folder limitations

MP3 players Sansa Fuze
1

I have 02.02.26 running on a 4GB Fuze.  I only use it as a USB Mass Storage Device (Linux is the host for syncs).

I’ve only been using it to contain folders of albums under the pre-made MUSIC folder. I have about 40 folders now.  It seems that

sometimes I go to add a folder, and everything seems to add fine, I unmount (or sometimes called sync and unmounted) the

Fuze, but when I go to use it, the new folder isn’t present.

Are there any limitations to the number of folders that can be made under MUSIC? Last time, I thought maybe that

was the problem, and removed a couple of folders, and renamed and rewrote the latest one, and it worked.  So not

sure if it was just a fluke, or whether there’s a real (and kind of small) limit to the folder count.

There’s still plenty of disk space on the Fuze, BTW.

Thanks! 

2

On the Fuze itself in folder mode, the player will only show folders that contain files that are in a format that the Fuze supports. There is no stated limit to the number of folders that can be used on the Fuze, as this will vary. The limit is on the size of the song database, which depends on the number of songs, the size of the path names, and the size of all the tags.

3

Indeed.  Subfolders is just what Windows Media Player plops into the music folder, one folder for each artist, and I have over a thousand in there.

Mounted in linux as a mass storage device, you should have no problems. 

Bob  :wink:

4

Thanks all – the files are in the right format – confirmed with the file util on both

the host and fuze after copying.  After tinkering with more writes, it does look

like one problem directory.

I’m going to play with renaming the directory and copying in one file at a time.

Shame there’s not diagnostic capability – like dumping the DB back out, or having

a trace of the refresh calculations?

5

Actually, there is one possibility if your files cannot be found, the Sansa likes to append the music database to save time during the refresh.  This allows the possibility of an elusive error sending you for a loop.

You can correct this issue by deleting the mtable.sys file from the root.  This is the music database file.  If deleted, the Sansa builds a new one from scratch.  Folder view also uses this file.

Bob  :wink:

6

Sounds like a good tip.  So …mount the fuze, remove the mtable.sys at the top level, and when i unmount and unplug, the DB

will be rebuilt then?

Can’t wait to try it when i get back to my home compter tonight. :) 

7

Yes, that’s all there is to it!  Pretty cool, huh?  The first database refresh will just take a wee bit longer.

Bob  :stuck_out_tongue:

8

Thanks.  The .sys file did in fact recreate itself fine.  That didn’t fix the problem, but maybe

I do see the problem now – one direct seems horribly corrupt.  If i cd into it and ls it goes

nuts, and I can’t recursively delete the directory.  It actually ends up (somehow) write-protecting

itself in that case.

I was desparate enough to boot vista to see what i could do, but it’s not seen as another drive

in that case, and I can’t even see my folders – assuming that M$ specific protocol took

over since I saw the demo music only.

So what i really want is a chkdisk or somesuch – something short of blanking the whole

thing.

9

Are your folders very heavily nested? How many songs do you have? There is a limit to the size of the music database, and if there are too many songs then some won’t be seen by the player. Are your tags in in order?

if there are problems with your tags, it is possible the files might not be seen in folder browsing mode either, since folder browsing mode on the Fuze is not true folder browsing.

10

I had about 1 folder with 2 subfolders in it, so no, I wasn’t that nested.

After finding fsck.vfat on Linux, things ended up going wrong, so I had to make a new filesystem. It may not be QUITE
back to the original contents (with the demo stuff), but after some hacking about I seem to have it working again.
And now I’ll know how to do it again if the filesystem gets corrupt again. I suspect a session wtih my laptop
was interrupted – judging by which folder was corrupt.

Thanks, all!