8GB Clip+ Transcend 8GB (speed class 2) card recognised as empty

[Kokroatch]

Hi. First of all, this is a great forum, nice to become a part of it, so welcome everybody!

I have anew Transcend 8GB microSD card that I want to use with my Clip+. The problem is that under "Music->Folders->External uSD" menu my player shows "<Empty>" although the card has about 4GB of music on it. Artists and Albums are also not detected. Till date my observations are

- the card can be written and read without any problems by Windows and Linux machine. I can load the card through Clip+ as well (MSC mode, it is just recognised as additional removable disc)
- the card is formatted as FAT32
- the card is correctly detected and played witout any problems by iRiver E150 and my old Sansa c250 with Rockbox on it.
- the player sees the card because under "system info" I can see its proper capacity and proper amount of space left.
- I took another Clip+ from my friend and behaves the same way: the card aknowledged but recognised as empty. My firmware is 01.02.13 and my friends Clip+ is 01.02.15.
- ID3 tags are not a problem here (I guess) becuse if I load the same music to the nternal memory it works immedietly.
- I have also 4GB SanDisk (also 2 speed class) that is recognised and played by my Clip+ without any problems.

Any suggestions welcome!

[dfkt]

Welcome to our forums, Kokroatch.

Did you try the card with Rockbox on your Clip+ as well, or only on your c250?

[Kokroatch]

No, I haven't - I kinda chickened out after big red letters at Rockbox website told me I can "brick" it without known way back.

[dfkt]

Well, after your very thorough troubleshooting list, that was the only thing left I could think of.

As far as I know, nobody bricked their Clip+ because of Rockbox yet. It's running perfectly stable for me, and has done so for over 3 months. Of course, it's not yet a supported Rockbox target, but chances of damaging the player appear to be astronomically minimal.

Or, asking the other way around: I assume the c250 won't recognize the card with stock firmware, since it's SDHC, not old SD?

[Kokroatch]

As for c250- yes, the card is SDHC but original firmware supports only 2GB cards. So I can see that Rockbox seems to be really last chance (which is not bad because I simply love it)
Btw, thanks a million for a prompt answer - I can finally go back to work ;-)

[dfkt]

The only other shot in the dark I can offer is to format the card with the official SD.org tool - it sometimes works wonders, compared to Windows' own formatter (and perhaps Linux mkfs too): http://www.sdcard.org/consumers/formatter_3/

[Kokroatch]

Thanks! I'll give a try this evening then.

[rickysio]

Did you transfer data to the card using MTP? MTP on the Clip+ is screwy (in my experience with it).

[Kokroatch]

@rikysio: no, I have MSC
@dfkt: Dude, you're a genius! Formatted in SD formatter without any problems and worked from a first power on!
Just for a future reference for those who have the same type of problem. In SD formatter I've chosen the following options: full format with erase off. For 8GB card I took approx. 20 minutes so be sure your Windows machine is on all the time.
Thanks again! (I think the thread can be closed)

[dfkt]

Glad it worked. Amazing that some manufacturers ship cards with screwed formatting (and that Windows can't format them properly as well)... FWIW, first thing I always do with any new MP3 player's internal memory or any SD or CF card - I always format them with that app. Not only does it fix such unforeseeable bugs, it also makes most flash memory gain faster transfer speeds (due to optimized cluster sizes).

[Ultimate Viking]

Originally Posted by dfkt

FWIW, first thing I always do with any new MP3 player's internal memory or any SD or CF card - I always format them with that app. Not only does it fix such unforeseeable bugs, it also makes most flash memory gain faster transfer speeds (due to optimized cluster sizes).

Good to know dfkt, and thanks for the link. What settings do you use to format your players memory with? Full format, erase?

[dfkt]

I always do a full format, erase off, format size adjustment off. I've done a few tests concerning speed, erase on/off doesn't seem to matter - and format size adjust doesn't work on regular flash media anyways.

[Ultimate Viking]

Good to know. Thanks again. I have a MP4 player that only has a transfer speed of 2.9 MB/s. I'm going to test formatting it with this tool, and see if it will be any faster. Will have to do it tomorrow. Will post results here.

[dfkt]

Good luck, hope it helps. For reference, here's some speed tests I've written down (Panasonic formatter is the older version of the SD formatter): http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...7&postcount=23

[Ultimate Viking]

Thanks again. dfkt, is there a link somewhere explaining what all that RMAA, or whatever it is means?

[Ultimate Viking]

Well, didn't make a difference transfer speed wise, but you know, it sure didn't hurt anything to give it a good formatting.