E260 4GB SD card

Thanks everyone.

I posted the version we have in my original post - Ver 01.02.24A. Therefore, guess we cannot use the 4GB micro SD.

(I thought we might be able to update the version by downloading new version (firmware, etc.) from Sansa, that would allow us to use 4GB card, but guess not.)

Grandson did just purchase a 2GB micro SD from eBay, but I notice it says “SanDisk 2GB Micro SD Micro Mini Memory Card TF.” The “TF” I believe refers to “Transflash.” I hope he didn’t act too quickly and order the wrong thing (with TF)!

Alice

P.S.  When we look in Settings, we see nothing about SD ‘drive.’ Attahced the E260 to computer but do not see any other drive - just Sansa ‘drive.’ Guess that is because we have the 4GB SD card inserted in the Sansa, but it is not recognized.

Message Edited by bobbyz on 04-23-2010 05:26 PM

bobbyz wrote:

 

P.S.  When we look in Settings, we see nothing about SD ‘drive.’ Attahced the E260 to computer but do not see any other drive - just Sansa ‘drive.’ Guess that is because we have the 4GB SD card inserted in the Sansa, but it is not recognized.

 

Sounds more like your player is in MTP mode, rather than MSC which assigns 2 drive letters (Example - F: & G: ). The 1st one would be your player and the 2nd would be the memroy card slot. This happens whether there’s a card inserted or not.

Either that, or it’s possible you have a defective card slot which isn’t being recognized by your computer or player.

Yes, you did have the version in the original post. Sorry about that.

In Settings, USB Mode, change it to MSC and connect to your computer. See if two drives show, Sansa E260 and (next letter in the alphabet): Removable Drive.

Under Settings/Info you will see SD Drive listed if there is a (readable) card in the slot–otherwise not.

Good old Ebay listings. They probably mean Micro (does the photo look like the Micro card in Tapeworm’s pic?). Don’t worry about the TF–as long as it’s 2GB (and not a bad or counterfeit card) it should be fine.   

Thanks all.

I looked in the Settings/USB and see it is set to MSC.

I connected to notebook and saw drive F: had the Sansa, but no other drive after that. Funny thing though… For some reason I wiped both ends of USB ‘cable’ with a cloth and then reinserted and got a Windows pop-up stating "No disk in drive(no disk drive mentioned, but a small white/blank box)… and a question mark. Underneath: “Cancel / Try Again / Retry.” I clicked on Cancel and then I go the usual pop-up about how do you want to run, etc., which I closed.

But then I saw the drive G: was now showing. Maybe my cleaning off the ends of the USB cable did the ‘trick.’ I hope it did.

Think I might be spending too much time on this and will now wait to see what happens when grandson receives the 2GB micro he ordered.

Thanks so much for all your wonderful help.

Alice

SD card he ordered:

SanDisk 2GB Micro SD MicroSD Mini Memory Card TF 2 G GB

Message Edited by bobbyz on 04-23-2010 08:19 PM

 Sorry. Here is the image:

Alice

That’s the right card. Looks like it comes with a couple of adapters, too–SD and miniSD. Maybe your computer has a slot that takes one of them.

Just received the 2GB micro Sandisk we ordered. We put it into the Sansa and now we can see a Drive G: in Explorer (Drive F: being the Sansa). I transferred (copy/paste) some songs onto it and I could see they were transferred.
I unplugged from the USB port, but when the Sansa was turned on, I couldn’t see the new songs anywhere. The songs that were already on the Sansa were the only ones showing.

I thought as soon as I inserted the card into the Sansa, the Sansa would ‘automatically’ switch over to the card and just play the songs that were on the micro.

Should I have formatted the micro card? I didn’t think so and that is why I didn’t.
The version that shows in settings is: V1.02.24A, which I believe is latest. Set to MSC. When I insert card, it says “Refreshing Database.” And then Sansa screen opens and still original songs.
I am at a loss now as to what else to do… How to get Sansa to recognize the micro card (even though I can see it in Exploer as Drive G:.)

Alice

Add-On:

Just found the micro card on my Sanssa. I looked in the Albums and saw Unknown Album, and when I looked in there I see all the 12 songs I copy/pasted from computer to the Sansa. However, they only show as Track 1.mp3. I changed the names before the transfer, but the Track 1.mp3, etc. are still showing in the Sansa. When I attach the Sansa to the computer and look in Drive G: I see the names (of each song) as they should be.

Would you know why, when I disconnect the Sansa from computer and then look in Albums/Unknown Album and then the Track 1, Track 2, etc.?

