Mystery of the moving files

[edpatterson]

Greetings,

I have a sansa c250. I installed rockbox manually and everything went good. I had one audio book on the player at the time I installed. When I went to play the files I could not find them. Looking at the player from within Windows shows 300+ megs missing. This is the size of the book. I connected the player to charge the player. When I unplugged it it had reverted to the original OS and I could see and play my files. I restarted the player, rockbox loaded and the files are missing again.

Is this normal?

Ed

[zajacattack]

What format are the files?

Try doing Settings->General Settings->File View->Show Files->All

[MarcGuay]

Looking at the player from within Windows shows 300+ megs missing.

Not normal.  If the files are on the drive, your OS should know they're there.  What did you do to find out how much data was on the player?

When I unplugged it it had reverted to the original OS

Also not normal (unless you held the left/rew button while it was booting).  How did you install Rockbox?

[pixelma]

When I unplugged it it had reverted to the original OS

Also not normal (unless you held the left/rew button while it was booting).  How did you install Rockbox?

I'd probably describe it differently but on the c200s the orginal firmware - at least some of the versions - doesn't reboot automatically after the USB disconnect (and you'll get the "database refresh" immediately after the disconnect and not on USB connect). So it is normal for those to stay in the OF until you shut down, mine does as well with an old original firmware version 1.00.04....

edpatterson:
Just an idea: is there a possibility that you copied that one file over with your sansa in MTP mode? As far as I know that doesn't work with Rockbox though it still should report the used disk space correctly. And how did you get the information in Rockbox? I'm asking because the statistic in the Rockbox Info sometimes needs a manual refresh (press "select" when in the Rockbox Info screen, you'll get a short "Scanning disk..." splash).

[MarcGuay]

I'd probably describe it differently but on the c200s the orginal firmware - at least some of the versions - doesn't reboot automatically after the USB disconnect (and you'll get the "database refresh" immediately after the disconnect and not on USB connect). So it is normal for those to stay in the OF until you shut down, mine does as well with an old original firmware version 1.00.04....

Aha.  The more you know...

[edpatterson]

What format are the files?

MP3, each one is ~45 minutes long

Also not normal (unless you held the left/rew button while it was booting).  How did you install Rockbox?

No I did not hold any buttons. I plugged in the player and got the typical Connected screen. When I unplugged it the normal menu system was displayed. I selected Music, Album, the name of the book, the 1st file and it started to play.

I used windows explorer and checked the properties of the 'drive'. It shows 364 megs used. I can not find the files. Searching with windows explorer for *.mp3 does not show the files either.

I did the manual install, unzipped to the root of the player and installed the fonts. Then ran the boot loader utility.

One new thing is when I connect it to the USB port I get a nifty info screen that I did not get before. Since I can not find the files I can not delete them, I guess I could format the drive and start all over.

Ed

[MarcGuay]

Maybe pixelma's comments have some useful leads.  If you go to USB Mode in the Sansa firmware, is it set to MSC or MTP?  What does Windows call the player next to the drive letter?

[zajacattack]

Try running "chkdsk /r" on it to see if there are file system problems causing the files to disappear and reappear.

[Chronon]

ed,

do you recall how you transferred those files?  Were they synced using a program like WMP?  It sounds to me like pixelma's hunch about MTP mode is the most promising at this point.

You could purposely switch the player into MTP mode and then connect by USB.  If that's what happened then your missing files should be visible.

---

Do you use XP or Vista?

[edpatterson]

Mode: I have the option of Auto Detect and MSC. Under Auto detect I never got a drive letter, just the name. Under MSC I get the letter (I) named sansa c250.

I first used windows explorer to copy the files, received a warning about them not being compatible with the player so I used Windows Media Player to sync the files.

Were it not for the horror stories of folks using the format option and ending up with a brick I would simply format the thing and start over. It is not like it is a lot of work and there is no unique data on the device.

Ed

[Llorean]

Using Windows Media Player to sync them may have caused them to be transcoded and hidden, which may be the problem.

[edpatterson]

Meaning the only way to get rid of them is to format the drive, that is just plain silly. No wonder Rockbox is recommended so highly! What was Sansa thinking? Hide the files and not include native file copy/delete functionality.

Ed

[Chronon]

Have you tried connecting via MTP and Windows Media Player again?  If that's how you got them on, then it seems like a good idea to try to get them off via the same combination.

[edpatterson]

I used the Format option. Worked like a charm. I have reloaded Rockbox and believe it or not just finished reading the entire manual.

WOW! I have to go find the appropriate suck up discussion area and fawn over the features for a while. After of course I load up Doom and go looking for the German Shepards. I remember when Doom was THE game and everyone was playing L.O.R.D. on the BBS's.

Thanks for all the help, I am looking forward to some serious poking around.

Ed

[Chronon]

Have fun!!