Sansa Clip+ fills itself up, free space vanishes

[physalis]

Since I updated to Rockbox 3.8. (same with 3.8.1), everytime I plug the Sansa Clip+ in to a PC, around 400 MB of formerly free space have disappeared. I have to erase album files to free space, but then the same thing happens again until the disc is full.

I checked trash, hidden files, temp files ... nothing that could explain the mysterious decrease - and it is highly annoying, as I frequently use the recording function, which of course doesn't record anything if the device is full.

I do not use the database at all, have never initialized it.

This only happens on the Sansa's internal disc itself, not on any Micro SDs.

Any help? Thanks in advance.

[Chronon]

Check the file system for errors.

[physalis]

Superstupid question: How? With a disk utility or the like?

[AlexP]

Yes, chkdsk on Windows and fsck.vfat on Linux.

[physalis]

Thanks for the fast and effective answer! Did that, found errors in FAT & repaired, but it happened again. Wiped the whole player, formatted it and re-installed RB from scratch, now it seems to work, indicated free space remains the same.

Could it be that the problem was somehow caused by non-sound files on the disc (like cover jpgs etc. in album folders)? It seems that RB has difficulties with some of them, I have experienced crashes or other strange behaviour before.

[Chronon]

I suppose it's possible, but it seems more likely that the crashes were the result of trying to read data from a corrupt file system.