Music has disappeared.

Been using my Sensa Clip.  Then couple of weeks ago I plug the Clip into my computer to charge and also add music, only to find that most music has disappeared, leaving only a couple of albums.  However memory useage remains the same as before (4.6 gb used out of 7.5).  So the music must still be there somewhere, just not accessible.  Is there some way I can recover those albums?  TIA.

Disappeared form where? You can’t see your files while plugged inito your computer, or on the device itself?

That’s correct.  All files have disappeared either when I turn Clip on or when I plug Clip into the computer.  However it still shows memory used.  So right now 4 G is used out of 7G, but no files are visible.

Have you scrolled all the way down to Folders (second page past Album, Artist, etc.) to see if the folders are still there? It’s possible something happened to the tags but the files are stlil there. You can re-tag them with MP3tag, which has a nice Convert Filenames to Tags function. Search mp3tag and ISO-8859-1 for more information on installing mp3tag.

Or, if they’re not in Folders, go to Settings/System Settings/USB Mode.

Change to MTP, see if your computer sees the files. If not, go to the Recycle Bin and see if the files are there and you can restore them.

Change to MSC, see if your computer sees the files. Look in the Recycle Bin again. 

What’s USB Mode?

There are two USB Modes–two different pipelines from the computer. The Sansa doesn’t care how files got there, but the computer can only read one mode at a time. Files sent via MSC are invisible to MTP and vice versa. Switch modes and files disappear from your computer’s view–though they should still be visible on the Sansa.

You should also make sure your Windows Media Player is not set to automatically sync anything. Otherwise, in MTP or Auto Detect mode, it will try to make your Sansa match what’s on your computer–so if you deleted files from the computer, it will delete them from the Sansa too.  Better to use MSC always. No automation.

Thanks for your help.  Unfortunately none of those works.  I can load new albums and they now show up.  Just that the old files have disappeared.  I think my next move is to format it.

So…anyone has any other ideas before I format the unit and start all over again?

Formatting is probably easiest. But make sure it is changed in Settings/System Settings/USB Mode from Auto Detect to MSC. My guess is that some automation in MTP mode messed things up.