Thanks

Message Edited by bobbyz on 04-27-2010 09:35 AM

bobbyz wrote:

Just found the micro card on my Sanssa. I looked in the Albums and saw Unknown Album, and when I looked in there I see all the 12 songs I copy/pasted from computer to the Sansa. However, they only show as Track 1.mp3. I changed the names before the transfer, but the Track 1.mp3, etc. are still showing in the Sansa. When I attach the Sansa to the computer and look in Drive G: I see the names (of each song) as they should be.

Would you know why, when I disconnect the Sansa from computer and then look in Albums/Unknown Album and then the Track 1, Track 2, etc.?

You need to edit the ID3 tags. MP3Tag is free and works great. In the Tools menu, set it to write ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 format and you’ll be good to go. :smiley:

Your computer sees file names, like 01-Artist-FirstSong.mp3 .

But the Sansa lists of Artist/Album, etc., are taken from electronic labels in the files called ID3 tags. Otherwise it’s Unknown because the Sansa can’t find those ID3 tags.

Mp3tag, as linked above,  will show you if those electronic labels are filled in. Otherwise, you have to fill them in yourself or get them online. 

When you install mp3tag, it asks to add itself to Context Menus. Allow that. When it installs, go to Tools/Options/Tags/Mpeg and change Write to ID3v2.3 ISO 8859-1.  Save that. Then find the album and right-click on it, and one of the options to open it wil be mp3tag. Open the album and you’ll see the list of song files. 

Either there are no tags for Artist/Album, etc., or–because there’s no fully standardized tag format–they are not in the format the Sansa reads: ID3v2.3 ISO 8859-1. (ISO 8859-1 just means Windows basic Roman alphabet.)

Most albums get tagged when they are ripped–converted to mp3. Looks like you got one that wasn’t, or has a different ID3 version. (There’s also v1, v2.1, v2.2 and v2.4.) 

If you see Artist, Album, Song Title, etc. already filled in, highlight them all and under File, Save Tag–and since you set the default, it will save them as ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1.

If they are not filled in, leave them all highlighted and type in Album and Artist yourself, in the boxes on the left, to add it to all the files.  (Save Tag.) Then under Tag Sources try Amazon. You might be able to get all the song titles filled in automatically that way. Or try freedb, also in the list.  

Also, with the files in order, under Tools look for Auto-Numbering Wizard. Make sure they are in playing order from top to bottom, and run the Leading Zeroes option to give you track numbers 01, 02, 03, which are best for the Sansa. I do that with every album before putting it on the Sansa. It takes 2 seconds or less. 

Message Edited by c1u31355 on 04-27-2010 02:33 PM

Thank you both.

c1u31355 …   Please, what do you mean by “When it installs, go to Tools/Options/Tags/Mpeg and change Write to ID3v2.3 ISO 8859-1”?

Where is the "Tools/Options, etc.?

What is “ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1” that is mentioned several times? Is that a program name or file name, etc.?

Alice

I should have said After you install it. Open it, look for Tools along the top and Options in the drop-down menu.

ISO-8859-1 is the way characters are put on the screen.  Your computer can handle various ways; Sansas like that one. It’s among the Options under Write. 

Thanks for all your kind help. I’ll try now to install the  Mp3tag and see what happens. I just don’t want to install a program that might damage my grandson’s computer.

I did rip an album today with the WMP10 and after some fiddling around, I got the songs onto the Sansa’s SD card along with the CD’s cover art, but just can’t get the album name to change. Oh well, at least I got the songs and artwork onto the card.

I’ll let you know how the Mp3tag installation and performance goes.

Thanks again.

Alice

(P.S. Didn’t get an email notice of your reply even though I had email reply checked, etc.)

Message Edited by bobbyz on 04-29-2010 08:23 PM

Normally, WiMP 10 will pull the album art and data automatically during the rip, as long as you have an active internet connection.  If it doesn’t, right click on the album image if blank (Library view), and select find album info.

A wizard will pop up, and you can go from there.  Once everything is updated, the ID3tag will be written in ID3v2.3 ISO8859-1 format as well.

If you choose to edit the tags using MP3Tag, once you select “write” to this format, all albums will automatically be written inb the correct format for you.

Feel free at ask here if you run into any hurdles!

Bob  :smileyvery-happy:

Thank you.

I did install the MP3tag and f9und it quite nice to use. However, there is one thing that continues to trouble us. One or two of the albums will not allow us to change their Album Name. We’ve tried everything we can think of (grandson and me).

When we look in the Sansa on the computer, it has the Album title we want, and when we look in th MP3tag, we see the correct title. However, when we look in the Sansa itself, we see the long title that we do not want.

CD title shows in Sansa: Among My Souvenirs.   In our computer Windows Explorer, it shows the way we want it to show: Connie Francis.

(Grandson put a few songs on the Sansa for me and his grandfather, and when we look in albums we would rather see Connie Francis (which let us know whose album it is), rather than “Amoung My Souvenirs” which doesn’t tell us who the singer is.

