Slow filetransfer Ubuntu => Sansa E260

[tdb]

Hi,

Just received my refurbished A260 v1 and installed rockbox right away. I've noticed it took a while for Ubuntu 8.10 to find the device and show its content.
After installing rockbox, I tried to send some files from PC to A260. It takes for ever to transfer though. It transfers in buckets of +-30 MB and then waits a while. Takes about 20 minutes to transfer 500 Mb.

My clip transfers a *lot* faster.

Any ideas?

[saratoga]

You could try the retail firmware and see if its any faster.

[tdb]

You could try the retail firmware and see if its any faster.

Thanks!

With the retail firmware it does 4.2 MB/s so there seems to be a bug in Rockbox or bootloader. I am using the stable version of rockbox and the bootloader I downloaded from here. http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/sandisk-sansa/sansapatcher/linux32x86/sansapatcher 
 

[saratoga]

Try updating rockbox to todays build and see if it improves.

[tdb]

After transfering a huge directory (>1Gb) with the retail firmware and restarting, rockbox appeared with can't load rockbox.mi4 etc messages.
Mounting the E260 confirmed this, there was no .rockbox directory in the root directory. Completely vanished!
So I copied the latest build in the root directory and rebooted. Same result. No .rockbox directory.
I am wondering if my flash memory is corrupt and giving me a hard time.

Even recordings aren't saved... 

[LambdaCalculus]

By default, Linux (and any Unix) will consider any files or folders beginning with a . to be "hidden" files. So you may still have the .rockbox folder on your player, but you just can't see it normally.

If you run "ls -al" in a terminal (without the quotes), you should be able to see if the folder is there or not.

[tdb]

Yep I know how the hidden files work I'm using linux for a couple of years now.
It's really not there anymore.
Just been playing with fsck.vfat:

---------------
sudo fsck.vfat -a /dev/sdd1
dosfsck 2.11, 12 Mar 2005, FAT32, LFN
There are differences between boot sector and its backup.
Differences: (offset:original/backup)
  71:53/4e, 72:61/4f, 73:6e/20, 74:73/4e, 75:61/41, 76:20/4d, 77:65/45
  , 78:32/20, 79:36/20, 80:30/20
  Not automatically fixing this.
/dev/sdd1: 402 files, 694691/974659 clusters
------------
I might change the boot sector. I have the option between 1) Copy original to backup
or 2) Copy backup to original with fsck.vfat -r

I don't want to do any experimenting without some solid advise. This territory is too advanced for me.

[Edit]

Just also tried to add a file and install the latest firmware from sandisk. The same situation as with linux, it appears everything is transfered and ok. After reboot none of the files are present.

Also tried to format, but even that fails... (message can't finish format in Windows)

Is this my last option? http://fixmysansa.blogspot.com.  If that is the case then I probably have a new worldrecord in bricking an E260.

[Edit 2] Had some nice chat on IRC but nobody could help me. Just remembered something else that I thought was strange. On the E260 was a directory (music) with songs on it. These songs were visible in the OF but not in rockbox. I deleted the directory in Linux, but the directory re-appeared after rebooting in OF without any files in it.
 
[Edit 3] and another test. I tried to install the new sansa bootloader and also uninstall the bootloader. http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=22130.0 Failed in both cases. 

[Chronon]

Maybe formatting using these instructions will have better results than using Windows.

[tdb]

Maybe formatting using these instructions will have better results than using Windows.

Yes also done that. Doesn't work as well, hangs in the writing image step after formating.
After rebooting nothing has changed. I'm beginning to think this is a hardware issue.
 

[tdb]

I have returned my previous E260 and just received a 'new' refurbished E260. The same problem occurs with this device. Very very slow filetransfer.
Because I am really afraid I will break the flash memory (and my E260) again, so I started using a small micro sd card (1 GB).

Also very bad filetransfer rates. I am going to try to transfer some bigger files with the OF in a couple of minutes. Still need to wait 20 minutes to transfer 200 Mb. On my previous E260 I interrupted file transfer and after that my device became 'read only' and useless...

My question is this. Could Rockbox be responsible for breaking my previous E260? If so, what can I do to prevent it from happening again, now I see the same symptoms with another E260.   



 

[Chronon]

I haven't seen reports of Rockbox's USB mode causing problems since it was enabled and I haven't experienced problems, myself.  Slower transfer speeds (compared to the OF) are to be expected, but this obviously doesn't explain your previous trouble.  You are also seeing much lower transfer rates than you should get, even with the OF.  Maybe some factor like a bad cable/port is giving flaky connection while you are trying to move data.  Intermittent disconnection while mounted as a UMS device can lead to file system damage as well, which seems consistent with some of your previous symptoms.

[tdb]

I haven't seen reports of Rockbox's USB mode causing problems since it was enabled and I haven't experienced problems, myself.  Slower transfer speeds (compared to the OF) are to be expected, but this obviously doesn't explain your previous trouble.  You are also seeing much lower transfer rates than you should get, even with the OF.  Maybe some factor like a bad cable/port is giving flaky connection while you are trying to move data.  Intermittent disconnection while mounted as a UMS device can lead to file system damage as well, which seems consistent with some of your previous symptoms.

Thanks, I have experienced more problems after this comment and I think my cable could indeed be the problem. I saw  connect + disconnect messages during file transfer and connection breaks sometimes. 
Will not use usb connection to store anything on my e260 again... I am using a cardreader to write directly to the sd card.
 
So my problem still is not solved, but I will buy a new cable to see if this helps. For now I will not modify internal memory. Better safe than sorry