Problem with long folder names on external uSD card / Clip+

MP3 players Sansa Clip | Clip+
1

I have encountered a problem with long folder names when stored on the external uSD card (does not appear to impact internal storage). I am wondering if there is a workaround to this problem, or other suggestions.

It appears that if the folder name is longer than 28 characters or so, the Clip+ prepends the name with a ‘random’ 8 character sequence and truncates a potion of the folder name. For example, ‘Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ is stored as ‘CBD70000_Harold Melvin & the Blue Not’ or something like that. This folder name mangling is also done when the album name (the subfolder) is similarly long. Normally I am downloading music via playlist (MTP mode - downloaded using MediaMonkey 3.2.0.1294), and this seems to work OK; the songs in these mangled named folders are found OK when I play the playlist on the Clip+. The problem occurs when I download the same playlist again (say, after adding more songs to the playlist). In this case the Clip+ sometimes (always?) chooses a different mangled name (such as ‘3FB10000_Harold Melvin & the Blue Not’), thus I get multiple copies of the same songs (wasting storage space in the uSD card). Oddly enough, I have also seen cases when a long folder name does NOT get mangled on external uSD (i.e. I have also see the non-mangled ‘Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ name in addition to the mangled version on the same uSD card).

One workaround I am considering is moving all my more ‘dynamic’ playlists to internal storage, and to use my external uSD card for the more static lists (that would not be modified and re-downloaded). But I would like to hear if anyone can suggest another fix/workaround. I have not tried reformatting the uSD card - is that worth trying? I did run a chkdsk on the uSD card and that indicated no errors.

Here is what I am running:

Clip+ 8GB, v01.02.15A

MediaMonkey 3.2.0.1294

Sansa 8GB, external uSD card

Thanks in advance for your help!

3

dbjord wrote:

I have encountered a problem with long folder names when stored on the external uSD card (does not appear to impact internal storage). I am wondering if there is a workaround to this problem . . .

 

Use MSC mode.

4

With regard to using MSC mode, I have not tried this mode recently, but was always under the impression that playlists are much harder manage and sync in MSC mode relative to MTP mode. Is that not the case? Sorry for the presumably dumb question - I know there are other threads that discuss this topic, but am having trouble sorting out the facts from the fiction.

BTW - I am using MediaMonkey (3.2) to sync.

5

I don’t use it myself, nor do I sync but I believe I have read here that you can use Media Monkey to sync in MSC mode. It can probably handle your playlists as well.

If not, there are ways to make playlists in MSC mode, just like there are ways to do it in MTP mode. It may not be quite as ‘automatic’ but it’s not hard. Neither for that matter is dragging & dropping the files you want from your computer to your player, but an awful lot of people are convinced they either can’t do it, or are too lazy to and prefer to have a software program do it for them.