Hi Pieto. I’ve actually re-formatted the usb stick a short while ago. Now loading about 90gb of music onto it. I’ll let you know what happens.
Drives filled very close to their maximum capacity often don’t work properly. Try leaving at least 10 or 15% of the capacity empty and see if it helps.
Hmmm… so I’ve reformatted the USB stick - loaded about 90gb of music onto it this time - same result. 
I’d be grateful for any suggestions. I’d particularly like to hear from any Nova/Star/Atom owners who have been through the same process.
A USB stick is a small SSD! I can’t see why it shouldn’t work, I’ve never had a problem with memory sticks myself.
One more thing you could try: remove the USB drive, clear the cache in the Naim app, turn off the streamer and unplug it for half an hour.
Then restart the streamer and insert the USB stick.
What file system are you formatting the USB stick?
I believe the stick must be formatted as FAT or FAT32 for music streaming on Naim.
Fat32 is what you need to use.
Thanks. Do you know what new drives come formatted in? My micro sd card and old USB drive seem to work OK. It might be easier for me to buy a new USB stick or external ssd if they will work as they come.
I expect it would be ntfs, that’s certainly suggested by the Samsung website.
Reformatting to Fat32 is straightforward with the correct software.
If the drive was incorrectly formatted I think you would have had problems reading the files in the USB input as well as elsewhere so I suspect that is not your problem.
I find that memory sticks work out of the box but there’s nothing to lose by trying a re-format, other than that it will wipe off the data and you will need to reload it.
My previous post was based on the idea that the streamer may have cached metadata from a previous drive, and become confused by the introduction of one or more new drives (possibly containing some of the same music files as the previous drive?) thus powering down and clearing the cache might help….but this is just speculation.
Fat32 works with all Naim streamers, if you are looking for cross compatibility.
Ok, but the OP has a Nova. I guess that it should work with NTFS. But of course reformatting is a good way to rule out certain issues
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I don’t know how my usb stick was formatted before I reformatted it. But afterwards it was in FATex. On doing a bit of research I have read that FAT32 can only be used on drives up to 32gb. So maybe I can’t use this on my 128gb stick?
From robert_h’s post a bit further up:
I don’t have that particular experience with my Star. I have one of these Aluminium Samsung sticks, it’s formatted on NFTS, and then the Star did the futher folder config itself. Funny enough I have 148 GB on a 256 GB which officially shouldn’t work, but it does. When my Uniti arrived at the start of Lockdown #1, I had already 30% ripped using EAC. When I continued ripping with the Star, I quickly noticed I needed to rename every EAC defined cover art file to ‘coverfront’ to make them show up on the display. Not sure if that helps. Since the Nova doesn’t do any ripping itself, the way that it accesses a USB may be entirely different from a Star.
I think you are correct there. FAT32 can’t handle today’s large storage volumes.
It’s good up to 2 TB.
OK - I think I’m going to bite the bullet. I’m planning to order a Western Digital My Passport Portable SSD 1TB. Unless anyone has a better suggestion? (Or a reason why I shouldn’t buy the above!)
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I would buy Samsung rather than Western Digital. Indeed I did buy Samsung.