2GB fuze shows 22MB FREE but...

SanDisk MP3 players Sansa® Fuze™
1

Sansa was fine til this morning. son went on rhapsody and bought a song,  put it on the player. Then he unplugged the mp3 from computer and it refreshed.  he  goes to see  music, and all thats on  mp3 is the 1 song just bought…where did all  songs go??  So he plugged it back in and clicked on the drive etc and it shows the player is almost full, but the bar color is RED now, not green… unplugged it and turned on  fuze, went into settings, and then info, it says this

sansa   V02. 01.09A

1855 MB memory

22MB  FREE

 then it shows 1 song

so what happened to all my music that was there just before i plugged in my MP3, to buy a NEW song???  If the player is showing i have only 22MB FREE that means i have just about used up the 2GB with ALL the songs put on the player…so then where are all the songs???

anyone here know or can help, soon?? this is my sons player and he is very impatient…thank you

2

He may have changed the USB mode on the player. Go to Settings/System Settings/USB Mode. You’ll see Auto Detect, MSC and MTP. Change it to MSC, hook it up to the computer, and see if you can find your songs in Music via computer. If not, change to MTP and look again.

If stuff still isn’t showing up, go back to MSC and do a Windows Search for .mp3.  And again for MTP if nothing shows up. You can also just keep Exploring on whatever folders you see, or search for *.* (all files).  Something has to be occupying that 1855MB. 

If it looks like the mp3s are there but the Sansa is still not listing them, go into MSC mode again and delete MTABLE.SYS, which should be in on whatever drive the Sansa shows up as. (That is, if your computer shows F:\Sansa Fuze, mtable.sys should be in F: .)  MTABLE.SYS is the list the Sansa makes from the files contained on it. It may have gotten messed up. When you delete it, Refresh will make a spiffy new MTABLE.SYS, and maybe you’ll see the songs again. 

Don’t get too worried yet–it sounds like your files are still on there–but like every other music library program, Rhapsody may have been set to do something automatically that your son didn’t realize. If the steps above don’t  help, post again.

Message Edited by Black-Rectangle on 04-24-2010 11:48 AM

3

he didnt change anything, he does the same thing each time he buys a song…it was in auto detect mode, just to let you know…I changed to MSC mode and connected to computer. when opened, all this mode showed was the internal memory, the line is RED and appears to show its just about full… it says 16.1 MB free   of  1.80GB.  when i clicked on that it then showed me all the folders, the ALBUMS folder appeared to look lighter in color then the other folders. when i clicked on it it showed the 1 album that my son just bought this morning…  music folder was same thing, showed the 1 band name of song bought this morning… playlist folder is empty…

I unplugged mp3 and changed it to MTP mode then hooked back to computer… shows sansa fuze in G  clicked on it and it shows a list of folders, NAMES not like the big folder in other mode. this mode showed me the  MTABLE.sys and says it is 1313KB…i didnt do any search yet for the songs… I know they are the computer itself, just not showing up on the device itself. have to be there because memory is showing something is making it full… 

you said to go into MSC mode to delete mtable… mtable doesnt show up in msc mode, only in mtp mode…none of this will delete songs on the player if in fact they are still there will it?

4

nancy361 wrote:

 

you said to go into MSC mode to delete mtable… mtable doesnt show up in msc mode, only in mtp mode…none of this will delete songs on the player if in fact they are still there will it?

You’ve got it backwards.

5

black rectangle… I did what you suggested and nothing worked…i switched modes and searched, only song that came up was 1 song he bought this morning… i went into  MSC and then deleted the mtable, then cked. nothing different… I cant CHAT with any tech support cause they arent there on wknds…Im wondering why the space used line is RED, is it due to because its just about full? funny how when i ck the info on the player itself, it says22MB free, yet when i plug it into the computer and open it it says 16.1 mb free  of 1.80 GB

ALSO, he has the exp slot and has a 2GB card. he recently used that card and has put music on it, no problems…i have it out now while figuring this issue out with the regular internal mem and ALL the songs he has on it…when i put the card in and click on it and open it it shows the songs on the card like normal… i dont know what happened from him listening to his songs normally last nite, to buying a song from rhapsody this morning and doing what he always does, and now all his songs arent showing up on the device, and who knows why…

I was going to back up all his songs too, the other day…he has music he bought in his rhapsody library   as well as a lot of songs that he keeps in WMP…Rhapsody already informed me that if the purchased songs are gone, or the device has to be reformatted and he loses all purchased music, he would have to PAY to get them all back, they dont redownload again…that ■■■■■…  When wanting to back up his rhapsody library bought songs, i should be using  CD Rs  discs right? for music?  or can i use dvds?  i imagine CD Rs are best for music…   then i have to back up music from WMP…its all getting goofy to me, how can i do that??

