e260v2 drag and drop after reformat

I’ve had my e260v2 for nearly 5 years now and have had little problems with it. A few years ago, it froze up and I had to reformat.  I was stupid and didn’t realize this would completely wipe the player clean to where I would have to reload all my music files.  After this, I got the bright idea that, after reloading the music, I would get a thumb drive and copy all my music files from the e260v2 to it.  That way, if this ever happened again, I would have a back up and reloading the player would be a simple matter of a drag and drop from the thumb drive to the player.  Sounds like a good idea, but here’s the problem I had…

I discovered, when I went to get the files from my thumb drive, they, for some reason had significantly increased in size.  For instance, a song file that was 2.53 MB had now increased to 3.27 GB (Yes, that’s with a “G”)!  If I were to transfer these files back to my 4.0 GB player, there wouldn’t be room for any more than one song.  The files are still mp3s.  I swear I did nothing to them but copy the files to the thumb drive.  I used no other program to do this, but opening the file folders and dragging them over.  Does anyone know what I might have done wrong, or how I can avoid this in the future?  I thought I was being so smart, but suddenly I find myself having to load these albums one at a time just like I did last time.  Thank for anyone’s help!

Probably a corrupted file system on the thumb drive. You can use windows to check the file system for errors, but if the thumb drive is dying you might not be able to recover the data.

The Sansa should be formatted as a FAT32 volume.

Errors like this can happen, as  saratoga suggests, if there is an error in the file allocation table. This is a record of all available memory blocks on any memory device. Essentially, think of it as the card catalog at your local library; it tells the computer where files are located, just like books on the shelf.

Using the computer, you can check the Sansa or the “thumb” drive fir errors in the FAT, and with a little luck, the errors can be fixed. Right click on the connected drive, select Properties, then the Tools tab. Select Check Volume For Errors from the menu.

This option is available if the device is recognized as a flash drive or mass storage device. If the Sansa is connected in MTP mode, as a portable device, the tools option will not be available. Unplug the Sansa and using its Settings menu, go to Settings > USB Mode and select MSC. After reconnecting, you can also repair the FAT on the Sansa if this is the  issue.

It can be a real can or worms if you try to perform a “mass transfer” of music files all at once, between a flash drive and the Sansa. I’ve always backed up files by transferring music in smaller groups.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy: