18 Nov 2020
The most successful flash drive to work with the Ai series products for updating is the SanDisk Cruzer Glide (newer series).
There are several models that SanDisk has in the Cruzer product line, the one you want to get is the Cruzer Glide (as pictured here).
Other versions of SanDisk USB Flash Drives that we tested and found to work include:
* SanDisk Glide SDCZ60 series that have an angled back bottom edge
* SanDisk Cruzer Edge SDCZ51W Series
* SanDisk Cruzer Switch Series
These are available everywhere not just computer stores, we've seen them for sale not just at computer and office supply stores, but also at department and even places like Walgreens and Rite-Ad pharmacies.
The sizes of drives we suggest to use are 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB. These have all been found to work well when doing updates.
SanDisk does make other models of Cruzer series drives including: U, Ultra, Ultra Flair, Fit, Force, Blade, Orbit or Extreme, we have not tested these and have had a mixed response of success from customers as it appears that not all flash drives are created equal apparently.
SanDisk Cruzer Glide first models will work, however, we found out these earlier models of SanDisk Cruzer series USB Flash Drive must be modified to make them work properly.
If you do have one of these older drives and you're having trouble making your SanDisk Cruzer USB Flash Drive work with the StuidoLive AI, this may apply to you.
The older models have black square body with red or white letters and a white plastic slide, most important of all, it has two partitions on it.
1st Partition is for their proprietary U3 mobile app / storage program
2nd Partition is for thumb drive storage.
It's this first partition that interferes with the StudioLive AI from being able to see the thumb drive.
Even formatting the drive will only format the 2nd partition. The first partition shows up in device manager as an optical drive.
Luckily SandDisk has a solution that will allow you to remove this 1st partition, by using their U3 removal tool found on their website. A link can be found here:
http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2550/kw/u3%20removal%20tool
Once this had been done, we found that the SanDisk Cruzer Glide worked rather well out of the box when it doesn't have this hidden partition on it.
NOTE: Please always format your drive before use. The formatting that comes on the drive may not always allow for proper operation with the StudioLive AI. We recommend you always do a fresh and full format on any new thumb drive, or on any thumb drive you experience difficulty with. You should format the drive as "FAT32" on PC (unselecting Quick Format, so that it instead does a Full Format) and format as "MS-DOS (FAT)" on Mac OS X. For details on how to update your your console with your thumb drive be sure to watch the video at the bottom of this page for your Operating System:
NOTE to Mac Users - If your Mac is running OS X 10.11 El Capitan or later, you will need to make sure to adhere to the following extra step in order to format a USB drive for loading firmware on your mixer (Users with Mac running OS X versions earlier than 10.11 can skip this):
Leave name set to "Untitled" & set Format to "MS-DOS (FAT)"
Change Scheme type to "Master Boot Record"
After verifying your settings look like the screenshot below, click "Erase"
Once the format is complete, watch the Mac OS X video for further instruction...
Mac OS X 10.8.5 or higher
http://youtu.be/mdzyaaNezzI?t=9s
Windows 7 SP1 or higher