Sansa Clip+ folder merging issue
22 Sep 2011I own a Sansa Clip+ as my mp3 player. It's really small, has great audio quality and combined with a 32Go microSD card plus the internal 8Go, it's enough to hold almost all my music library.
As with any mp3 player realeased nowadays, you can browse your files using mp3 tags. I don't really like it and feel limited in my browsing. As I'm listening to a lot of movie soundtracks I have a pretty long list of artists with only one song attached.
Fortunatly, the Sansa also allows you to browse by folders, which is rare enough to be highlighted.
So far so good. Except that I've discovered a little bug a few days ago in the way folder navigation is done.
I had two folders named Soundtrack - Games and Soundtrack - Movies. Each were holding a dozen albums. In each of those folders I had subfolders sharing the same prefix, like Hitman Contracts, Hitman Blood Money or Kill Bill and Kill Bill volume 2.
When browsing my music folder on the Sansa I noticed that the Soundtrack - Games folder had disappeared. I check the SD card in my computer, and it really was there.
I finally discovered that all the Sountracks - Games content had been merged in Soundtracks - Movies resulting in one big directory instead of two smaller ones.
My second discovery was that all my Hitman sub folders were also merged into Hitman Contracts, and my Kill Bill music was in Kill Bill volume 2.
It seems that when multiple directories shared the same prefix, all folders will be merged in one whose name is the last in alphabetical order.
I'm not the only one in this case, I saw a similar report on Sandisk forums, but the bug seems erratic. Folders does not always get merged if sharing a prefix.
As a temporary fix, waiting for a regular fix in a firmware update, I'll update my folder tree to use Soundtracks/Games/Hitman/Contracts and Soundtracks/Movies/Kill Bill/Volume 1 but this is far from optimal.
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