GoFlex Satellite

[bengersfood]

I have had my Satellite a few days now. On the second day I used the sync software to put my very large media library onto the satellite. It has in excess of 60,000 file, almost entirely audio. The are organized by folder, artist/album as is usual.

The satellite doesn't seem to be indexing the files in any understandable way.

Sometimes when I switch on the app reports only a few thousand files, all listed as "unknown" artist and "unknown" album. Then some hours later (after I have left the satellite running) it will report NO content at all. Then some hours after that about 30% or 50% of the files will be properly indexed and the rest will be sitting under "unknown" in a single album of several thousand tracks or so. Sometimes the GoFlex app just refuses to display any information or folder list for the drive at all (even though the drive is connected)

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to this. I had assumed that that the Satellite or the app would progressively build it's database over a few days, and that with a library as large as mine, it might take a while to index but it would get there. Or I could leave it running overnight and get the job done. But this doesn't seem to be the case. It's very opaque as to what is going on at all.

This morning after a night of (what I assumed was indexing) the app was reporting 38 (!) artists in the library. Now (after a restart) the app won't show anything, it just displays "Getting Satellites content list..."

I don't think I have ever before bought a product that has been so problematic out of the box.

[Harry Dodgson]

Hi,

If you've only had it a few days, the first thing to do is upgrade the firmware to the latest version.  The earlier ones had problems with .MP4 audio.  When the unit first sees your files, it shoves everything into Unknown, then puts them into the database.  It shouldn't take more than a few hours to scan and index your library.  I have 641 albums on mine and it rebuilds in about an hour.

It never hurts to do a scandisk and defrag on the drive and that can show if there are other issues.

Harry

[bengersfood]

Yup. Updating the firmware was the very first thing I did.

I must say I've had nothing but misery from the device for the last few days.

Indexing never seemed to get finished, despite my leaving the thing running for hours. Often it went back to putting everything in "unknown".

Lots of disconnection problems.

A typical battery life of 1-2 hours.

The bug where the thing won't turn off.

And now the disk has corrupted and I've just had to reformat the whole thing.

Sigh.

To add insult to injury, no replies from Seagate's support email either.

Anyway, I'm back to square one with the device. Hope it works this time round.

[bengersfood]

Having started from scratch, I'm having a better time at the moment, dropping the music file on in alphabetical (by artist) chunks and letting the device to an hour or so of indexing before moving on. I'm also using the iTunes script rather than the media sync software, which seems better, faster, and easier to manage.

This time round there's a visible database structure being built on the disk alongside my media folder, something that was notably absent before.

This will all take a few days to complete though.

One question about indexing persists.A few files seem to be permanently recognised as "unknown" but I know the artist tag is correctly set in iTunes, Any suggestions as to how to correct this?

[bengersfood]

Whenever I switch the drive on and off or even stop using it for a while, the next time I use it it seem as if it has to re-scan and rebuild the entire contents. Albums that were visible and indexed this morning have gone when I retured to the disk in the afternoon. The "unknown" artist category contained 14 tracks this morning. When I switched the staellite on this afternoon it contained about 20,000 tracks. This number is diminishing as the scanning goes on, but will I have to endure this EVERY time I use the drive?????

This is via the browser BTW, the app itself simply refuses to show me ANY of the music files. It gives up and loops back to showning "Local Folders" when I try to check on the Music library

[Harry Dodgson]

Hi,

If you just had problems with a few items remaining in 'Unknown', I'd advise to check the revision of the tag that's on it.  I've used a free program (for the PC) called Mp3tag v2.49a to go thru and set all the versions on my .MP3 files to ID3v2.3 (ID3v1 ID3v2.3).

As far as having to rebuild the database everytime, I can't help you with that.  Version 1.3... of the firmware seems to have fixed the previous issues with that.

Harry

[bengersfood]

Thanks for the suggestion about tagging software - I have managed to clear up the last of the "Unknown" odities that way.

As far as my database and indexing woes go - I don't know. I've had a load of trouble over the weekend, but I seem to have got a really helpful person at the other end of Seagate support. So we shall see.

His latest suggestion is to delete the following folders:

.goflex data folder
.swap and goflex mini DLNA.

And then give the thing 24 hours or so to re-index itself from scratch.

If it all works I'll come back and post to that effect. Perhaps someone else can benefit from my week of aggro.

[bengersfood]

10 days (or so) on and I wish I had something positive to report. Unfortunately not. The device stubbornly refuses to be usable.

I have never in my life bought something that fails so spectacularly to perform its stated function.

[slim8589]

To solve the continual looping back to local folder issue you need to restore to factory settings that will bring back the folder view in the app. Have had to do that twice now in the last 4 months.

[USMCSS]

Benger, it might be as slim said but I think you might have a bad drive. I have 111,000 songs in 10,000 albums. I just purchased the drive yesterday. I dragged the music folder from my computer to the flex. It took about 10 hours. 

This morning I unhooked the flex from my computer and connected to it with my ipad. It showed 6000 songs unknown. I exited out of the app on the ipad and double clicked the home button to completely shut the app down. Then I started the app back up and it now stated around 20,000 songs unknown. So I knew it was indexing. It has been going for about 1 hour and has found all 111,000 song names and is now sorting them into albums with album art. It is currently at 2000 plus albums. 

I will let you know how it turns out and if I have any problems like you in the next couple days.

I will note that none of my music is from itunes.

Semper Fi!