expanding the j3 memory and file limit

[MattJCL]

I am planning expanding my j3's memory with an sdhc card soon. However I understand that there is a limit on the number of files the j3 can handle. This leads me to wonder, is my plan of coupling my 32gb j3 with a 32gb sdhc card not going to work, because before I fill up this capacity, I will hit this other limit?
Anyone know?

[CrowdAds]

[NeedBalanceCtrl]

Yes, there is a hard limit of 8000 files total. It depends on what kind of files you're going to store on the J3. If it's 128k mp3s only, then you'll hit the limit. But if it's APE/FLAC files, or if you store a lot of videos, then you won't hit the hard limit.

Also, keep in mind that the J3 has to scan through all the files when it turns on. The more files you have stored in it, the longer it takes to turn on each time. I'm stuffing more and more files to my J3 and it's taking longer and longer to 'boot' each time. Frankly it's getting a little annoying. Not all players need to scan all files during each bootup but the J3 does.

[spectre]

Originally Posted by Need Balance Control

Also, keep in mind that the J3 has to scan through all the files when it turns on. The more files you have stored in it, the longer it takes to turn on each time.

Not too much of a problem, but it does get a little annoying when you are really in the mood to jam.

The J3 scans it's internal storage, then it scans the external storage. You get to sit there, watch and wait...sigh.

I still haven't reached a limit with my 16GB +16GB storage. However I use 320Kbps for most of my mp3's and I have a few gigs of video on there as well.

[NeedBalanceCtrl]

Originally Posted by spectre

Not too much of a problem, but it does get a little annoying when you are really in the mood to jam.

The J3 scans it's internal storage, then it scans the external storage. You get to sit there, watch and wait...sigh.

I remember how zippy my J3 was when I first got it--as there were hardly any files on it. But now, there are a lot of files on both the internal and external memory and it does take a while to boot up. It's not a major problem, but in comparison to when it first arrived, it is much slower now. But I am no where near 8000. I can only imagine how long scanning 8000 files would take.

[happyguy]

I've set my power off button to put the J3 into sleep mode by default. The J3 wakes up almost instantaneously, even with a full microSD card. I only shut it all the way off at night to save battery power.

I've filled up my 32GB J3 and a 16GB card with assorted-bitrate mp3s and that's about 6600 songs. With a 32GB card about 8800 songs could be stored, so 8000 doesn't seem like such a tragic limitation to me. I'd still like to see the limit raised, and memory scanning speeded up, but as my dad always used to say, people in hell want ice water.

[NeedBalanceCtrl]

Originally Posted by happyguy

I've set my power off button to put the J3 into sleep mode by default. The J3 wakes up almost instantaneously, even with a full microSD card. I only shut it all the way off at night to save battery power.

I've filled up my 32GB J3 and a 16GB card with assorted-bitrate mp3s and that's about 6600 songs. With a 32GB card about 8800 songs could be stored, so 8000 doesn't seem like such a tragic limitation to me. I'd still like to see the limit raised, and memory scanning speeded up, but as my dad always used to say, people in hell want ice water.

Does that mean us J3 owners are in hell?

This may not matter much to users who only use the J3 for music, but I use it a lot for video, and I need to transfer new video files to my J3 on a daily basis. Each time you plug in the J3 via USB connection to the computer and later unplug it, the unit is turned off. So every time I add videos (or music) to my J3, I have to turn it on again, and with ever more files, each bootup is taking its toll. It's just something to consider. The slow bootup time may not bother everyone, but it does bother me a bit.

[MattJCL]

Well, I was planning to eventually expand my 32gb j3 with a 32 sdhc card, but maybe i should just get a 16gb sdhc instead... though, i would always have a few videos on my j3 at any one time, and the large majority of my expanding music collection is 320kb, so I'll have to think about it. The loading time during the turn on process I dont think would bother me, and if it did I would just make use of the sleep mode function.
Still, I find it a bit strange that Cowon would make player that's compatible with these larger sdhc cards, and yet has a file handling limit that restricts the full potential of the player's own features... oh well.

[arcangel]

Originally Posted by happyguy

I've set my power off button to put the J3 into sleep mode by default. The J3 wakes up almost instantaneously, even with a full microSD card. I only shut it all the way off at night to save battery power.

I've filled up my 32GB J3 and a 16GB card with assorted-bitrate mp3s and that's about 6600 songs. With a 32GB card about 8800 songs could be stored, so 8000 doesn't seem like such a tragic limitation to me. I'd still like to see the limit raised, and memory scanning speeded up, but as my dad always used to say, people in hell want ice water.

