Fuze won't mount in Ubuntu

Okay, so I messed around where I really shouldn’t have…

My Sansa Fuze was refusing to receive any files from my computer using Ubuntu Linux 10.10 (MSC mode) it was complaining that it was a “read-only device.”  I had tried rebooting, resetting the player, etc., but it still gave me the same problem. And instead of trying it on another operating system, I made the boneheaded move of trying to fix this error myself with fsck. I had heard on other forums that when their Sansa product had a similar problem, people would recommend doing a file-system check. So I ran “dosfsck /dev/sdc,” and, as far as I can remember, the program gave me two choices (for different partitions maybe?) The first one ran with no errors, but the second one said that there was some error with a file “.Trash-1000.” So there I thought, “Aha, I have it!” (A previous problem was that when I would delete a file from the device while in Linux, it would create a new folder by that name in the root directory of the device and move the deleted files there. The player would then get stuck with “Refreshing media” or something like that.  But I eventually got around this problem by using “Shift-Del” to permanently delete.) I thought that one day I had forgotten to do that. But the weird thing was, the folder didn’t show up to my file manager like it did with the previous debacles. I assumed that the computer was seeing something I didn’t, so I gave fsck the go-ahead. After that, the player gets stuck with “Reloading media,” then after a minute goes to a white screen. When I hold the |<< button, I can get to the device’s folder, but all of my music folders are empty, so I think something is wrong. If I disconnect it after, it goes and does the “Refreshing media” thing all over again.  One more thing: these things appear in my system log, probably won’t be any help though:

When I connect it regular:

[8860.229402] scsi 9:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery

[9056.885932] usb 2-1: USB disconnect, address 8

[9057.202553] usb 2-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9

[9057.502752] hub 2-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1

[9061.410306] hub 2-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1

[9066.192544] usb 2-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 11

[9066.349240] scsi10 : usb-storage 2-1:1.0

[9088.200050] usb 2-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 11

[9088.940548] usb 2-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 11

[9095.432579] usb 2-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 11

[9095.942595] usb 2-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 11

[9096.760068] usb 2-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 11

[9097.148056] scsi 10:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery

[10313.505014] usb 2-1: USB disconnect, address 11

When I connect it while holding down |<<:

[12254.592561] usb 2-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 13

[12254.745124] scsi11 : usb-storage 2-1:1.0

[12255.744215] scsi 11:0:0:0: Direct-Access     SanDisk  Sansa Fuze 8GB   v02. PQ: 0 ANSI: 0

[12255.744822] scsi 11:0:0:1: Direct-Access     SanDisk  Sansa Fuze 8GB   v02. PQ: 0 ANSI: 0

[12255.745871] sd 11:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0

[12255.746145] sd 11:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0

[12255.751296] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdc] 15462400 512-byte logical blocks: (7.91 GB/7.37 GiB)

[12255.751791] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off

[12255.751798] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 04 00 00 00

[12255.751802] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through

[12255.754851] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through

[12255.754864]  sdc:

[12255.757670] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk

[12255.759401] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through

[12255.759410] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk

I really am not sure what could be the fix to this problem! I hope I am not missing something obvious… 

OK,

  1. I don’t use Linux.

  2. The Fuze has two USB modes, MTP to work with Windows Media Player and MSC (generic flash drive) for everything else. Out of the box the Fuze is is set to Auto Detect, which is supposed to be MTP if it sees WMP and MSC if not. It should have gone to MSC since you are using Linux.

3)Disconnect it. Turn it on.  Go to Settings/System Settings/USB Mode and change to MSC.  Then connect  and see what happens.

  1. I had set the player to always use MSC.

  2. I can’t do that, whenever the player is turned on while disconnected from a computer, it gets stuck refreshing media.

I tried plugging it into my Mac, but mostly same problem: A lot of system files are there, I can’t get to my music folder, etc. Also, random filesystem glitches occcur, such as exactly 23 items reported in every folder, which can’t be true…

Windows (XP) did basically the same thing.

If you’ve got that XP computer at your disposal and can get a connection, you could try reloading the firmware. It’s in one of the top sticky threads. Basically unzip the file and drag fuzeA.bin  onto the Fuze root directory.

You could also Format it, which erases all your added content but leaves the system files. Format  from its own controls if you can reach them (Settings/System Settings/Format) or through Windows (Format the SANSA FUZE drive to FAT32). Obviously don’t format with Mac or Linux.

I tried reloading firmware… didn’t work…

I reformatted… and it works perfectly (minus the songs of couse!)

Thanks a whole lot for your help!