I have been having the same issue with Chevy cars for years now. It happened with my 2009 HHR, and I am experiencing the same exact problem with the 2012 Malibu. The crap radios that GM uses (too cheap to put any money into technology support) won't even recognize most thumb drives. I have bought 7 different thumb drives over the years, only TWO of the seven worked with the car radios.


Some specifics:


-I formatted all the drives to Fat 32. I tried FAT 16 as well.
- The last few I bought were only 16G, as I heard any bigger wont work, although Chevy doesn't even say that.
- All MP3 files
- I only have a small number of files and folders, that isn't the issue
- Same exact issue with 2 different Chevys and 2 different model years: the problem is the tech support, NOT malfunctioning radios. Nothing is "wrong" except Chevys tech support for thumb drives is laughable.
- Chevy customer support is WORTHLESS. They don't know a THING except what they can read in my owner's manual. After hearing my owner's manuals read back to me by 4 different robots, er I mean support reps over the years, I gave up. I can read that myself, DUH! The dealers are equally "knowledgeable".


One of the thumb drives that works is 6 years old (a Kingston DataTraveler 16G) and is crapping out due to age- the connection is wearing out. I bought a new DataTraveler- its now a newer version of the model- and of course, the radios won't recognize it. I also tried a Transcend thumb drive- same thing. I just bought a Lexar S50 16G (with a teal sliding cover)- SAME THING.


I CAN'T be the only one having these problems. I am getting sick of wasting money on thumb drives that are virtually guaranteed to not be supported by the awesome Chevy radios.


Can anyone supply me with a link to a thumb drive (preferably on Amazon) that you bought and works on a Chevy radio? The Brand/model of the thumb drive isn't sufficient, as I said the newer identical DataTraveler model didn't work. I would like the largest capacity thumb drive I can get that actual works, but at this point I'll take ANYTHING that works.


Thank you for any help you can offer.

 

Also, although I didn't specifically say so, all of my thumb drives work just fine in every USB port on the planet EXCEPT the Chevy radio ones- so the thumb drives aren't defective either.