and type exit to close Command Prompt window.

After formatting the USB flash drive in CMD (Command Prompt), the USB drive should be shown in Windows File Explorer and is available for storing files

Note :_ Exlude quotes while typing commands

(source :- minitool.com)

 

When I insert my usb drive you can see the first level folders that contains the songs. I did not try a second level folder. But if you scroll down there is also an option called folders. During playback there’s also the rightmost button with two arrows that cross each other, this button is the random playback button which will toggle between random and sequential playback

 

Here is a tool that formats fat32 in windows 10 and windows 11. it can format up to a 2tb USB drive but no file can be larger than 4gb - the limit of fat32 file system which is the only file system supported by android and windows.
I have used it for 10 years. It is from HP and was released to fix issues with windows 7 and 8 but still works in 10 and 11.

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool v2.2.3.0 - Free Download - OlderGeeks.com

Freeware and open source downloads - 100 percent clean, no ads, no BS. Trusted since 2008.

www.oldergeeks.com

or here

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool allows you to format any USB flash drive, FAT, FAT32, or NTFS.

www.techspot.com

or here

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool Free Download for Windows PC

This page shows how to use the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, as well as how to solve disk write protected error.

www.diskpart.com

 

Just bought a 2026 CRV and had the same problem. The solution is to format the card that you put in the USB. It must be formatted as FAT 32 or the car won't recognize it.

 

"Rufus" is a free tool that will format your drive to FAT 32 easily and quickly: Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way I just brought a 2026 CR-V Hybrid and am shocked that Honda requires FAT32 with a USB-C connector. It seems counter-intuitive for a vehicle with advanced instrumentation to handcuff the sound system with FAT32. I'd like to put my music files on a portable usb drive, choose which album I'd like to listen to and simply play it. Is that such a big "ask"?