Help With memory loss!

Hey, I was having a few problems with my clip when I got it, putting on music and such. It was showing on my computer that i was putting music on, but nothing was showing up on the player itself. Anyway, I figured out why, and deleted the music I had put on it so I could start again. Now those files are gone, and so is the memory they took up. My player is working fine, but what was a 2gb player is now about 700mb. Can anyone tell me what happened? and possibly how to fix it.
Thanks!

I was going to start a new thread before I saw this one.

Basically the same thing just happened to me. The clip was working fine. I plugged it into the USB port yesterday to charge the battery but I forgot about it and it was left plugged in for about 4 hours or so. 

I went to use it earlier today and it powered up just fine, but all of the menu’s (Album, Artist, Song) read empty. 

Is it possible to over-charge the battery?

I tried holding the power switch in the Off position for 15 seconds, then releasing it for a bit, then turning it on but no luck - all the folders still read empty. When I plug it back into the USB port and let my computer look at the device (Dell, Vista), all the albums, artists and songs are there. 

Any ideas?

@sumi wrote:
Hey, I was having a few problems with my clip when I got it, putting on music and such. It was showing on my computer that i was putting music on, but nothing was showing up on the player itself. Anyway, I figured out why, and deleted the music I had put on it so I could start again. Now those files are gone, and so is the memory they took up. My player is working fine, but what was a 2gb player is now about 700mb. Can anyone tell me what happened? and possibly how to fix it.
Thanks!

Are you sure you deleted the files? When you switch between MSC and MTP modes, the computer can only see the files from the current mode only. So the files may still be on the Clip, but on the other mode. You can check this by manually switching to each mode and reconnecting to the computer.

If that’s not the case, then it’s possible that the Clip’s file system is corrupt. You can rebuild it using “Format” from the Settings. Note that this will wipe out everything from the Clip and you’ll have to reload your music to it.

Never mind. I was looking through the forums and found this advice, I think it was from Bob:

Ah, I see.  So, if you try no navigate on the device to your music, it’s not coming up?

 

If you haven’t formatted your Clip yet, it’s possible we can recover:

 

You can try connecting the Clip in MSC mode (Settings > USB Mode > MSC) first.  From the PC, go to Windows Explorer by pressing [Windows Key] + E, or go to My Computer.  What you will need is the drive letter assigned to the Clip.

 

Then, open the Run window by pressing [Windows Key] + R, or Start > Run.  It may insert the command cmd for you, if so, simply press the Enter key, or cmd [Enter].  Then, type chkdsk e: /f where e: is the drive letter assigned to the Clip by Windows (this may vary).  the /f is a “toggle” telling Windows to “fix” the errors if possible.  When it asks if you would like to save the errors as files, tell it no.

 

Unplug your Clip, and see if it will find your music.

 

Let me know what happens!

I was going to try that, but my clip was still plugged in from when I was checking to see if Windows would read the files. I unplugged it so I could follow the above advice, changing it to MSC mode. But it was unnecessary - all of a sudden my music is all back.

Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.

@monkbiker wrote:

I was going to start a new thread before I saw this one.

 

Basically the same thing just happened to me. The clip was working fine. I plugged it into the USB port yesterday to charge the battery but I forgot about it and it was left plugged in for about 4 hours or so. 

 

I went to use it earlier today and it powered up just fine, but all of the menu’s (Album, Artist, Song) read empty. 

 

Is it possible to over-charge the battery?

 

I tried holding the power switch in the Off position for 15 seconds, then releasing it for a bit, then turning it on but no luck - all the folders still read empty. When I plug it back into the USB port and let my computer look at the device (Dell, Vista), all the albums, artists and songs are there. 

 

Any ideas?

You don’t have to worry about the battery. It will stop charging when it’s full.

If the Clip shows no songs despite having files on it, then perhaps the music database wasn’t written properly. Try adding some songs to force it to rebuild. If that doesn’t work, you could connect in MSC mode and delete the MTABLE.SYS file in the Clip’s root folder. When you disconnect it will be rebuild.

If everything else fails, you could try a format.

This problem above is more widespread. I got my 4GB Sansa Clip, which has the V02.01.13A firmware already installed, just days ago as an early Xmas present. Loaded about 2GB worth of stuff on it, and now am traveling for Xmas. But low and behold, one day, I turn it on, having not connected it to a PC since, and the first thing I see is “Refreshing Database” and then every song is now “gone”. Connecting it to a PC to try to discover the problem reveals that my Clip has 2GB of memory used, so the songs are there, but I don’t see the files when looking using the PC (haven’t tried anything fancy to detect them) and having put 2 songs on it, the database refreshes, but the 2GB of music still buried on it are still not revealed.

Thus, the problem isn’t related to PC connections. This is a major glitch. Unless a fix is found soon, I may have to begrudingly convert to an Apple (ack!) product…

I’ll try to follow this thread as I travel, but would love any feedback.

Message Edited by cartala on 12-27-2008 02:20 PM

Slide the power switch up to the ON position, and hold it there for 10-15 seconds, and release.  Then power up again as usual.  This performs a soft reset of the device.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy: