My Sansa Fuze 32Gb External Card Crucible....

MP3 players Sansa Fuze
1

Wow.  What a painful journey this has been. 

Don’t get me wrong - over the past few years I have liked my Sansa Fuze, however, I do have issues with claims of it being able to fully support a 32 GB external card. 

I have an 8gb player and purchased a 32Gb microSDHC card after reading on the Sansa Fuze site that it will support one.  Well, that is sort of a half-truth.  The Sansa Fuze will support a 32GB, but not fully. 

Yes, my player is from 2008 and still works fine, however, the firmware and player will not fully utilize the entire memory provided by an addtional 32 GB card when combined with the player’s internal 8Gb card.

I have editited tags to the bare minimum and my player has now topped out at about 6090 songs.  And I have had to tweak this player all I knew in order to get it there.  I had to quit using playlists and resort to using the names of artists and genres to act as pseudo-playlists. (For example, because I have a large number of songs from compilation cds, I found if you tagged your true favorites like 00 Springsteen or 00 Young, these will show up first on the Artist list; the same with Genre - 00 Zydeco, 00 Jazz, 00 Blues, et cetera).  If you have too much data on the player, your playlists WILL disappear. 

I’ve tried MTP and MSC to put music on the player, too.  I did find you get more workable data on the player by use of MSC, but still, after getting to about 10 GB of space left, issues started to arise.  Tag editing had to start and then songs would copy to the player, but not show up on the player.  On top of that, use of Media Monkey shows the songs to be there; the player just does not notice them.

So my suggestion to people would be - STOP at a 16Gb card; a 24GB card would probably be the perfect limit, but this player will not FULLY utilize a 32 GB card (I guess maybe it would if you had a ton of classical songs logging it at 30 minutes long or something, but other than that, regular songs will not show up properly).

And if you want to go to a player that will hold a larger library…look for a different player. 

I wish someone had of been able to tell me all this before hand because if I had of been told, I would have either sought a different player or maybe stuck with two Fuzes and two 16Gb cards and broke the music up by type or something. 

2

“And if you want to go to a player that will hold a larger library…look for a different player.”

Or install a different firmware.

Have you tried Rockbox?

www.rockbox.org

3

@eleellis wrote:

Wow.  What a painful journey this has been. 

 

Don’t get me wrong - over the past few years I have liked my Sansa Fuze, however, I do have issues with claims of it being able to fully support a 32 GB external card. 

I have an 8gb player and purchased a 32Gb microSDHC card after reading on the Sansa Fuze site that it will support one.  Well, that is sort of a half-truth.  The Sansa Fuze will support a 32GB, but not fully. 

 

Yes, my player is from 2008 and still works fine, however, the firmware and player will not fully utilize the entire memory provided by an addtional 32 GB card when combined with the player’s internal 8Gb card.

 

I have editited tags to the bare minimum and my player has now topped out at about 6090 songs.  And I have had to tweak this player all I knew in order to get it there.  I had to quit using playlists and resort to using the names of artists and genres to act as pseudo-playlists. (For example, because I have a large number of songs from compilation cds, I found if you tagged your true favorites like 00 Springsteen or 00 Young, these will show up first on the Artist list; the same with Genre - 00 Zydeco, 00 Jazz, 00 Blues, et cetera).  If you have too much data on the player, your playlists WILL disappear. 

 

I’ve tried MTP and MSC to put music on the player, too.  I did find you get more workable data on the player by use of MSC, but still, after getting to about 10 GB of space left, issues started to arise.  Tag editing had to start and then songs would copy to the player, but not show up on the player.  On top of that, use of Media Monkey shows the songs to be there; the player just does not notice them.

 

So my suggestion to people would be - STOP at a 16Gb card; a 24GB card would probably be the perfect limit, but this player will not FULLY utilize a 32 GB card (I guess maybe it would if you had a ton of classical songs logging it at 30 minutes long or something, but other than that, regular songs will not show up properly).

 

And if you want to go to a player that will hold a larger library…look for a different player. 

 

I wish someone had of been able to tell me all this before hand because if I had of been told, I would have either sought a different player or maybe stuck with two Fuzes and two 16Gb cards and broke the music up by type or something. 

 

 

 

Rockbox it and it will work just fine with a 32GB card. 

4

Or e-rip your low bit-rate files to a higher quality settiing, increasing the file size (and the total number of files) and it will also work. You’ve been told numerous times in other threads your problem is not with the Fuze and it’s ability to use a 32GB card, but with the number of files you are putting on the device/card combo.

Someone putiing only podcasts at 64kbps could experience the same thing you are with only a 16GB or possilby even an 8GB card. Again, yours is a software database limitation issue, not a hardware compatibilty issue.

