Sansa e200v2 (e280v2): file transfer problems in Rockbox, works in OF

[Zakalwe]

(I had an earlier thread on this, but the info I had there was misleading.)

I have a Sansa e280v2. When running Rockbox, transferring files to the player via USB will fail after a while, typically after 120MB give or take, but I have managed up to 700MB once. The player seems to unmount from the computer, or it still shows up but as empty, and I have to unplug and reconnect.
This does not happen when booted into the original Sansa firmware.

It makes no difference whether I write to the internal 8GB or a microSD card.
Rockbox versions: I have tried recent dev builds, 4.0, 3.15, and a number of older builds down to 3.7.1, all have the same issue.
I have tried this on several computers, with Ubuntu, Mint, and Windows.

I am puzzled by how it works with the OF, which indicates that it is not a hardware fault. I mean, if it is random I guess in theory the OF might fail after a while as well, but I have transferred 60,000 files/500GB in one go with the OF, without error, so it seems unlikely given how early Rockbox fails. For what it is worth, file transfers in the OF are also a bit faster (3.9MB/s vs 3MB/s in RB).

Is this expected behaviour? The device status page says USB works on the e200v2.

I can use the OF for file transfers, but it has that pesky database refresh that I cannot avoid entirely - I can force-turn off the player after the transfer to interrupt the refresh, but next time I boot it into the OF it will refresh (for hours...). Is there some way to get around this? Then I could "live" with the situation. 

[bahus]

Yes, I can confirm that USB is unstable with my e200v2 in rockbox and works fine in OF. Though, it doesn’t bother me much—I simply use a USB 3.0 card reader for file transfers to my SD card, which provides reliable 50+ MB/s write speed. I also avoid using the internal memory to minimize flash wear.


What does bother me - unstable writes on SD card by rockbox itself. Does it work reliably for you? Can you for instance copy/paste inside rockbox some big amount (500Mb+) of data on your SD card. In my case e200v2 crashed with 100% certainty. And sometime crashed even on bookmark creation. I was able to fix it in my custom build but I wonder if it's a general issue or some specific quirk with my device (I had to unboost cpu in case of write errors)

[Zakalwe]

Yes, I can confirm that USB is unstable with my e200v2 in rockbox and works fine in OF. Though, it doesn’t bother me much—I simply use a USB 3.0 card reader for file transfers to my SD card, which provides reliable 50+ MB/s write speed. I also avoid using the internal memory to minimize flash wear.

Thanks, good to hear that it does not look like something that is just messed up on my side. I also use a dedicated card reader for larger transfers, but I often do smaller changes (new albums), so in principle I would find it convenient to be able to do this directly in the device. It is not a "dealbreaker", but if anyone happens to know a way to fix the issue, that would be neat.

Agreed on avoiding the internal memory, I only really tested it there to rule out that it was exclusively an SD card issue.

What does bother me - unstable writes on SD card by rockbox itself. Does it work reliably for you? Can you for instance copy/paste inside rockbox some big amount (500Mb+) of data on your SD card. In my case e200v2 crashed with 100% certainty. And sometime crashed even on bookmark creation. I was able to fix it in my custom build but I wonder if it's a general issue or some specific quirk with my device (I had to unboost cpu in case of write errors)

Oh, I am a rather basic user it seems, I had not even noticed there were copy/paste capabilities in Rockbox. But I will test this and get back to you.

[Zakalwe]

What does bother me - unstable writes on SD card by rockbox itself. Does it work reliably for you? Can you for instance copy/paste inside rockbox some big amount (500Mb+) of data on your SD card.

Oddly enough that seemed to work alright for me. I copied around some 1.1GB, testing different directions (SD->SD, SD->internal, internal->SD), no crashing. Now that I think of it, it was a folder of mp3s, i.e. small files - I will try with some big file as well.

[bahus]

Oddly enough that seemed to work alright for me.

Just means it's some hardware issue in my unit. No need in further testing - filesize doesn't matter. Thanks for testing!