Using USB media drives on 2016.5 CX-5

I'm able to connect an old iPod to one of the 2 USB ports just fine - BUT - I'm trying to move off of iOS altogether - and need to know what software I need to "enable" a standard USB drive to be seen/read by Mazda Connect.

I did buy a different mobile player (HIDIZS AP-60 - not iOS) and it works fine too - but pricey and it seems like I should be able to just connect a USB drive with standard media files (and formats). When I try that, Mazda Connect doesn't recognize the drive (let alone the folders/files).

Does the USB drive need to be "bootable?" In other words - does the USB drive need an actual Operating System over and above just having media files in a directory structure?

The drive does need to be formated - I forget which way, but it says in the manual - but everyone that I have at home that I've tried just works without me doing anything special/different to it.

FAT32 should work.

Look in the manual, it states what to format the USB drive, and what audio file formats are supported. I myself have found that unless you have an Apple device connected, 320 Kbps media files is the highest quality you can use. An iPhone or iPod will be able to hold lossless .M4A files in ALAC format, and it'll play on Mazda Connect just fine, but putting those same files on a USB drive will not work.

As Craigo said, the drive has to be formatted in the FAT32 format. This means that a 32gb or smaller USB drive has to be used as anything larger than 32gb will need to be formatted with something other than FAT32. I have two drives plugged in, that's 64gbs of storage and a ton of songs!

Got it - thanks. Formatting to FAT32 seemed to do the trick. (FYI - you can format a 64Gb USB drive - but need to use different formatting software that what's baked into Windows 10. I used a product called: "USB Disk Storage Format Tool 5.3" and it worked fine. It's nagware, but free - and I don't anticipate I'll use it much at all).