I use the built in GPS in my truck a lot. It has proven to be better than mu Garmin Nuvi, Google maps, Waze, Google Earth, or the Maps app on my phone. My biggest problem with the phone apps is that they seem to keep changing the interface. For example, it used to be easy to find the latitude and longitude of a building and navigate to it. Now I have to search for that functionality - sometime unsuccessfully.
Anyway - I got an email letting me know an update to the Sync 3 map update was available for my truck. I could either take the truck to the dealer, order installation media delivered to me, or download and install the software. Download and install appealed to me because it's immediate and cost less.
I went ahead and downloaded the software and copied it to a 64G thumb drive I had handy. Plugged the drive into the USB port and - nothing!
Nothing happened. The truck never attempted to read the drive. I knew the port worked because I could plug my phone into it and everything worked as it should.
I went into the setup menu and changed several things to no avail. Finally I performed a master reset to return everything to factory settings. This also deletes all your favorites and contacts. Not necessarily a bad thing after three years of accumulated junk. But, it didn't solve the problem.
Finally I decided to try a smaller thumb drive. The instructions call for at least a 20G drive so I grabbed a 32G drive.
Copied everything over to it, plugged it in and voila! Installation started right up and ran without a hitch.
So if you decide to update your Sync Navigation, save yourself some trouble and use a 32 gig thumb drive to begin with.
I upgraded from NA 1 15 to NA 1 19.

 

I wonder if the other drive was corrupt ?

 

Or had the wrong file system on it?

 

I recently completed my GPS update with a 128gb SanDisk Cruzr flash drive. Guessing your issue wasn't related to the size of the drive.

 

It’s always best to use one dedicated thumb drive for SYNC 3 updates and put nothing else on it.

 

The thumb drive has to not have any other files on it other than the map update.

 

Did this actually give you an update to the maps or just the operating system?
Gary

 

I have several devices that use SD cards, every one is limited to a 32GB card.

As to map updates, I stopped doing that a long time ago. The map updates don't really seem that current, especially when new interchanges that are 5+years old don't show up.
My current truck was built December 2010, still using the original map. We travel a lot with the RV and never had any real issues other then the occasional "incomplete map data area" message.

On my wife's 2020 Explorer our house address doesn't show up, in a development subdivided in 2009 and the house was built in 2012.

Hopefully later this month I will be updating the map to the current version though.

 

It was probably the file system type of that USB Drive. It has to be exFAT.

https://help.ford.com/update-sync/usb/