B2 HDD - missing recordings

[William Ellison]

Hi Forum,

Weird goings-on with my B2 as follows – any suggestions welcome:

I’ve ripped 390 CDs to my B2 so far, mostly without problems, apart from the major inconvenience of the niggardly 170 character limit for album names.

Something went wrong with the latest CD that I tried to rip. This was a respectable Czech Panton recording from 1990, though it was not recognized by the database.

·       It seemed to have ripped normally, but after I had added track name information the recorded music would not play.

·       I re-ripped it without adding track names, following which the recorded music did play satisfactorily.

·       I re-entered the track name information for Track 1; as before, the recorded music would not play for that track, but would play for the other tracks which had no track name information added.

·       I deleted the track name information for Track 1, but it still wouldn’t play.

·       I tried re-ripping a second time, but the B2 mechanism immediately sounded odd – a clicking noise repeated at about half-second intervals – so I abandoned the rip and decided to delete the recording from the B2 and move on.

·       Turning to the WebUI, I found that about 80% of the contents of the B2 HDD had apparently disappeared.

·       I then tried restoring the B2 HDD contents from a recent backup. This seemed to progress normally, but on completion there are major omissions: the WebUI is currently showing 2754 Tracks, 228 Albums, 118 Artists, whereas my backup external HDD is showing 4792 Tracks, 390 Albums, 161 Artists. For Tracks and Albums that’s a shortfall of about 56% - about 27% for Artists.

·       Just one example – I had 34 Beethoven albums recorded, only 2 of which are now showing.

Can anyone tell me what’s going on, and how I can fix it?

Another unconnected question – why does the IP address change every few weeks?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks, Bill Ellison. 5/4/22

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi William,

I will let others get into the nitty gritty help with your initial issue. BUT try running, from the Front Panel, "main menu >  settings > Scan Disk" .

Then press and hold in the Stop/Play button until "Saving" appears on the front display. Then after the clock reappears reboot the B2.

I suspect that after this it would be helpful to post a snapshot of the top of the window which appears when you press the "cog" icon towards the top left of the Web UI.

-----

Regarding the IP issue.

The B2 is not responsible for the IP number that appears. This is given to it by your House Router. Thus if it changes (which can happen after you reboot the B2 or your Router) this can only be sorted out by going in and configuring your Router

to reserve an IP number for use by the B2.

Most modern routers have this capability, but all routers do it differently. If you tell us the Make and model of your Router (if anyone on the forum has one similar) we may be able to guide you through doing this.

Fred

[JFBUK]

Hi Bill

when you say

"  It seemed to have ripped normally, but after I had added track name information the recorded music would not play."

Can you give an example of what the track name was before and after your edit ?

I assume the before was just "Track 1" and that you made these edits in the Web UI ?

John

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Bill,

If Fred's suggested 'Scan Disk doesn't sort out the problem then we might be able to help through the process listed below.

The B2 music management centres around a file in the B2 named 'b2db'. The B2 builds and maintains this file throughout all of its processes such as ripping, compression, renaming, deletion, playing, etc . I think that you might have fallen victim to a problem when using very long album names, and these can cause issues within the 'b2db' database.

 It would be very helpful if we could look at your b2db file, as it would give us a good indication as to how the B2 'sees' your collection.

There is also a function that lists all of the artists and albums.  Both of these function will output to a USB stick in the USB C port.

If you would like to do this, here are the steps involved.

1.  Insert a USB stick into the B2's USB C port (the stick only needs to be small volume as the files will only be about 3-5 MB).
2.  Format the stick to FAT32 if not already done.
3.  From the B2 front panel, select 'Settings' --> 'Maintenance' --> 'b2db to USB'   (this is a text file so can be read by any text editor).
4.  From the front panel, select 'Settings' --> 'Maintenance' --> 'List Albums'    (this is also a text file).
4.  Plug the USB stick into your PC/MAC.
5.  Select and upload the files 'b2db' and B2AlbumList.txt' into this thread.

We can then examine the file and let you know something more of what is happening.

Also, if you could plug your Export backup into a PC and navigate to 'b2Export' --> then select the ''music'  folder ,and right click on that folder and run 'Properties'.  If you post that here as an attachment, or just post the figures for # Files, # Folders, Size and Size on Disk then that will provide the baseline to figure out what is happening.

Attached is an example of Windows Properties for my last 'Export'.

Regards,

Peter.

[PMB]

Hi Bill,

Did you include any special characters when renaming?

\ / : * ? " < > | .

Paul

Brennan Support.

