Clip+ spontaneously refreshes media

I bought an 8GB Clip+ just over a month ago.  I have had a few problems with it, but this is the main one.  Because of the nature of the problem it’s hard for me to say exactly what the difficulty is, but I will try to be as descriptive as possible.

NB - I did a search and there is a thread with a similar problem started by AlWhite here, but I am fairly certain that I am having a different issue, which is why I have started a fresh thread.  The advice in the other thread did not solve my problem, anyway.

I have an 8GB Clip+, with the most recent (01.02.09) firmware installed.  The internal memory of the player is 95% full.  I am using it with a 16GB Toshiba MicroSD card, which is about 60% full.

The problem I have is that my player seems to decide to “refresh my media” entirely of its own accord.  This happens in a variety of different ways, so I will list them all:

  • Sometimes I am just listening to music, and it will stop without me interacting with the player at all.  I always have the keylock on when I listen to music.  When this happens and I take the player out of my pocket, it is on the “refreshing your media” screen.  I would say this has happened perhaps fifteen times in the month I have owned the player.  On four of these occasions it happened when listening to the same particular 90 minute track (stored on the card).  I don’t know if that is just coincidence, or if it is possible that certain tracks are somehow corrupted and cause the player to malfunction.  The tracks all play fine on my PC, and played fine on my old iPod Nano.
  • Sometimes I will unplug the player from my computer and it will refresh my media.  So far, so good.  But then if I don’t use the player for a while (say an hour or two), when I pick it up and press the power button to switch it on, it will switch on and then go to the “refreshing your media” screen, even though it already completed that operation a couple of hours earlier.
  • Sometimes it will refresh my media in an expected situation (when I unplug it from my PC or when I remove and reinsert the MicroSD card), but then once the progress bar has completed once, it will start refreshing again immediately.  On a couple of occasions it has started refreshing a third time after completing the second time.  In order to stop it from doing this I usually remove then reinsert the card, then it refreshes once as normal and I can use the player.  When this kind of problem occurs, the speed at which it refreshes the second or third time is usually either slower or faster that the speed of the first refresh.

In addition to these problems I should also add that the time it takes for my media to refresh can vary considerably.  When I first got the player I had ~8GB of music on the player and ~6GB on the card.  It used to take approximately 2 minutes to refresh in these circumstances.  Since adding an extra ~4GB of music to the card, the refresh rate varies between about 4 and 10 minutes.  If it decided to refresh spontaneously, without me doing anything, it usually takes nearly 10 minutes to do so.

I’m not sure what the typical refresh time is for the Clip+, but surely it should not take the best part of ten minutes?  

I have tried updating firmware, formatting the player, and formatting the card.  None of these seem to solve the problem.  I am fairly sure it is a card related issue, because in the limited time I have spent using the player with no card in place, I have never had any of these problems.  Still, that could just be coincidence.

Anyway, any suggestions you could give me would be appreciated.  I have not tried completely restoring the player to factory settings.  I have also not tried using the player with a different card.  Unfortunately I am now past the point where I could return the player to the retailer from which I bought it, so that is not an option.  I would be particularly interested to know how long it normally takes other people’s players to refresh the library, if they have a comparable amount of music to me on their systems.

Cheers. 

Do you have a microSD card in your player when this happens and by any chance is it at all loose?

I do have a microSD card in my player when this happens.  Or, at least so far, it has never happened without a microSD card in the slot.

As far as I can tell it is not loose at all.  Not to sight or touch, at least.

I did wonder if, perhaps, I was brushing or knocking the card in my pocket.  Not enough to dislodge it from the slot, but perhaps enough to break contact between the card and player for a split second.  It is a possibility, but I have also had these problems when the player has just been sat out untouched on a desk or in my lap, so I have suspicions that it must be a deeper hardware or software issue.

Hey DD,

I think I have similar if not the same problems. After reformatting card and player, trying a smaller different card, firmware upgrade, I believe the problem is my player. So far spoke to three different tech support guys. The last one told me that if I have a card in, it will refresh media EVERY time I turn it on, which hasn’t happened. At least not every time. It seems that even a slight tap will trigger it though. I’m going to give it a few days then request a new player. At this point I’d be tempted to just sell the new one unopened! Highly disappointed! My Creatives never gave me these problems.

Steve

Of course, the last tech. was wrong (shameful, tech.!).  It sounds like something is a bit loose for you, making the Clip+ think that the microSD card has been removed and reinserted, causing the card refresh/re-read.  Return the player if you’re still within the return period, or RMA it with SanDisk directly.  Hopefully, a replacement Clip+ will work out just fine for you!

I am just about ready to throw this in the “Well that’ll teach me Bin” The one that I throw all the junk that has proprietary operating systems that only do what the manufacturer wants it to do. It plain ■■■■■ to try to do anything on this POS player. If I had known that this POS has a proprietary OS I would never have bought it.

Before you actually bin the device, consider installing Rockbox.

It’s open-source replacement firmware, and can refresh its database when you tell it to, instead of automatically. And database updates happen in the background anyway.

A warning: Rockbox on the Clip+ is considered unstable at the moment, so there’s a very small possibility of bricking your Clip+, but if you’re really hacked off with the thing already, that potential risk might not bother you.

Rockbox installs as a dual-boot system, so that you can boot into the original firmware by pressing Power + Left.

The Rockbox Utility makes it easy (well, easier) to install Rockbox, and the latest version 1.27 can accommodate the 01.02.15 Sansa firmware for dual-boot.

PhryingPhish wrote:
I am just about ready to throw this in the “Well that’ll teach me Bin” The one that I throw all the junk that has proprietary operating systems that only do what the manufacturer wants it to do. It plain ■■■■■ to try to do anything on this POS player. If I had known that this POS has a proprietary OS I would never have bought it.

Most (if not all) mp3 players have firmware written specifically for that particualr device. Despite your opinion on ‘proprietary’ systems, it is not an evil plot by SanDisk (or any other manufacturer of music-playing devices) to alienate you from their products.

To most users, your description of “POS” would translate as “Perfect Operating System”.