Can anyone tell how long it takes to start up with ~6000 or ~7000 songs ?

[NeedBalanceCtrl]

Originally Posted by arcangel

Can anyone tell how long it takes to start up with ~6000 or ~7000 songs ?

I can't tell you about 6/7000, but I took a lot at my collection of files and it seems I'm a little under 2000--this includes all files, not just music files. If I'm already feeling it's taking too long to scan less than 2000 files each time, I can't imagine what it would be like to scan ~8000 files at bootup each time.

IMO, Cowon capped it at 8000 because to allow for anything higher would seriously annoy lots of users who would mind such a long bootup time.

[Resiak]

IMO, Cowon capped it at 8000 because to allow for anything higher would seriously annoy lots of users who would mind such a long bootup time.

If what you say is true...I am annoyed. Why would Cowon decide for me how long I am prepared to wait for startup?. I could always put in only a few thousand if startup is that important. The choice should be mine and not Cowon's.

[Syndrome]

Cowon has always had a cap that was just slightly lower than what it should be. Its something you get used to with cowon, after a few generations you may even grow fond of it.

[chri5peed]

Use the Panasonic SD Formatter with new cards, speeds up log-in.

'SD or SDHC memory card file systems formatted with generic operating system formatting software do not comply with official SD memory card requirements and optimum performance may not be experienced.'

[Xul]

Originally Posted by Need Balance Control

Yes, there is a hard limit of 8000 files total. It depends on what kind of files you're going to store on the J3. If it's 128k mp3s only, then you'll hit the limit. But if it's APE/FLAC files, or if you store a lot of videos, then you won't hit the hard limit.

Also, keep in mind that the J3 has to scan through all the files when it turns on. The more files you have stored in it, the longer it takes to turn on each time. I'm stuffing more and more files to my J3 and it's taking longer and longer to 'boot' each time. Frankly it's getting a little annoying. Not all players need to scan all files during each bootup but the J3 does.

It doesn't scan all files at boot up, it compares a start of session value to an end of session value. No one would program a device to scan all files everytime. I have over 18GB of files and it powers up from cold in less than 1 second, if i haven't added or taken away any files.

[DSperber]

Originally Posted by Xul

It doesn't scan all files at boot up, it compares a start of session value to an end of session value. No one would program a device to scan all files everytime. I have over 18GB of files and it powers up from cold in less than 1 second, if i haven't added or taken away any files.

This may be true for internal storage only.

I have almost all of my 32GB internal and 16GB external storage loaded (with about 6300 files), and most of the boot time (which is NOT 1 second) is spent on the first phase... "checking external storage". And I haven't changed a thing for several weeks.

So it appears that at least with external storage, it MUST go through a full scan each boot.

[NeedBalanceCtrl]

Originally Posted by DSperber

This may be true for internal storage only.

I have almost all of my 32GB internal and 16GB external storage loaded (with about 6300 files), and most of the boot time (which is NOT 1 second) is spent on the first phase... "checking external storage". And I haven't changed a thing for several weeks.

So it appears that at least with external storage, it MUST go through a full scan each boot.

I'd appreciate knowing how long it's taking to scan the 6300 files. I have 1700 files and it's feeling kind of slow for me already. I can't imagine how slow 6000+ files would be. Given that I load videos almost on a daily basis, I have no choice but to turn on from a completely cold start. You can't enter sleep mode when you disconnect from the computer--the unit mandatory powers off completely after a disconnect.

[DSperber]

Well, total is about 6300 files. Don't know exactly how many are on primary and how many are on secondary (but I can find that out, just not right now).

Anyway, the initial boot process takes about 4 seconds and then it goes into "check external memory". This takes about 25 seconds. At the moment this is still a 16GB card, with primary storage on my J3 being 32GB. I only have a few hundred MB free on both primary and secondary.

Once that finishes it does appear that whatever it does (or does not do) on the primary storage files takes almost zero time, as was earlier reported. So after that 25 second scan of external storage is completed the main display appears essentially instantly (apparently knowing that there was no change in primary files from the past relevant scan).

I only have 14 sample videos (also split across primary and secondary storage), and also have not changed them in weeks.

[NeedBalanceCtrl]

Originally Posted by DSperber

Well, total is about 6300 files. Don't know exactly how many are on primary and how many are on secondary (but I can find that out, just not right now).

