Free Space slowly decreasing

I have an issue that I hope folks can help with. I do use this on a Mac and don’t know if that has anything to do with my issue. I have a 1gb that has worked fine for me. I’ve noticed that the free space has gotten smaller. It’s probably been a gradual thing. I use this mostly for podcasts. I add to it daily for my commute and delete what I have heard the next time it is plugged in. I of course use the Music folder. I suspected my space was getting smaller and smaller so I deleted everything in the music folder. I do not have any recordings on the unit. I should hvae over 900MB but show only about 400MB available. I am guessing that there is some sort of stuck file(s). I would like to clean slate the unit or figure out how to find the data that is hidden to delete. I was surprised that I couldn’t find this issue in the forum. Anyone have some help for me?

The Clip can be set into two modes: MTP (music device) and MSC (thumb drive). A computer can only see the files from one mode at a time. By default, the Clip is set to Auto-Select mode: it will try MTP mode first and then fallback to MSC. So, depending on which computer(s) you connect it, it may use a different mode each time.

In the Clip menu, try going to “Settings > USB Mode”, select “MTP” and connect to your Mac. The Clip should show up as a device and you can check its files. Then disconnect, go back to “Settings > USB Mode” and select “MSC” mode this time. When you reconnect, the Clip will show up as a simple thumb drive with a different set of folders and files.

If all that doesn’t help, you can also try a Format from the Settings menu to delete everything.

EDIT: I don’t know if it’s relevant, but I found this message from a Mac user with a similar problem. Seems that the Mac stores some hidden files starting with “._” .

Message Edited by eliasf on 12-19-2008 12:12 PM

Thanks for the quick info. It would seem that on my Mac I cannot mount the drive in Thumb Drive mode. I checked out the link you posted. I had assumed it was those tiny Unix files building up. I always knew they were there. They appeared to get deleted when I would delete the MP3 that they were associated. Maybe they were not. I downloaded the software he posted to show hidden files. It only showed the few ._ Unix files that were with the MP3 files that I had on the unit. I couldn’t find any other hidden files to make up the 375MB or so of missing space.

I ended up doing the format which brought me back to about 950MB or what have you. I guess I just need to do that now and then. It took a long time for the space to become noticable. At least a few months.

Thanks for the help! 

Look for a dir tree – probably hidden – out of the root directory of your Sansa.  It’ll be chock full of database and indexing files, some fairly deeply nested.

Excise that tumor and you’ll free up your space without having to euthanize and resurrect the patient (i.e., format and reload).

I just left a more detailed post in your other thread  before I noticed this one.  Macs LOVE to insert tons of pointless ■■■■ everywhere they walk.  In addition to one “phantom” file for each REAL file (in the same dir as the real file), they insert a sort of “virtual file system” into the ROOT dir, which serves NO purpose in the real world – other than to consume storage space.