Why are my CD files out of order on a USB stick?
I’ve just become a reader of your magazine and, in my late 70s, I’m a bit frightened of technology. I’ve transferred some opera CDS to a USB stick to use in the car. When I check the memory stick after transferring them I notice that they do not appear in the order that they were on the CD. They won’t stay in the correct order no matter what I do to rearrange them. Can you help?
There are a few things that can affect the file order on a USB stick. You can sort them by clicking on one of the column headings – so Name for an alphabetic sort, or ‘Date modified’ to order them by when they were copied on to the stick.
However, for reasons we’ll explain, the way they’re listed in File Explorer within Windows 10 typically won’t bear any relation to the order they’ll play when you insert the USB stick in your car.
In fact, for your purposes, it’s the play order that matters. While we don’t know your vehicle’s make or the particular CDS you’re ripping, these kind of problems usually boil down to the filenames given to the MP3S.
The fundamental problem is this: most if not most in-car stereos play back MP3 files in alphabetic sequence. So, no matter what order they are on the original disc or were copied to the USB stick, the car’s player will work through them from A to Z. Actually, and more accurately, it’s usually alphanumerically – meaning nought through nine, and then A to Z.
That last detail is important for an effective solution. The easiest way to ensure your car plays the files in the correct order is to first use File Explorer to rename the files so that they reflect the track listing. Click on a file and press F2 (or right-click and choose Rename), which will allow you to add numbers before each track – so ‘1 Brahms.mp3’, ‘2 Liszt.mp3’, ‘3 Bach.mp3’ and so on.
However, note that for CDS with more than nine tracks, be sure to use the format ‘01 Brahms.mp3’, ‘02 Liszt.mp3’, ‘03 Bach.mp3’ for the first nine. Otherwise, your car might play ‘1 Brahms.mp3’ followed by ‘10 Elgar.mp3’ and then ‘11 Vivaldi.mp3’ because, logically and alphanumerically, all the tracks labelled ‘1’ would play before those labelled ‘2’, ‘3’ and so on.