Sandisk cannot predict or account for every contingency or situation someone may put their products through. The limit is there; you’ve exceeded it; SanDisk isn’t going to fix it (not with a discontinued for 2 years player anyway). It has nothing to do with their claim that 32GB cards are supported; they are.

You cannot fully use the available space based on the way you are using it. I understand your frustration, but you’re not the first to encounter it, and you seem intent on placing blame and making accusations that just are not true.

5

Or e-rip your low bit-rate files to a higher quality setting, increasing the file size (and the total number of filers) and it will also work. You’ve been told numerous times in other threads your problem is not with the Fuze and it’s ability to use a 32GB card, but with the number of files you are putting on the device/card combo.

Someone putting only podcasts at 64kbps could experience the same thing you are with only a 16GB or possibly even an 8GB card. Again, yours is a software database limitation issue, not a hardware compatibility issue.

Sandisk cannot predict or account for every contingency or situation someone may put their products through. The limit is there; you’ve exceeded it; SanDisk isn’t going to fix it (not with a discontinued for 2 years player anyway). It has nothing to do with their claim that 32GB cards are supported; they are.

You cannot fully use the available space based on the way you are using it. I understand your frustration, but you’re not the first to encounter it, and you seem intent on placing blame and making accusations that just are not true.

6

Or re-rip your low bit-rate files to a higher quality setting, increasing the file size (and the total number of filers) and it will also work. You’ve been told numerous times in other threads your problem is not with the Fuze and it’s ability to use a 32GB card, but with the number of files you are putting on the device/card combo.

  

You cannot fully use the available space based on the way you are using it. I understand your frustration, but you’re not the first to encounter it, and you seem intent on placing blame and making false accusations that just are not true.

7

Tapeworm,

Let’s see here…

I buy a product based on a compaby stating its product will “support” another product when it does not without taking on extreme measures. 

Yes, people have offered suggestions, but why should a consumer have to go through all those measures to get a product to funciton like a company states it will?

So far these are the things I have done to try and get this device to work:

-re-install firmware; re-format several times; syncing and re-syncing; using MSC; installing, removing, re-installing Rockbox (didn’t work for me); tried using Music Bee, WinAmp and Media Monkey (which I now use); have edited Tags (but who wants to remove an artists’ name from a song?!?!);

Then there has been the receiving of conflicting information here and there.  One Sansa technical support person replied to an email stating the Sansa Fuze would only allow TWO playlists - one on each memory location. Imagine that shock. 

Frankly, when a company makes a claim, that claim should not include going way beyond to get that claim to be fully accurate. 

So what I’m suggesting to people is DO NOT BUY A 32GB card for their Sansa Fuze.  Yes, it is “supported” but it does not fully work with the Sansa Fuze properly. And I do understand this is a relatively older player and appreciate that, but if SanDisk had stated in their literature that problems may arise with a 32GB card at certain memory levels, I WOULD NOT HAVE BLOWN MY MONEY ON A 32GB card!

And now you are suggesting to rip files at a higher rate to make them bigger so that you have fewer files on the Sansa Fuze.

8

@eleellis wrote:

 

 

 installing, removing, re-installing Rockbox (didn’t work for me)

I had it on three different Fuzes over the last few years…a V1 Fuze, and two V2 Fuzes, and I never had a bit of trouble…I wouldn’t use one without it, if i had one.

9

Re-ripping CD music at higher quality is a good idea.

Re-ripping a low-bitrate file to a high-bitrate file is a waste of space.

But really–you should retry Rockbox. It rarely gives people trouble. If it does give you trouble then its programmers should be able to help you.

Music Bee? Looks interesting.

As I explained elsewhere, there is a redundant tag called Album Artist, different from Artist or Album. You can see the field in mp3tag, and you can delete that without deleting Artist.

SanDisk probably should somehow explain that a 32GB card will tax the database capacity of its firmware. It probably could publish the actual character limit of its database. But it can’t really establish a number of songs, or files, or playlists, because those are so variable. And frankly I think it has moved on from the Fuze–not bothering with any further documentation, firmware updates. etc.

You can get a 16GB card nowadays for $5 plus shipping from Amazon. You could keep a couple of them in your wallet. If you are really desperate for a particular song you could swap a 16GB card in and out of the Fuze.

Or you can make Rockbox work. Probably with a much simpler fix than what you have already gone through.www.rockbox.org is very helpful.

There are a couple of ways to approach software/hardware. One is the aggrieved, they ■■■■, how dare they, they are personally trying to screw me approach.  The other is the amused, curious, wonder how this works, oh that’s a limitation, here’s an interesting problem, maybe there’s a workaround  method. That’s what the Rockbox folks do, and more power to them.

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