Sansa e280, repartition fat32 & ext2, speed up database refresh

[jimbolaya]

I'm wondering if I can reformat my 8Gig Sansa drive to say 1Gig fat32 and the remainder as ext2. My hope is that the database refresh of the original firmware will only look at the 1Gig partition and ignore the ext2 partition. That would speed the refresh up. My music files would be on the ext2 partition. Does anyone have any thoughts or experience here? Thanks.

[krazykit]

Rockbox only supports FAT.

edit: and by FAT I meant FAT16 and FAT32.  Supporting only FAT12 would be silly.

[scorche]

Well, FAT16, FAT32, etc...

[e280ruser]

If you want to speed up the refreshing of the database, convert your files to a format that is unsupported in the original firmware.  I recently converted my collection to ogg to reduce disk usage, and have noticed that the database refreshes in 2-3 seconds.  Of course, then you can not play them in the original firmware, but then again, if you were planning on putting your music on an ext2 partition, I guess that you don't use the OF, except for data transfer and charging.  Also, why would you use ext2?  Ext3 is pretty much the same thing but with better data integrity  due to journalization.  If you really would prefer this method, then maybe you could write a patch to allow for different filesystem support in Rockbox, although this may require quite a bit of knowledge in the C language and a lot of work.  Good luck

[Chronon]

Well color me confused.  Why would the speed that Rockbox updates its database depend upon whether a given set of files is or isn't supported by the OF?

[AlexP]

It is the OF that updates it's database.  Sansa users have to use the OF to transfer music because of the current lack of Rockbox USB mode.

[bascule]

e280user has grasped the gist of the question.

No, you cannot put your music on an ext2/3 partition because then Rockbox would not be able to access it.

Does the Sansa OF db refresh really make that much difference to the start-up? Personally, Im just waiting for the USB stack work to be finished and a Rockbox native USB mode to be available...

[senab]

Incidentally by simply having MP3's with ID3v1 tags make them unreadable in the OF. The OF only supports MP3 with ID3v2.3 only.

[saratoga]

e280user has grasped the gist of the question.

No, you cannot put your music on an ext2/3 partition because then Rockbox would not be able to access it.

Does the Sansa OF db refresh really make that much difference to the start-up? Personally, Im just waiting for the USB stack work to be finished and a Rockbox native USB mode to be available...

Its infuriatingly slow.

[Chronon]

It is the OF that updates it's database.  Sansa users have to use the OF to transfer music because of the current lack of Rockbox USB mode.

That makes sense.  

Hmph.  That's a mighty inconvenience -- much more so than the iPods.

[cpchan]

If you want to speed up the refreshing of the database, convert your files to a format that is unsupported in the original firmware.  I recently converted my collection to ogg to reduce disk usage, and have noticed that the database refreshes in 2-3 seconds.  

This is exactly what I do.

Ext3 is pretty much the same thing but with better data integrity  due to journalization.  If you really would prefer this method, then maybe you could write a patch to allow for different filesystem support in Rockbox, although this may require quite a bit of knowledge in the C language and a lot of work.  Good luck

ext3 would be sweet.

Charles

[AlexP]

Ext3 is pretty much the same thing but with better data integrity  due to journalization.  If you really would prefer this method, then maybe you could write a patch to allow for different filesystem support in Rockbox, although this may require quite a bit of knowledge in the C language and a lot of work.  Good luck

ext3 would be sweet.

Note however it is unlikely this would get into Rockbox.  Despite the shortcomings of FAT32 it is read/write on all operating systems and the extra overhead and complexity of adding another filesystem is unikely to be worth it.  Still, if someone wants to code it up, feel free!

[dara.parsavand]

The database update is incredibly annoying for me too.  I've gotten in the habit of expecting a big lag the next time I want to use the USB transfer and leave it sitting on my desk for 5 minutes after booting the OF before plugging in (after disconnecting, there is no wait since the Rockbox Firmware loads).  I stupidly thought I could put my files outside the Music directory but of course that doesn't help.  About 1/2 my files are ogg and 1/2 mp3 and I'm too lazy to rerip the latter half.  Does it really work if I convert all my tags to an earlier version (which probably would work for me - heck, I use the File Browser mode mostly anyway - I'd consider stripping out the tags completely).  Has anyone wrote a script to convert tags?

I had read about the long lag on Amazon, so I knew before purchasing - went for the 8 gigs anyway.  If  I were to do it again, I'd have probably gotten 2 gigs and waited for a better player, this one has some other quirks such as the headphone jack  pushing a huge charge into the headphones when plugging in (don't wear them on your head if you plug your device in when it is on).  The buttons on the outside of the scroll wheel are pretty hard to press too.  But the sound is pretty good (not amazing), and so is the screen and I love being able to customize the Rockbox firmware (like turning off the ridiculously bright backlight on the scroll wheel).  Since this unit looked like the obvious FLASH choice, I went for it.  I am so looking forward to the day Rockbox supports USB transfer (if it doesn't happen in a few years, hopefully there will be another device on the market that is fully supported).

Dara

[cc]

About 1/2 my files are ogg and 1/2 mp3 and I'm too lazy to rerip the latter half.

One idea: You could buy a 4GB MicroSDHC card and put the mp3's on that - the original firmware doesn't support 4GB cards, but rockbox does.

[scharkalvin]

One idea: You could buy a 4GB MicroSDHC card and put the mp3's on that - the original firmware doesn't support 4GB cards, but rockbox does.

Well yes but you'd have to have an SDHC card reader/writer to do that since the Rockbox port doesn't support USB yet and the OF doesn't support SDHC.
So there isn't a way to WRITE to the card when it's plugged into the Sansa!