Sudden MP3 Internal Memory Loss

i suggest you phone the company itself.

 

Your player probably needs hard reset - you should consult the manual or contact support for details.

I would buy a Zune - it has lots of features and a sexy body
iPod... well it's sooooo boring and unoriginal.

 

your songs are not erased - since you mentioned, that free space did not show up. The software probably malfunctioned and lost the playlist.

 

I guess it's the mp3 player software at fault - rhapsody is just a web-service That's why I suggested resetting it. Your songs should not be affected since they are stored separatelly from software.

 

I'm guessing it's a USB mass storage device. You connect it to your computer using USB and the computer reads it as an external hard drive. If you're afraid of losing your music, I'd recommend backing up the drive to a disk image. I don't know of any freely available disk imaging software for Windows, but if you can find a local Unix geek they could create an image for you using dd.

Then you at least have the image and if a hard reset doesn't work you can replace it and try something else. You could also play with the image and try to recover the songs if you are feeling bold.

 

it basically means that:
1) you connect a player to a computer using usb
2) open windows explorer or whatever file manager you have
3) copy the files from player drive to hard disk

 

Not quite. I think there's something wrong with the file system, meaning you won't be able to read the files through normal means. A disk image makes an exact copy of whats on the disk and saves it as a single file.

A file system is basically a way of indexing the files so they can be accessed. This is usually abstracted by the operating system. The problem is if the index is corrupted then the files are not accessible using Windows Explorer or other file management programs.

There are ways of recovering the index, and if you have and exact byte-by-byte backup image of the disk then it allows you to experiment with various methods of recovery.

I'm gonna try to find some free Windows disk imaging software. If you have the backup and a hard reset doesn't work at least you'll have the option to try something else.

 

ODIN looks good.
There's also FOG.

 

Yes... making an image would be a great way to backup it, also once you've done the back up, run defrag on it. Defrag should take care of the problem if it was just corrupted data, if not, call the company.

 

^Defragging won't do a thing, as Sansa players use flash memory. It's actually bad for flash, but it this case it doesn't matter anyway because the memory is probably corrupt.

I've seen this problem before. Sansa players have some weird defect where they'll just go bad after awhile. I know that's not very specific and certainly not what you wanted to hear, but I've seen at least two where the firmware went corrupt and even accessing a menu was impossible.

If you want a new player, look into an iPod nano or a Creative Zen. The Zen is cheaper and they're expandable with an SD (/SDHC) card, plus they have a much nicer screen. The only downside to this is that they're plastic and less durable than an iPod (I managed to break the LCD on mine with a hard fall from my bookbag). iPod nanos are basically indestructible with their aluminum frame and flash memory.

You could also go all-out and get something like a Cowon or iPod touch, but that's probably pretty excessive for replacing a Sansa.

 

Like Cardigan said, I would go for a Creative if you had to buy a new one. (And I suggest you do, because once an MP3 does something like that, it means it can do it again...) I've always had Creatives and they've worked fine for me. They have perfect sound quality, the looks (if you care about that at all) are sleek and smooth and you get a lot of variety in features to choose from. Every now and then they'll freeze and you'll have to wait till the battery dies out, but I think that's pretty common with things like this.

Anyone would say I work for Creative now~ xD