Another one shows in Sansa as: "The Ultimate Collection - Stand By Me -Best of Ben E. King/Ben E King with the Drifters.

Windows Explorer folder shows: Ben E. King (which is what we want)

Any ideas how to have Sansa show the album name the way we want?

Thank you for any help.

Alice

(P.S. Our WMP 10 is not copying the album info and art when we rip. Maybe something I am doing wrong. All very new to me, as you can tell.)

Interesting!  WiMP 10 should do the tag automatically, including the album art.  Yoiu could try the si,plest upgrade, go to Help > Check For Updates, and upgrade to WiMP 11.  I’ve found it to be a bit smoother than WiMP 10.

On the other side of the coin, running with Windows 7, WiMP 12 is kludgy in comparison, as the “Advanced Tag Editor” is hidden, and the player is problematic when ripping / editing the tag data.  The latest player mated with Windows 7 only, using the new file display format.  Microsoft integrated most functions in the background, making manual adjustments a real treat.

Bob  :wink:

Thank you very much. I did see the Find Album Info in upper right hand corner and used that to find the album info. However, it prints our the entire album description, such as “The Millenium Edition…etc.” I just want to use the artist’s name for the title of the album.

Any ideas how to have Sansa show the album name the way we want?

Would you please tell me what you meant by “If you choose to edit the tags using MP3Tag, once you select “write” to this format, all albums will automatically be written inb the correct format for you.?”     “Write to this format.” ???

Thank you for your help.

Alice

P.S. I tried to update to MS Media Player 11, (clicked on the Help in 10 and then clicked on check for updates) and it says you are using latest version 10.

Message Edited by bobbyz on 04-30-2010 09:38 PM

Open mp3tag. Look for Tools, click on it, click on Options and you’ll see Tags and Mpegs under that. Click on Mpegs and you’ll see Read and Write. Let it Read everything and Remove everything–check them all–and for Write change it to ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1. Click OK. Now whenever mp3tag saves a tag it will save it so the Sansa can read it most easily. 

Right-click on one of your problem albums. You should see all the files listed–hopefully in order of play, not alphabetically.  It’s going to depend on how the files are named. (If they’re alphabetical, because nobody put numbers in the filenames, click on the top of the Track column–assuming they have track  numbers.) Now you can change all of their tags at once, by highlighting them all and putting Artist or Album in one of the boxes at the right, and going to File and Save Tag.

Once the Sansa can read the tags, it can sort them in the ways you see under Music: by Album, Artist, Song (title), Genre. 

You can do whatever you want in any of the tag boxes, and that’s what the Sansa will read. If you want to change all of your The Beatles albums to have Beatles as Artist instead, you can do that.

But I recommend keeping the original album titles. On the Sansa you can then turn to Artist and get the albums listed alphabetically under that. 

If you have multiple albums by one artist and also change Album to be the same as Artist, you’ll get a jumble. Track one of one album will play, followed by track one of another album, etc., followed by all the track 2s. 

But you can really do as you please. Some people add the release year to album titles, like  1963 Meet the Beatles, 1964 A Hard Day’s Night, 1965 Rubber Soul, etc. Then under Artist you get the albums listed in career order.  

I strongly recommend that when you’ve done whatever else you want, that you highlight the tracks–again, in playing order, top to bottom–and go to Tools and the Auto-Numbering Wizard.  Tick the Leading Zeroes option and run it. Otherwise, the Sansa is going to go by the first digit of the track number, so 1, 11, and 12 will play before 2 and 3. 

As for WMP 10, don’t worry about updating it as long as it works. What is your computer’s operating system? (Windows 2000, XP, Vista, etc.)? 

Thank you.

Re: Your: "I strongly recommend that when you’ve done whatever else you want, that you highlight the tracks–again, in playing order, top to bottom–and go to Tools and the Auto-Numbering Wizard. "

I went to Tools (at top) but do not see 'Auto-Numbering Wizard."

There is one artist/album that is very confusing to us. When we attach Sansa to computer and look in Explorer, we see album: Ben E. King and the 12 songs are listed on right side. (The way I want it.)

When we open the MP3TAG we see same thing.

However, when we disconnect the Sansa and look in Albums, I don’t see Ben E. King, but “The Ultimate Collection:Stand By Me / Best of Ben E. King / Ben E. King with the Drifters” Which is a rather long title! When I click on that, I see all 12 songs.

But, when I look in Artists, I see: “Ben E. King.” Click on that and I see “Ultimate Collection” with 8 songs in it.

Also see (in Artists): “Ben E. King: The Drifters” Click on that and see “Ultimate Collection” with 2 songs in it.

Also see: “Ben E. KingA” Click on that and see “Ultimate Collection” with 2 songs in it.

I did highlight all 12 songs when I attached the Sansa and highlighted them all and clicked on Files and then Save Tags.