I know im getting off track here, sorry…just want to figure out why the songs he has arent showing up on the device anymore… thanks

6

wanted to let you know i put the device back in auto detect mode… i put the 2gb expansion card in and now it doesnt show any of the songs that son put on it…he is going to kill me…he has 1 song on the device itself and now nothing on the exp. card. i have NO idea what happened to that now…i plugged it into the computer and now i see 2 memorys ,internal and  expansion uSD card and it shows space used is in REd and all full…it says 0 bytes for space free  and total size 0 bytes, of the expansion card,  internal is same as what i told u… so something is wrong with this goofy device now…

with exp. card in i cked info and it says this…card is 1883 MB   and has 1711MB FREE, so see?  the picture i see of both the card and the internal is that of a RED line suggesting the space is used up…but when you read the info it states differently…and only shows 1 song on the whole mp3 player…  i dont get this at all…

Message Edited by nancy361 on 04-24-2010 02:16 PM

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the Card is working now…  so as of now its still all his songs on internal mem that are not showing up…feel free anyone, to offer suggestions

8

Not to state the obvious, but something went wrong, and the player no longer recognizes the songs in it. Your chance of recovering the content is probably not high.

Reset the Fuze: Hold the power slider at the Up position for 30 seconds. Turn it back on. If it sees the music, great. If not, make sure the player is set to MTP mode (Settings|System Settings|USB Mode), and connect to the PC.

If the PC sees the music via the Rhapsody app, then use it to copy the music back out to the PC. Then reformat the Fuze (Settings|System Settings|Format), and resync the music back in.

If neither the Fuze (after reset) nor the PC (when Fuze is in MTP mode) sees the music, then there is no recovery.

A long shot is to find a tech there who can look at it for you, as this medium is not interactive enough to help you in that regard. We can offer some known fixes, but in the end they’re simply guesses, and it’s up to your technical skill to know which to apply, and how.

Regardless of whether you can recover the music, the sensible thing will be to reformat and start over. A couple of things here: If Rhapsody won’t let you re-DL the songs lost, then perhaps you should look for other places to buy your music. One of the pitfalls of protected music is what you’re experiencing right now.

If it’s a large dollar amount, I would call Rhapsody tech support by voice and explain your situation. Don’t use e-mail. It’s easily ignored.

The second thing is that always have more than one copy of your music/data. Unprotected music makes it easy–you just copy your music to another location, like your PC. Hence, buy unprotected music whenever possible. People tend to wait until after they’ve lost data to think about backup. And while it’s probably too late for the music on the Fuze, it won’t likely happen twice if you adopt a backup policy.

Whatever offline media you want to back up to is fine, as long as you do it. CD-R’s are being obsoleted, as they don’t hold enough capacity to back up today’s large drives. Even DVD-Rs are marginalized. The simplest and fastest means of backing up for home-users is a 2.5" USB-powered drive. Plug it in, drag stuff over, done. If it’s easy and fast, it means that you’re more likely to do it.

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Message Edited by TomJensen on 05-03-2010 05:44 PM

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A USB flash drive is just right for backing up music.  They’re small and compact, and the music can be dragged-and-dropped onto them.  You can get them in different sizes, too.  There are 2GB, 4GB and higher.

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tom, thanks for your post…I have backed up my hard drive before… but i dont need to back up the whole thing, just the music and the photos…  we have 2 libraries, itunes for husbands songs, which are almost 4GB, and of course my sons, 2Gb plus 2 gb exp card… son has mostly purchased songs, the others were from CDs. husbands is mostly CDs and some bought from itunes…

and i have a lot of photos thru kodak software…

when you say to back up with a 2.5" USB powered drive, you mean an external HD??  They arent cheap if thats what you mean… I just installed a NEW optical drive in my dell cause i couldnt burn to dvds with my original one.  so this way now i can burn my photos at least, to the dvds, for back up purposes…but i read that backing up music to dvds wasnt good, due to the format and cds were better if i used a disc.

