I purchased my SanDisk Clip+ a few months ago and am utterly frustrated with it. I am not sure whether part of the problem is that I use Mac rather than PC. First, I have never been able to get the Clip+ to accept more than about 40 songs. Although the music folder appeared to contain over 150 songs, only about 40 would play. I went to troubleshooting and got the impression it had something to do with iTunes limiting the number of times a song could be copied to other devices, but I’m not sure that’s right. Several times I have tried deleting all the music and recopying with other music but I never have better luck gettin more music on the device.
After fiddling around with it some more, the Clip+ says "Not enough space for music DB - but there isn’t any music on the device. I’ve tried resetting to factory defaults. I am at my wit’s end. I want to make this work because I like the way the device works and sounds and I want to avoid iPods and iTunes and get out from under Apple’s thumb.
How can I make this work and how can I download music from another source? I’m not entirely technically inept, but I’m definitely not an uber savvy tech person either.
thanks to anyone who can help.
If you do a search here, you’ll find various posts about the little games that a Mac plays with non-Mac devices. Basically, as I understand it, the Mac, when transfering files, also leaves behind little admin. “ghost” files that can chocke a device like a camera, audio player, etc. The easiest way to handle it seems to be to use software to transfer from a Mac, such as Hidden Cleaner (freeware), which handles that situation.
If you do a search on Hidden Cleaner or KopyMac (a similar software, but no longer available) here (use the search box at the top right) you’ll learn more about this issue and other ways to handle it, including using the “Mac OS teminal emulator” (or something like that). But Hidden Cleaner seems the cleanest way to go.
Also, before trying the solution, recommended that you clean your player up from those ghost files–easiest way to do that is to re-format it under the player’s System settings (but note: this will erase your content on the Clip–transfer anything you ant to save to your computer first, if possible).
The “not enough space” message often means there’s a corrupt file on the internal memory. One thing that often fixes it is to run Windows error-checking, assuming you have a friend with a PC.
On the unit go to Settings/System Settings/USB Mode and make it MSC (which is the mode the Mac will use anyway).
Connect to a Windows computer. Look for the Clip listed as a disk drive. Right-click on it, Properties/Tools (a tab)/Error-Checking. That can fix a bad file.
While you’re hooked up to Windows, search the unit for folders named MACOSX. Those are the little ghost files–Mac calls them Finder files–that are only 1kb in size with names like ._.01-FirstSong.mp3. The Sansa sees the .mp3 file type and tries to play them, but there is nothing in them to play, and it doesn’t like that very much. You should delete all the MACOSX folders from the unit. (Leave them on your computer–it needs them.) You could also search the unit for DSStore, more little Mac files that the Sansa doesn’t use.
If that doesn’t fix it, you could wipe it clean and start again, but make sure your files are backed up.
Resetting to factory defaults only changes settings like language, USB Mode, etc. It is not back to zero. For that you need to Format either with the unit itself–Settings/System Settings/Format–or via Windows (right-click and Format…to FAT32). Don’t format it with the Mac!
This could be a result of “bad” tag encoding. Sansa products are known to be picky about how the tags are saved. You should try re-saving the tags with a tag program that uses ISO 8859-1 encoding. I recommend Kid3, as it uses this format by default.
Thank you for the helpful advice in language I could understand. I attached the Cliq to my husband’s Window’s laptop and cleaned up the device. I don’t know what was on it, but it really had no space. I formatted it, now it no longer is full of whatever was in ther (though I never found any files named MACOSX) and all appears well. Now I just need to get music on there from a different source - I don’t know whether to try Amazon or Google as I have music on both.
thanks again!
I don’t know the process of creating a special group, like one for the Clip Zip, but one is obviously needed for Mac users since that platform seems to present special problems.
I know nothing about the Mac, but am willing to bet if you were using an IPOD or whatever their brand of music player is called there wouldn’t be a problem.
Yep–Macs, at times, just don’t play nice with non-Apple devices. Extra care definitely is warranted.
“I don’t know whether to try Amazon or Google as I have music on both.”
Either of those should work. They both use mp3.
Music you were getting from the Mac may have been the .m4a or .m4p or other Apple proprietary files sold through iTunes. The Clip wouldn’t list them because it can’t play them–so it could look empty on its own screen but still be full of music.
iTunes also plays .mp3s, though Apple steers you to its own formats. Using iTunes, if you highlight a song (or an album full of them) and go to Advanced you can find Create Mp3 version. That will make an mp3 copy that the Sansa will digest more easily.
If you’re ripping actual CDs through iTunes, you can also set it permanently–they keep moving around the path to the settings in different versions, but it’s somewhere under Importing–to rip to mp3 as a default.
