So, here are my findings on the Bolero in my brand new MY2011 Octy Scout, specifically looking at its behaviour with SD cards. I've got a pretty large music collection (~150GB), which I've got structured into one folder per artist, with sub-folders under the artist for each album by that artist. I've copied my music on to 5 x 32GB Class 10 SDHC cards, formatted to FAT32. All good so far...

I put the first of the 5 cards, containing artists A-D, into the Bolero. It took around 30 seconds to read in the 4,400 files in 450 folders, which I thought was pretty acceptable. It automatically started playing the first track in the first album by the first artist, again all good.

Then I browsed up to the top folder level and found that the Bolero had truncated the folder list after 64 top level folders, at the artist Capercaillie :( . I have 110 top level folders on the card, but the Bolero was incapable of seeing anything beyond folder 64.

64 sounded like a significant computer number, so I then altered the top level folder structure to be an alphabetic folder structure (my first SD card contained artists A-D, so I created 4 top level folders A, B, C and D and stored all artists beginning with letter A in the A folder and so on). Doing this made not one jot of difference; the Bolero truncated at exactly the same point, so no artists beyond Capercaillie were displayed and the top level folder D (and the artists therein) was not displayed at all.

I wonder what limit I'm striking here? The Bolero is supposed to handle 32GB SD cards. Curiously, the size of the music that is displayed up to the point of truncation is ~16GB, so maybe it can't handle 32GB cards (or it can, but only if they have 16GB or less of data on them :( ).

Interested in anyone else's experience here.

I've only tried a 16GB card I'm afraid. If 32GB cards don't work its been quite an expensive test for you if you bought 5!

The Bolero is supposed to handle 32GB SD cards.

It does handle 32GB cards, you inserted the card full of music and it played. If it could not handle 32GB cards you would have got some sort of error or it just would not have played anything.

What I would say it doesn't handle is more than 64 folders and I bet that if I put an 8GB card with 100 folders on it in my Bolero it will only handle 64 of them just like on your system.

I'm not sure why this should effect the CD player, but FAT32 can only handle invidual file sizes up to 4GB, have you tried formatting one of the cards to NTFS.

I'm not sure why this should effect the CD player, but FAT32 can only handle invidual file sizes up to 4GB, have you tried formatting one of the cards to NTFS.

The Bolero can't read NTFS and that would be one hell of a music track to be bigger than 4GB anyway....

The Bolero can't read NTFS and that would be one hell of a music track to be bigger than 4GB anyway....

"Yes" track perhaps?

That's a massive music collection, quite ambitious to have it all in the car, I guess you like the idea of being able to play any of the music you own when in the car!

I can't help thinking that a retrofit of MDI with a large HDD is the way to go for you.

I have 2 x 16Gb, as 32Gb was way expensive.

I agree that this seems more likely to do with the Bolero's ability to index and present the SD contents than the card itself.

I have a 16 gb card, that i want to use in my new one when it arrives, However I was loaned an octy vRS 10 plate fl with a bolero & after running the program on here that sets cards up for for the slot, when i put it in it errored, however when 1 took out the 9 sub directories & put everything on root, it started to read it, however after 5 mins of reading it I got bored & cancelled.

Coming to the conclusion that it doesnt seen to like a 16gb SDHC card, its only got 5.75 gb used & that includes playlists.

I will do some serious checking out when i get the car to sort it out.

I really want this working as my current car has usb slot with media player on the H/U, & its loads better that messing around with CD's. - Although I will probably seriously miss the controls on the steering wheel , never mind its worth the sacrifice

In the Bolero manual (page 13) it says:

"The Folder structure must not exceed a depth of 8 levels. One folder must not contain more than 1000o data" (that last o after 1000 should be a degree symbol)

Not sure what this means!!! Could it be that with your 4,400 files in directories A to D that one directory has past has the limit of 1000 items (including folders and subfolders) so they are not all being read. Perhaps your solution is to spread the files across more directories in the root.

I have the MDI interface (an unpaid for surprise extra!!) and have plugged in a USB hard disk. The disk was initially 80GB NTFS but the Bolero didn't recognise it. I tried to format it to FAT32 but the size limit in that format is 32GB. I now have a single 32GB FAT32 partition that currently has around 12GB of files on it and all seem to be available. If I get around to filling the 32GB I may try setting up another partitiion on the HDD to see if they both get recognised - has anyone tried this?

I have a 16 gb card, that i want to use in my new one when it arrives, However I was loaned an octy vRS 10 plate fl with a bolero & after running the program on here that sets cards up for for the slot, when i put it in it errored, however when 1 took out the 9 sub directories & put everything on root, it started to read it, however after 5 mins of reading it I got bored & cancelled.

Coming to the conclusion that it doesnt seen to like a 16gb SDHC card, its only got 5.75 gb used & that includes playlists.

I will do some serious checking out when i get the car to sort it out.

I really want this working as my current car has usb slot with media player on the H/U, & its loads better that messing around with CD's. - Although I will probably seriously miss the controls on the steering wheel , never mind its worth the sacrifice

I loaded a 16Gb card nearly full in advance and it played fine in my new VRS. (Most expensive MP3 player I've bought)

Cheers Juan27 - that gives me some hope

In the Bolero manual (page 13) it says:

"The Folder structure must not exceed a depth of 8 levels. One folder must not contain more than 1000o data" (that last o after 1000 should be a degree symbol)

Not sure what this means!!! Could it be that with your 4,400 files in directories A to D that one directory has past has the limit of 1000 items (including folders and subfolders) so they are not all being read. Perhaps your solution is to spread the files across more directories in the root.

