Getting rid of pre-installed "bloat music" on Sansa

[tcrass]

Hi everyone,

meanwhile I've got my third Sansa player (all finally running Rockbox, of course), and all of them came with loads of pre-installed music and image/video files. Since I prefer to decide myself what to use the players' disk space for, I'd like to get rid of those files.

The funny thing is: both Rockbox and the original firmware allow to individually delete those files when browsing through the database, but I can't find them anywhere in the file system. (Even the 'find' command was unable to deliver what its name promises). Furthermore, even 'grep'ing through all files for, say, the title of one of those pre-installed songs didn't yield any result.

So I wonder whether anyone has a clue how SanDisk manages to hide their pre-installed files from being accessed through normal file system functions, and if there is a way to remove those files without formatting the whole disk.

Any ideas?

Best regards --

tcrass


P.S. In the root directory, the Rockbox file browser always displays folders with funny names like '##MUSIC##' and '##PORT##'. Any idea what these entries mean?

[AlexP]

Those funny named folders are put there by the Sansa firmware, I suspect your furtive files are in one of them with non obvious names (or extensions etc.)  You can just delete those directories (although the OF will recreate them if you boot it), maybe that'll flush out the songs too

[tcrass]

Alex,

You can just delete those directories (although the OF will recreate them if you boot it), maybe that'll flush out the songs too

I'd love to delte those directories -- if only I could find them! But a "find . -name '*#*'" in the Sansa's root directory, which should detect all files/directories containing at least one hash character, doesn't reveal anything...

Regards --

tcrass

[AlexP]

Why not just delete them from in Rockbox?

[tcrass]

Why not just delete them from in Rockbox?

Know what? While you wrote your last reply, I renamed those funny directories using the Rockbox file browser, and voily! they suddenly showed up when accessing the Sansa as USB drive! Still I'm somewhat puzzled why they were initially hidden at all -- can't be the hash characters, can they? I mean, I can even manually create a directory like '##MUSIC#' (leading to two directories of this name after the OF has recreated their special folders)... Seems the Sansa is doing something really nasty to the poor FAT file system.

But you where right -- the original ##MUSIC# folder did contain the pre-installed music, and deleting it wiped that unwanted stuff off the disk.

Thanks for taking the time to discuss this issue.

Best regards --

tcrass

[funman]

They are deleted by the OF when USB is plugged and recreated when unplugged.

If you power off the OF while it's still plugged and start rockbox you won't see them.

[tcrass]

Funman,

They are deleted by the OF when USB is plugged and recreated when unplugged.

If you power off the OF while it's still plugged and start rockbox you won't see them.

so far, so good -- but can you also tell me why those directories don't show up in a normal file browser (like Window Explorer or KDE Dolphin) or via ls -a /path/to/sansa/mountpoint?

Regards --

tcrass