Mac not recognizing my Fuze in MSC

This sounds very promising…however it did not work with my fuze just now. I am using OS 10.3.9 and have the 8GB silver. I have tried it in msc, but will try it with auto just to make sure. I wonder if yours mounted because you had a card with “mac” data on it. Perhaps I need to get a card reader as you have done. Does your fuze now mount up when you disconnect it? Thanks, Ron

I don’t know if this has been mentioned, but working in the computer hardware industry, (we make KVM switches) I have found that some OS’es take literally forever to enumerate USB devices sometimes.  This has been a common complaint amongst some of our USB KVM switch users.

I have seen certain units take literally minutes to show up.

Perhaps that is what is going on here.  I don’t know how long you guys have plugged the unit in for, but perhaps it just takes an inordinately long period of time to enumerate under the earlier Mac OS versions.

I would attach the unit and walk away for 15 min, 30 min or an hour and see what happens.  If it does eventually show up, at least you can then load to it.  It’s a bad compromise, but at least it’s functional…eventually.

Just a thought

Quick update (have to take my kids to t-ball) - the Fuze only mounts when I have the card installed. When I take the card out, the Fuze doesn’t show. It was a card I had previously mounted using my card reader, so it looks like you’re right, and that the Fuze is (begrudgingly) appearing because it’s the vehicle for the card that the Mac can already see!
Card readers can be as little as five bucks, now, so that might be the way to go.

p_opus:  Great info!  I will try that myself, maybe that is why my Mac is freezing.  It is trying to enumerate (?) the USB connection from the Mac.  BTW, does what you suggest mean that once the device is enumerated that it will be picked up faster on future connections?

JohnnyQuest:  Excellent!  Though I have not had the same success.  I bought a 2 GB microSD card and it doesn’t show like you have experienced.

Keep on truckin’ !  Somewhere along the line a connection will be made. 

Well the free 512MB sansa sessions card showed in the mail here last week. I never had opened it as I really was not interested in the contents, but more so in the card itself. It seems the card may have a purpose after all in the form of a “'key”…who knew? Well after reading JQ’s luck with a card I went ahead and opened it up and thrush it in the fuze. Low and behold the darm thing mounts it first as “'sansa music” and then a second later it mounts the fuze itself as “sansa fuze”. Without the card the fuze does not mount at all. Prior to this revolation I spoke with sansa and they said it was an apple problem so I dubiously called apple who naturally said it was a sansa problem. Not being an expert it is so very easy to see who is at fault with this bug. Hey Sansa why don’t you fix this little problem so your product works as advertised on your website!!! Mac OS is Mac OS and it should not be this difficult to fix. This was after all a major reason that I purchased your product was the advertised dual compatability…in addition to the other nice features that it pocesses. If this mounting issue were resolved and a line out option for video and pictures were made available I would have to give you a 10, but for now the frustration problems with the product and service brings it down a few pegs. Ron

I just received my Fuze 8GBs in the mail today.  I have OS X 10.3.9 and a PowerBook G4.  After hours of playing around with it and trying to troubleshoot with a friend of mine, we figured out that by putting in a MicroSD card both the internal memory and the card would pop up on the desktop in OS X.  So apparently the fix for those in 10.3.9 (and it sounds like 10.4) is just to have a MicroSD card always plugged in.  Easy enough.

But now there’s a new problem.  Every time I eject those two drives (the internal memory and the installed card), and then unplug the Fuze, OS X always tells me that I have disconnected the USB device improperly by not ejecting it (even though I did eject it).  I even tried turning off the Fuze after ejecting everything, and then unplugging it.  I still get the same warning in OS X about unplugging it improperly.  Anyone have a fix for this?  Will this damage the device over time?

I tested on my 10.5.4 Mac (all I have) and both drives show up on the desktop and I am able to drag both drives to the trash and eject it properly.  My device is in MSC mode. 

Don’t bother with any of the renaming nonsense.  Make sure you plug the sansa into a USB port ON THE COMPUTER… NOT on a USB hub.  It will then show up on the desktop.  Just discovered this today after running into the same problem as you did.  Note:  The hub I was using was a Belkin.  Other hubs MAY work.

Jack 

I have a G5 iMac System 10.4.11 - I had set the Sansa Fuze Usb settings to MSC mode.  It refused to mount on the Mac and was not visible in the System Profile / USB.

When l replaced my Apple / Nana / USB leash with the USB leash from Sandisk, the Fuse immediately was visible on the Mac desktop, and I was able to rename it, and it also appeared in the Mac System Profiler / USB 

   My daughter had loaded music and pictures on the Fuse but they were not visible on the Mac finder.