I have the MDI interface (an unpaid for surprise extra!!) and have plugged in a USB hard disk. The disk was initially 80GB NTFS but the Bolero didn't recognise it. I tried to format it to FAT32 but the size limit in that format is 32GB. I now have a single 32GB FAT32 partition that currently has around 12GB of files on it and all seem to be available. If I get around to filling the 32GB I may try setting up another partitiion on the HDD to see if they both get recognised - has anyone tried this?

Is that 32GB a limit on the Bolero? It's certainly not a limit for FAT32 although Windows will try and tell you otherwise as Microsoft have put an artificial limit on it when using Windows to format as FAT32... My 160GB USB drive is formatted as FAT32...

Download a Live Linux distro or find someone with a MAC or Linux box to format the full capacity as FAT32... There may well be utilities for Windows that will allow the whole disk to be formatted too

Thanks for all the replies. I've tried a few more options:

I extracted all 4,000-odd files from their individual album folders and put them in the root folder of the card. This time, the Bolero displayed the first 512 files only.

I tried using the program written by Danish Viking. (with the folder structure 1\2\3\4\5\6\7\8\9 and playlists for each folder in the root). This time the limit was 16GB.

Whichever way you look at it, while a 32GB card can be read by the Bolero, effectively you appear to be only able to use 16GB of its capacity :'( . Just as well I can return the 32GB cards!

If anyone figures out a way to fully utilize 32GB cards, I'd love to know their solution.

Is that 32GB a limit on the Bolero? It's certainly not a limit for FAT32 although Windows will try and tell you otherwise as Microsoft have put an artificial limit on it when using Windows to format as FAT32... My 160GB USB drive is formatted as FAT32...

Download a Live Linux distro or find someone with a MAC or Linux box to format the full capacity as FAT32... There may well be utilities for Windows that will allow the whole disk to be formatted too

You are a hero - thanks!

Trawled t'internet and found a free WinXP compatible utility to format FAT32. Reformatted the whole 80GB disk to FAT32 and copied the music files back.

There is just over 10GB of data, 1953 files in 263 folders. Plugged the disk into the MDI and hey presto - the Bolero reads all the files so it is not limited to 32GB media!.

Problem with Fat32 is that above 16GB actually really about about 8GB) it gets very wasteful if you use small files or files that don't terminate neatly on a sector boundary.

64 folders sounds like they are bit packing and using 6 bits of a byte to count folder names.

Perhaps there is a 6 folder number and then two bits for pointer?

That could explain why you can't cope with more than 64 folders at a single level.

Edited 14 October, 201015 yr by cheezemonkhai

See you could have just used an MDI cable & Ipod and have had not one of these problems.

See you could have just used an MDI cable & Ipod and have had not one of these problems.

Indeed, hindsight is a wonderful thing. I opted not to go this route, because

a. I don't own an iPod with a large hard drive (just an 8GB iPod Touch, which incidentally streams music perfectly to the Bolero via Bluetooth)

b. I'd reasonably assumed that as the Bolero spec stated it supported 32GB cards, I would be able to put 32GB of music on the card

c. I didn't feel like throwing another NZ$250 at the dealer for what seemed like a pretty minor accessory at the time.

Never mind, I'll just be more selective with the music I carry in the car. There sure is a lot of crap among my 150GB collection .

There is a limit to the NUMBER of files, not capacity. I have run into this problem myself with other mp3 players.

If you load high bit-rate mp3 files equalling 32GB it will play them, if you load medium rate mp3 files equalling 32GB, it will only play the first "x" number and ignore the rest. It is an indexing limitation of the player.

There is a limit to the NUMBER of files, not capacity. I have run into this problem myself with other mp3 players.

If you load high bit-rate mp3 files equalling 32GB it will play them, if you load medium rate mp3 files equalling 32GB, it will only play the first "x" number and ignore the rest. It is an indexing limitation of the player.

I wish this were true, but in my case, my files, which are all .mp3 format, are almost all encoded at 256kbps or higher, many at 320kbps and nothing below 192kbps.

I just loaded a spare 16GB card to full capacity with 2,100 files in 217 folders. All files were fully accessible. I believe that the Bolero cannot access more than 16GB of data on a card.

Edited 15 October, 201015 yr by Simon Cobb

The only other possibility is that you have bought "dodgy" cards, ie 16GB cards that have been "fixed" to look like 32GB versions. As someone pointed out, there is a big price difference between 16 and 32GB, and there has always been a market for nasty people selling dodgy cards to punters looking for a bargain.

I like to listen to my music on a mixed play list . What I did was copied all music into a file called "all songs". Then I had the other albums in individual files. I took them out of artist files so all as individual albums, this seemed to speed it up. Having said that I'm having a denison ice wired fm modulator fitted on Monday, so I can use my ipod and my DAB.

I have this - Integral 32GB SD Card (SDHC) - Class 4

Filled with my collection, loads of sub folders, no loading delays work instantly with no problems.

I have this - Integral 32GB SD Card (SDHC) - Class 4

Filled with my collection, loads of sub folders, no loading delays work instantly with no problems.

I'll be getting myself one of these then in preparation for my new vRS in March. Got a Pioneer head unit on current vRS with an ipod connected via USB in glove box but the standard stereo offering in the vRS appears to have moved on so i won't be transferring it across.