Memory gone in a flash?

May 25, 2006 12:39 PM

My better half's MP3 flash drive says its full even though there's nothing on it. Please help. She hopes to have some tunes for a flight/train journey tomorrow. Any ideas?

Its a Creative MP3 USB flash drive player, Muvo V200. Nothing flash if you'll pardon the pun but it would be handy tomorrow. The memory is 128MB. It does not have any data on it (doubles as a memory stick), nor any recordings/MP3s on it. To me it looks like a blank slate yet it says that there is approx 20MB free space, which is room for about 6/7 low quality rip songs.

We have a Mac although the player itself it has always been used on WINXP in the past. My Windows laptop is at work so I can't check it against that. It says it is MS-DOS FAT (I didnt think this mattered with a flash drive).

I am not the most computer literate. So, does it matter that it is MS DOS (I've used other flash drives between Windows and Mac with no problems), is it something to do with the driver software? Does anyone have any ideas to get back the memory? Any suggestions?

I would be much obliged.

posted by ClanvidHorse to technology (10 comments total)

Is it possible that someone has copied files to it to use it as a USB key drive, and those appear separately from music? I don't know much about the MuVo works, as I've never owned one.

It may also be that it's incompatible with your MAC, though I think a MAC can probably read MS-DOS FAT stuff even though it's a PC format.
posted by twiggy at 12:42 PM on May 25, 2006

Have you emptied the trash?

You could also try opening terminal, and typing:

cd /Volumes/[then type the first few letters of the muvo's Finder name and press tab]
then
ls -a
and you should see everything that's there.
posted by bonaldi at 12:48 PM on May 25, 2006

If you have used the drive with a WinXP computer and deleted music/files from it, they might be in the (hidden) recycle bin on the drive. Try plugging it in and emptying the recycle bin.
posted by camcgee at 12:49 PM on May 25, 2006

The Muvo should work fine on the Mac. Mine does.

Just reformat the thing. The Mac OS can read FAT. It can also read NTFS.

Good link about DOS/NTFS & your Mac.

Or, be a good better half, and go buy her a 512mb iPod Shuffle. More tunes, and they're pretty cheap. :-)
posted by drstein at 12:49 PM on May 25, 2006

Plug the device into the Mac and run '/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility'.

Select the device in the left-hand pane. Select the 'Erase' tab in the right-hand-pane. If necessary, select FAT as the volume format in the drop-down. Click the 'Erase' button. Click 'Erase' on the scary warning.

That should give you all the space possible.
posted by veedubya at 1:07 PM on May 25, 2006

I thank you one and all for your time. I tried veedubya's first cos I had at least seen the disk utility thing in the past. So again, many thanks.

Now to fill the little beauty up with some tunes.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 1:16 PM on May 25, 2006

Empty the Trash.

I had exactly the same problem with a MuVo (different model, though.) When you delete files in the Finder, it creates a hidden .Trash folder and moves them there, rather than just erasing them. If you use the Terminal -- as bonaldi suggests above -- you'll see it.
posted by Rifkin at 1:18 PM on May 25, 2006

Bonaldi's works fine too. Thanks for that.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 1:37 PM on May 25, 2006

FWIW, I had a similar problem on an MP3 Flash drive of mine the other day. Turned out some of the MP3s already on the drive had file names that were too long and were causing to drive to not accept new data.

Renaming the offending files fixed the problem.
posted by pierrepressure at 10:16 PM on May 25, 2006

Yup, same thing happened to me on a Creative Muvo when I had it plugged in to my Ubuntu Linux machine and deleted some files. Instant hidden files. I just reformatted it and the space came back. Same thing happened to me with the Memory Stick from my Sony camera. I'm definitely looking forward to next week's release of the latest Ubuntu, hoping that stoopid shite like this will work better ...
posted by intermod at 10:24 PM on May 25, 2006