The Honda Odyssey is starting to be notorious for all the electronic features that fail to work, especially if you have had the car for years. A USB port should accept and read your thumb drive without hassles while cruising along the highway. Yet, many times it does not. I wouldn’t be surprised if sometimes you suspected your car of sabotaging you.
There are many reasons why the Honda Odyssey USB port will not work. Some are more serious, and you may have to take your car to the dealer to have it fixed; others you can do yourself, which will take a few minutes.
Sometimes, all it takes to get your USB drive back to work is to switch the car’s engine on and off. Yes, the electronics in a Honda Odyssey can be that sensitive. Another minor reason your USB plays up is a dirty or loose connection. If you take a small cotton wool pad, moisten it with rubbing alcohol, and wipe the USB port, it suddenly works again! Remember, note to self, check all these minor things before taking the car to the dealers and pay for them to diagnose McDonald’s crumbs inside the USB connector.
Reasons Why Honda Odyssey USB Not Working
If you confidently push your thumb drive into the USB port, you expect to see the file names appearing on the screen on the dashboard. So, it can be very infuriating when either nothing happens or, worse, the infotainment unit tells you that it does not recognize your thumb drive.
Here are the reasons why the Honda Odyssey USB is not working, listed from serious to not serious, but annoying. Starting with the software compatibility, damaged connection, a blown fuse, broken cable, and lastly, blocked or dirty port contacts.
First, you may experience software compatibility. Thumb drives come in different sizes of storage abilities. Honda Odyssey’s infotainment usually has no problems with USB flash drives with up to 64G of storage space. When you insert a flash drive with a larger storage space, you may need to compartmentalize the storage before the unit can read the data on your flash.
The second most common reason the Honda Odyssey USB is not working is a damaged connection. It could be due to the loose USB port. If you can “wiggle” the USB after inserting it into the port and find a momentary connection followed by a loss of connection, then the USB port is loose. You can tighten it by lifting two small support pins upward using a needle or a sharp object.
The USB port will not read your flash drive if no electric current gets through. Check that all fuses that supply the infotainment unit are intact and your car’s battery is not depleted. If all is intact, that is not the issue causing your USB flash drive not to work.
The USB ports in the Honda Odyssey are situated in somewhat out-of-the-way places, and it is quite difficult to insert the flash drive directly into the USB port. To ensure you don’t cause accidental damage to your port while inserting the USB, you can use an extension cable, which you can place in a far more convenient place to reach.
Making sure the USB opening is clean before inserting your flash drive is good practice. Seeing that the USB port has small openings, it is vulnerable to dirt, dust, and small debris getting stuck inside the USB port. When you insert your thumb drive, you may push the obstructing particles further and block the contact between the port and the thumb drive. To prevent a build-up of dirt, clean your USB regularly with a ball of cotton wool dipped in rubbing alcohol to remove dirt and grime from the port.
Honda Odyssey USB No Data
The infotainment unit audio system in a Honda Odyssey is set to read all USB flash drives in FAT32 format. This means that on all USB flash drives that have the FAT32 format, the system can read the data and play your playlists. However, if you insert an exFAT 32 formatted flash drive, the “No Data” or “No USB” connected message will display.
When the Honda Odyssey USB displays a “No Data” message, it cannot read data. The unit will not be able to read the data when the head unit is damaged, but much more frequently, it cannot read data because the flash drive you inserted is not in FAT 32 format and needs to be reformatted.
To format the flash drive correctly, you may need to use the free software AOMEI Partition Assistant. Once you download it, you can begin converting the drive’s formatting. On the home page, right-click on the drive you want to convert. Find the drive in a list and right-click on it again. Select a “format partition” from the drop-down menu. Click OK on the dialogue box. Choose FAT 32 and follow the prompts to format the flash drive. Press “Apply” in the top left corner of the screen and “Confirm” on the confirmation screen that appears. Once your flash drive is formatted into FAT32, you can plug it into the USB port in your car, and it will work.
Honda Odyssey USB Port Not Charging
People often want USB ports in cars to charge their phones while driving. It makes sense. You should be able to charge your phone during your journey from place to place to continue using your phone at your next destination. However, the designers designed these ports with the intention of data transfer, and many USB connections cannot draw sufficient power to operate and charge your phone. Those ports only draw .5 Amps in most cars, barely sufficient to keep the phone’s battery percentage steady.
The copyright owner of this article is Knowmyauto.com and was first published on Oct 19, 2022..
When you find that a Honda Odyssey USB port is not charging, you could be plugging your charger into a non-charging port, meaning that the port was designed to transmit data and does not have sufficient wattage to charge your phone.
The Honda Odyssey has a designated USB charging port that can supply up to 2.5 Amps for charging devices. It is situated on the console’s left side of the double USB connection. You can also check your owner’s manual to see which port is meant to charge your phone while driving.
Honda Odyssey USB No Device Connected
When the “No Device Connected” message displays on your console, and you know that there is a device that you have just plugged into the system, it may be because the software is incompatible. Make sure that whatever you use is compatible with Apple Car Play or Android Auto software.
As a general rule, your Honda Odyssey USB will display a “No Device Connected” message when it is having trouble reading incompatible software plugged into the port. Try reconnecting it a few times; otherwise, use a different device that is Apple or Android compatible.
Remember that if you connect to the USB port using a cable, it should be Apple MFi Certified or USB-IF certified to comply with the USB 2.0 Standard. You pay a lot of money for your devices, so it makes sense to spend a couple of extra bucks on proper cables to ensure that your devices will not get damaged by plugging into your car system.
Honda Odyssey USB Unsupported
Nothing lasts forever, so there may be times when you want to listen to something and plug your device into the USB port, and you get the USB unsupported message. Such a message usually means something is wrong with the USB connection. It may also be a faulty device. If a device is attached with an incorrect cable to the USB, it can get damaged.
You may get the Honda Odyssey USB unsupported message displayed on the screen in certain situations. It may be due to the USB port’s card reader, hard disk drive, or your files being damaged.
It is always a good practice to remove your Flash drive from your car every time you exit because of high temperatures that build up in a locked vehicle. High temperatures damage electronics, and the next time you want to listen to your playlist, you won’t be able to.
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KnowMyAuto is the sole owner of this article was published on Oct 19, 2022 and last updated on .