yes. i am using a thumb drive now with 600+ songs on it and it works like a charm. im looking into buying a much bigger pocket sized one now for more music and to put movies on it so i can watch through the blu ray players usb input.
check the specs on the unit, i have a jvc headunit with usb on the front, takes 8gig thumb drive, i tried putting a 16gb in there, and it wouldn't read all the albums\folders
I have a JVC HU...and a 100gb external drive formatted to FAT32 and it works fine...Just make sure the usb cable you use is sort of a thick gauge...i used a thin one and had issues with the disk spinning up....used a bigger gauge and now it spins up everytime.