Anyway, the initial boot process takes about 4 seconds and then it goes into "check external memory". This takes about 25 seconds. At the moment this is still a 16GB card, with primary storage on my J3 being 32GB. I only have a few hundred MB free on both primary and secondary.

Once that finishes it does appear that whatever it does (or does not do) on the primary storage files takes almost zero time, as was earlier reported. So after that 25 second scan of external storage is completed the main display appears essentially instantly (apparently knowing that there was no change in primary files from the past relevant scan).

I only have 14 sample videos (also split across primary and secondary storage), and also have not changed them in weeks.

Yes, I'll concede the external memory scan definitely takes longer--in fact substantially longer--than the internal memory scan, but I'm certain even the duration of this "quick scan" of the internal memory is related to how many files one stores on the internal memory card.

I distinctly recall how zippy and sprite the bootup of the J3 was when I first got it. It was almost instantaneous--very few files on the stock J3. But as I added more files to the internal memory, the J3 felt more and more bloated and slow. Adding an external card really slowed things down. I would definitely not describe my current J3 as zippy or sprite, but I would describe its initial stock state as zippy or sprite.

It probably takes less than 10 secs to scan all the current files on my external card. At 25 seconds, it would definitely frustrate me.

I agree with Cowon's logic in capping/hard limiting to 8000 files. I can hear it now: God damn it, it's taking over a minute for my J3 to bootup now, says the guy with 15,000 files on his J3. I believe Cowon limited it to 8,000 files so they'd hear less of that kind of complaint from the user base. If the J3 was engineered to not require such scans during bootup, then there wouldn't be a need to cap it at 8000 files, but the fact is that the J3 does indeed scan during bootup and it would severely slow down the bootup of a J3 if someone had 15,000 files on theirs.

[chri5peed]

Heh, my 30GBs of V0 mp3s albums are single files[to ensure gaplessness on D2]. So 300 albums are 300 files.

They're EAC-ripped FLACs on my HDD. The majority of the 32GB J3 with be new FLAC albums...hence browsing by 'new'

[Xul]

Originally Posted by DSperber

This may be true for internal storage only.

I have almost all of my 32GB internal and 16GB external storage loaded (with about 6300 files), and most of the boot time (which is NOT 1 second) is spent on the first phase... "checking external storage". And I haven't changed a thing for several weeks.

So it appears that at least with external storage, it MUST go through a full scan each boot.

That's nice to know, it shows the difference between the two models. I bet some folk looked at the 16GB model and thought, why go 32GB? A 16GB + 16GB card is cheaper. Well now we know that it costs speed to go down that road. That behaviour sounds like a bug as I thought the J3 merged memory with the card, as that is how the pool is presented. mini SD cards come in different speeds, are you guys using the fastest cards? Or was your choice made on just price?

[DSperber]

Originally Posted by Xul

mini SD cards come in different speeds, are you guys using the fastest cards? Or was your choice made on just price?

It took me three separate tries to complete a legitimate purchase of a genuine 32GB SanDisk card. Still haven't opened the package yet on the one which finally arrived a few weeks ago.

In the meantime, I was so anxious to get things installed into my J3 (especially after discovering that I actually only needed about 13GB of external storage to finish copying the rest of my MP3 collection so far) that I dropped into a Best Buy I was passing in order to pick up a 16GB card. Turns out they only had PNY cards in that size, not SanDisk. Cost me about $60 I believe.

Anyway, this PNY card was rated as Class 2. However as I reported in this other post discussing purchase experiences with a 32GB card I discovered that the PNY card actually seemed to perform as if it were a Class 6 card! Both H2Testw and realworld experience copying files confirmed the same results... that the card seemed to write at 6.40MB/sec, which I had not been expecting. This speed was obtained both when writing directly to the newly unpacked card (i.e. without FORMAT) and then again after doing a complete low-level FORMAT because I couldn't believe what I'd just experienced the first time.

In contrast, I had only obtained the expected 2MB/sec write speed from my first counterfeit/fake 32GB card (which actually turned out to be a 2GB phony) but I have to disregard that experience completely. And of course I don't know yet what I'll get from the genuine 32GB SanDisk card I will someday open. However I'm honestly not expecting anything more than normal Class 2 speed.

However I can state that for some inexplicable reason, the 16GB PNY card I bought strictly because it was the only brand for sale at Best Buy at what seemed like a decent price and I wanted a 16GB card right then, it seems 3 times faster than it should be. And that's a VERY VERY GOOD THING.