Any idea on how to get the album title on Sansa to just read “Ben E. King” rather than that long one?

And, how to get Artists to have just one Ben E. King with all 12 songs in it?

If no solution, I’ll just leave everthing as it is, but it is just a bit confusing when my husband is using the Sansa.

Re your question…   He has WinXPsp3. We will not worry about updating to WMP 11, as I think he tried to do that a few months ago and he got some sort of an error message and discontinued the update.

Does the WMP 11 overwrite the WMP 10? Or does WMP 10 have to be uninstalled first?

Thanks for your time and help.

Alice

Click on Tools to see Auto-Numbering. 


I know what follows looks long, but once you get the hang of it, it’s very quick and painless. 

The Fuze lists Album, Artist, Song (Title) from the tags.  Whatever is in Album is what the Sansa is going to display as the album title. Not the folder name. It’s the electronic labels, the ID3 tags, that show on the Fuze listings.

You can change any tag you want in mp3tag–and change an entire album all at once so it’s consistent. 

Open the album with mp3tag. Highlight all the files. On the left pane of mp3tag, you will see Title, Artist, Album, Year, etc. and, lower down, Album Artist. (Album Artist is for albums like a soundtrack, with multiple artists, while Artist is who performed each track. You can ignore Album Artist. The Fuze lists Artist from the Artist tag.) 

With the files highlighted, when the tags are all the same throughout the album, you’ll see what that consistent label is–like the Album title, since all the tracks are on the same album. I expect you’ll see the whole “Ultimate Collection” mouthful there, which is where the Fuze is getting it. 

Meanwhile, if you see <keep>, that means that what’s in the field changes for the multiple tracks you have highlighted. So of course Title (song title) will say <keep> because each song has a different title. 

Because that Ben E. King album is a compilation, the people who tagged it gave you too much information–listing all the different groups he was in: the Drifters, etc. 

So you’ll see <keep> in Artist. 

When you see <keep>, you can click it and see in a drop-down menu what all the various Artist designations are. You can pick one–like Ben E. King–or just type in whatever you want.   Then (under File) Save tags. Now Artist reads Ben E. King for all the tracks. And if you want to shorten the title in Album, go ahead: With all the tracks highlighted, type it in and Save.  It’s your music. 

Make sure you are re-tagging the copy of the album that’s on your Fuze–or drag-and-drop it off the Fuze onto your desktop (or anywhere you want), fix the tags, and send it back. (I’ve done some lovely re-tagging myself on the copy in my computer, then forgotten to transfer it…)


Think of the system as a catalog. Windows Explorer is actually pretty stupid–all it can see is one name (a folder, a file, etc.) alphabetically. All the folders in Windows, in effect, have just one label that Windows can read.

But with tags, every file has more than one label. It’s labeled by Album, Artist, (song) Title, etc. And by reading the tags, the Fuze can sort them all those different ways for you.  But of course, the tags have to be usable first.


Meanwhile, if you do want to navigate via folders and filenames like Windows Explorer, you can do that. Under Music, the last choice should be Folders.  Click on it and you can go through them as you would in Windows Explorer.

If you don’t see Folders as a choice under Music–scroll all the way down the list, there’s more than one screenful–then you need to update the firmware. There are instructions near the top of the forum. Don’t install Sansa Updater, which will try to phone home every time you connect. Just do the manual installation–download software, drag it into the Fuze, and disconnect (follow the more detailed directions). 


You shouldn’t have to uninstall WMP 10 to install WMP 11. Your son can right-click on Help to see Check for Updates and try to do it that way–or, if Help isn’t visible, right-click on the very top of the window to see Help, click Help, etc.–or just leave it as is if it’s working. Every Windows Media Player just gets more bloated, and if 10 is working, I’d leave it alone. 

Thanks for all the help.

I tried everything and didn’t seem to work. I deleted Ben E King from the Sansa e260 and then reinstalled again, but only tried 6 songs this time. I changed the left side of mp3tag so album was Ben E. King and artist was Ben E. King.

When I look in Sansa I see one album which says Ben E. King and when I click on that I do see all 6 songs. When I click on Artist I see Ben E. King with 4 songs and also Ben E King/The Drifters for 2 songs. I don’t know how to get rid of that Ben E. King/The Drifters in the Artists with the 2 songs and have the 2 songs switched to the Ben E King (artist). Maybe because of the album info from the Internet, there is no way to get rid of that.

I guess I will just have to let it remain “as is,” as long as the Album shows Ben E. King with all 6 songs in it, and forget about looking at the Artists category.

And, don’t want to take up any more of your time.

Thanks again

Alice

P.S.  When I turn on the Sansa it always starts with “Refresh Database.” I don’t remember seeing that so often in the past when the Sansa was turned on.