Need reliable protocol to create playlists that play and survive robustly on external cards switched back and forth between two Sansa clip+s without involving internal drive. How can this be done? If it can’t I’m through with this, what’s the point of the external drive if you can’t make playlists? What is another device by another manufacturer that is lightweight and will do this? Thanks.
People have posted thusly here–did you try a search using the search box at the upper right, and in the SanDisk Knowledgebase (I could swear I have seen instructions there).
I don’t use playlists but…
If this is the most important function for you, and you are comfortable with computer geekness, your best bet is probably Rockbox, the alternate firmware.
I don’t know if it will give you completely portable playlists–i.e., you can just move the card–but it does make playlists that access both internal and external memory. You’d have to look at Rockbox to see whether or not you have to put those playlists in the internal memory.
There’s also this from the technically inclined folks at anythingbutipod, don’t know if it will help.
M3u playlists are the format you want (not .pla). These get stored in the Music folder, and not the Playlist folder on the player. So you can create a playlist of songs located on an external memory card, store the playlist file in the same Music folder (as the song files themselves) on the card, and they should work reliably regardless of which player the card is inserted in.
Note this won’t work with songs from both memory locations (in the same playlist). For that, you need to use .pla format.
Here is a step-by-step tutorialI wrote some time ago here to create playlists using Winamp. While I use a PC, there is a Mac version of Winamp as well. It may help do what you want. The procedure should be the same, or at least similar enough for you to adapt it.
Hope this helps. 