Hmm.

Ian Campbell 

whitenorth-

BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO USE APPLE ACCESSORIES WITH THE SANSA 30-pin port!!

The 30-pin connector for the Sansa is slightly different from the Apple counterpart.  Have a closer look.  You’ll note that the tabs on the outside edge are a wee bit different.  Not different enough, in my opinion, but that’s the way it worked out.

NEVER try to plug the Fuze into a dock made for the iPod, as it will place power on the wrong pins, and damage your Sansa!

Bob  :dizzy_face:

@whitenorth wrote:

My daughter had loaded music and pictures on the Fuse but they were not visible on the Mac finder.

Hmm.

This is due to the fact that files (music, photos, whatever) that are put on in one USB mode is not visible on the computer while the player is connected in the other mode.

If your daughter loaded these files in MTP mode, that would be why you could not see them when you successfully connected to your Mac in MSC mode.

Additionally, the sample music, photos, & videos that come on the Fuze when new are put on in MTP mode, so if you have a Mac you can’t access them to delete them to make more room for your files. You have to connect in MTP on a Windows machine to do that.

Thanks for the above help.

Once I removed the music files, reformatted the Fuze, switched to MSC and reloaded the files on the shop PC, the OSX.3. Mac would not recognize the Fuze, however, the Fuze did load and I could see the files on my OSX.4.11 Mac.

I notice that there may be an issue on the Fuze due to extra blank files that appeared in folders where I either moved or added MP3 files. 

Hello Fellow Mac Users!

Had this same problem since getting my Fuze 2GB and a 2GB microSDHC card for Father’s Day this past summer.  I have an iMac G5 running Tiger 10.4 and my Fuze (as well as the microSDHC card) was not being recognized or accessible from my iMac.  Last night I upgraded to Leopard and “TA-DA!” my Fuze and the microSDHC card showed on my desktop.

If upgrading to Leopard is not in the cards right now, may I suggest trying to find the freeware application SynchTunes (http://www.nesfield.co.uk/synctunes/) and you will be able to synch iTunes to a microSDHC card.  Easy work around, great little application.  I did a drag’n’drop for audiobook files onto the Fuze itself using a Windows PC and filled up the Fuze’s 2GB of space.  I say try to find the app because the developer has removed the application for download.  I’d offer to send it to you, but I never kept the compressed install package. 

Update 15 minutes later:  Also try this application for synch/transfer:  http://www.wentnet.com/projects/xnjb/

                Great little MP3 & Mac primer:  http://guyscharf.wordpress.com/mp3-on-macintosh/

Best of luck!

NormZ

Message Edited by NormZ on 12-31-2008 06:38 AM

I have a 1 year old MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard 10.6.2.

When I plug in the Fuze, I can see the device in Finder and the top directory, but nothing underneath. I can add and delete at the top level, so there’s something about the file system that OS X doesn’t like. 

To make things even more interesting, I’m running Windows XP Professional under Parallels on the same machine. Windows has no problem accessing the filesystem on the Fuze on the same hardware and even the same USB port.

This tells me there is something wrong with the Fuze format that Windows accepts but Mac doesn’t. 

Is your Fuze set to MSC?  This is the recommended setting when connecting to Macs.

Go to Settings/System Settings/USB mode

The default on the Fuze is Auto Detect. This will (when working properly, another story) use MTP mode if Windows Media Player 10 or 11 is detected on the computer, MSC if not.

MSC is the generic USB connection you can use for any computer. I don’t know how Macs treat MTP–it may be as you describe, since MTP makes the Fuze a virtual device rather than a basic external drive. 

But if you leave it on MSC, you should be able to drag-and-drop with Windows or Mac. 

I sent a message to SanDisk support. Took a day, but got a nice message back.

They suggested reformatting my Fuze. That required moving the good stuff off … formatting … then moving back.

It worked. Now my Fuze is accessible from my Mac.

Support said is was probably a corrupted file system. How does that happen? 

It could be a bug. It could be a file with tags the Sansa didn’t like. It could be something incompatible between the way Mac and PC handle USB.  It could be hitherto unnoticed sunspot activity.  It’s impossible to know.

My mac used to show icon when i plugged in my Sansa Fuze but not any more. Is the problem with the Fuze settings or the mac? 

please advise,

Thank you, David

The first thing to try is the Fuze.

Go to Settings/System Settings/USB Mode and choose MSC. That’s the generic USB connection for both Macs and PCs.