as for the music on sons sansa, wouldnt the files alos be in folders that are inside rhapsody folder? all the purchased songs should be there and the other songs that were ripped from cds should be in music folders… ill ck on that…and yes i am going to ck with tech support on monday with sansa to see what they say to do… and will def. call rhapsody and tell them about the songs…I chattted with a tech rep and told him what happened, he said that it sounds like the issue is with the mp3 player, not rhapsody software, i think so too… but who knows

I did the 30 second rest of power button and didnt show anything as far as internal mem… i put it in MTP mode and used it thru rhapsody and on the left it shows the fuze itself and i click on it then click tracks and all i see is the 1 song that was bought this morning… then i click on the SD exp card with the sansa and it shows all the songs i have on it…i closed that out and went into computer to bring up the device, it shows the sd card with the BLUE bar showing how much is used etc… its BLUE, the internal mem is RED and states what ive posted earlier about used sapce and whats free…what does the RED mean as opposed to BLUE??   its not showing any songs at all except the 1 song bought this morning…

I have NO IDEA what went wrong and different  today then any other time son buys music and puts it on his player… he is 17 he knows how to do this stuff… i just dont know what all happened to lose the song list on the device…and why does the device show that something has used up all that memory…if it all deleted, then it should show empty memory… i dont know…

12

mags, i have usb flash/ thumbdrives, 2 of them…i just plug them into my computer.  but i did that before when i had problems with my HD and had to reformat awhile ago… and i lost the PURCHASED music…it didnt seem to have all the songs i bought, and so had to go back and they let me redownload 1 time from itunes for free and that was it… i have to ck his actual rhapsody folder in music folder to see whats there now… if it all vanished, i have no idea why or how

13

Mtable.sys is just an index. Deleting it cannot affect the songs, any more than throwing out a shopping list affects your groceries.  

The computer can only see one mode at a time: MSC or MTP. Somehow it seems that your son added this one song in a different mode than the one he usually uses. So that song shows up in MSC.

Here’s what Auto-Detect does. If it sees that your computer has Windows Media Player 10 or 11, it goes to MTP mode to shake hands with Windows Media Player. If it doesn’t see WMP–or it sees WMP 9–then it goes to MSC mode, which makes the Sansa work just like a USB thumb drive. 

Could your son have used an older computer, one that only had Windows Media Player 9? Then Auto-Detect would use MSC mode and put the one song there. It’s just a possibility. 

Meanwhile, the rest must have been transferred via MTP. And since all that memory space is taken up, there are files there. Find them. 

If Albums has a lighter-colored folder icon it may have somehow been turned into a Hidden file. Right-click on it, Properties, see if Hidden is checked and un-check it. 

Rhapsody files may not be .mp3. They may be .wma. Search for *.* to get a list of all the files in the unit.  Files that are about 2-6 MB are probably the songs. 

Rhapsody files have digital-rights management, which is basically a booby trap if you try to copy them more than Rhapsody allows. If it turns out you can no longer play those files, and you have spent a lot of money on them, it is definitely important to call Rhapsody and tell them to restore what you paid for. You’ll probably have to be firm and escalate through a few levels of customer service. But it’s important to stand up for your consumer rights. No matter what happened to the Sansa, you have paid for that music. Rhapsody should have a record of what was purchased, and it should make good. 

In future, Amazon sells mp3 files without digital-rights management, which can be copied everywhere, and will probably give you less trouble in the long run. They also have some ridiculous cheap deals on new albums to help push them up the charts. 

14

thanks, black…

we have 1 computer, its vista home with wmp…he has done the music thing several times and does same thing each time… so we arent sure just what happened or changed… he didnt switch modes. it just seems as though the 1 song he bought is the only song he is… yet the info and the space used says differently…i believe we have latest version of wmp…he doesnt touch or do anything. plugged his device in AFTER he found the song he wanted to buy then bought it. didnt touch or do anything different. after he downloaded it then synced it to the device he unplugged it and it refreshed and he went to see the song and that new song was all that was on there, other ones were nowhere to be found… ill ck for files…the ALBUM folder had hidden cked, i uncked it…oh u better believe im going to get those purchased songs back… he bought them and its not our fault they are GONE…once you pay for them they are yours, correct?

thanks again for all of your time and effort…all of you…