My installer kindly put USB1, HDMI, and a mini jack in the glove box but also USB2 in my center console.  I didn't think to ask/make the point that it matters which USB is used.  So I have to plug my iPhone into the glove box port, when I want to plug it into the port in the center console.

Are there any software or other tweaks I can make?  My car doesn't have a backup camera so I figured I would be kind and hire them to install one at the same time as swapping the USB port used.  But even this could later be an issue if I were to want them swapped.  It is horribly frustrating that the specific USB port number makes this much difference.  Apparently Android phones only work on USB2, but this doesn't matter to me since I don't have nor have any immediate plans to buy an Android device.

It would be great if you could software swap which port did what--or best yet, if both ports worked for both.  Thoughts anyone?

Instead of re-routing the cables between your center console and glove box, pull the unit and switch the USB1 & USB2 cables on the back.

Instead of re-routing the cables between your center console and glove box, pull the unit and switch the USB1 & USB2 cables on the back.

ditto, and then rip your music onto a usb thumbnail drive or solid state drive and hook up to usb2, in the glove box. 

With that being said what is the preferred format [Fat32 or NTFS] for playing media off of an external hard drive and the storage capacity?  I understand there are some power constraints as you get larger drives. Also, does the 8100 nex understand id3 tags so I can sort my music by artist, genre, etc.  I have all my music categorized in folders where each album is it's own folder. so you will find Micheal Jackson - Thriller as one folder...Just trying to save me the headache of transferring my music to an external device only to find out that it won't work.  Right now all my music is on my iPod Classic 160gb and the interface is nice.  I wish I had bought another to keep as a backup.

I have found that fat32 works best for me. I have an intel 480gb solid state drive, and a 240 gb Samsung 840 pro Solid state drive. I have all my music in mp3 form at highest bitrate, and a lot of music in flac form. I store ripped dvd's on the 480gb, and all my music is on the 240gb. I also reformatted a 256gb PNY SDCARD to fat32, and it has about 200 or so ripped dvd's stored on it. I know the largest sdcard that is supported by pioneer nex is 32gb, because anything larger is formatted exfat, and nex only supports fat32 or ntfs. Your nex will sort by Artist, Album, Song and genre. Does not support playlists. When I ripped my songs to lossless (flac), i added my own album cover, since some did not show up. I think you will be fine using the iPod classic instead of ssd, I have a large collection of ripped dvds, because i installed headrest monitors for my 3 and 4 year old girls, and with dual zone, they can watch movies(with headphones) while i am listening to music. I recommend solid state drives over regular hard drives, because of their ability to take shock, and their power requirements are less than spinning discs. I will also say, there are people that have 1tb spinning disc drives and no problems. Just remember there is a limit of size per file 4gb, and limit of total files 15000, per disc. No problem when it comes to songs, because songs are usually no where near 4gb in size, whereas movies can be large. Someone said that you could not use iPhone and iPod at the same time, but not sure about that. I use iphone6 on usb1 and ssd on usb2. I also know the music on iPod is lossless (apple's own) and it should sound great. If you transfer to ssd, make sure you transfer at highest bitrate.