[William Ellison]

Hi All, and many thanks for your helpful suggestions and follow-up questions, which I will digest over the next day or so - I'm a bit busy with other things just now. Regards, Bill.

[William Ellison]

HI Fred

Apologies for my 2-day absence from the Forum, but I have now had a go at trying your suggestion. 

Following a Scan Disk > Saving exercise, the Stats are now as below. 

Alarmingly, what I was hoping would be a tally of 4792 tracks is now 5086, with a corresponding increase in the tally of albums and artists. After going down a few rabbit holes, I now realise that this is the result of using an HDD for my recent backup which had some earlier versions of the music files on it. These had been superseded within the B2 by versions with edited names in all three categories, so when I carried out the backup the edited files were added to the register as if they were new ones. So I now have duplicates of several music files under slightly differing names - which I can live with. 

Thanks very much for this - but if you have any ideas about what actually happened to make me "lose" most of my collection in the first place, I would be interested to hear them.

Moving on to the IP address, thanks also for your lucid explanation. And I would be interested in configuring the router as you suggest may be possible. The make of the router appears to be D-Link and the model is DSL-3782. It was issued by Talk Talk.

Thanks and regards,

Bill Ellison

r All,

On Tuesday, 5 April 2022 at 14:06:26 UTC+1 fred.w....@gmail.com wrote:

[William Ellison]

HI John,

Yes, I made the edits in the WebUI. And yes, the original Track name was Track 1. My edited version was:

1.     String Quartet No.1 (Kreutzer Sonata): I - Adagio (con moto); II - Con moto; III - Con moto (Vivace, Andante); IV - Con moto (Adagio)

(Unusually, on this recording the four movements are all contained within one track - normally they would have a track each.)

I hope that offers a clue?

Regards, Bill Ellison

[William Ellison]

Hi Peter,

Thanks very much for your suggestion. It seems that Fred's suggestion has done the trick, but perhaps I could try your suggestion in due course to see if it throws any fresh light on the matter? First I need an available USB stick.....

Thanks and regards,

Bill Ellison

[William Ellison]

Hi Paul,

For my renaming of the track that apparently caused the problem, the text was:

1.     String Quartet No.1 (Kreutzer Sonata): I - Adagio (con moto); II - Con moto; III - Con moto (Vivace, Andante); IV - Con moto (Adagio)

Of the characters you have listed, I can plead guilty to a colon, but not any of the others, I think, unless your full stop is a special character, rather than just doing its usual job at the end of a list? I've definitely used loads of full stops in my renaming. 

Speech marks are odd, in that some have been accepted by the B2 and others not.

I hope that's helpful.

Regards, Bill Ellison

On Wednesday, 6 April 2022 at 09:57:27 UTC+1 PMB wrote:

[JFBUK]

Hi Bill,

your example in your response to me 

1.     String Quartet No.1 (Kreutzer Sonata): I - Adagio (con moto); II - Con moto; III - Con moto (Vivace, Andante); IV - Con moto (Adagio)

has 140 characters (including spaces) which is right up against the 140 character limit the Brennen has for track names which may have had an impact.

Is everything now working as you expect and need ?

John

[Ray Dion]

In your above post you also ask how to setup your router, a DSL-3782 from Talktalk. 

The first thing I found that was relevant is:

      How do I find my TalkTalk router password?

       You'll find your default wireless username and password located on the back of your router and if it's a WiFi Hub you'll have a removable WiFi Settings card.

If you have previously logged in and changed the password, of course use that.

Most things I have seen is that your default IP address for the router is 192.168.1.1. This means in your browser you enter "http://192.168.1.1" (without the quotes). If that does not work, page not found or something like that, replace http with https. If those do not work, please provide your IP address of the B2 (and any other device like an iPad or computer). From this we might be able to figure out your address.

I used a video for this portion as I do not have the equipment. The link is Web admin interface: TalkTalk Super Router D-Link DSL-3782 A1. How do you turn off wifi? - YouTube

If you look at the section near 3:25 it will discuss the Settings >> LAN screen. The host does show you how to add a machine to the static IP function. What I noticed as more typical however is that the screen also shows all computers/equipment connected to your router at that point in time. So if you connect your B2 and make note of the IP address you should be able to click edit on that row. From there an option to reserve that IP for the B2 should be available. The MAC address will automatically be filled in for you. 

Do the appropriate saves and you should now have a fixed IP for the B2.

Sorry I can't be more help on the detail. Feel free to ask or provide a screen capture where you are stuck.

Ray

[William Ellison]

Hi John,

Thanks for your comment. And in answer to your question - yes I think it is working properly now, though I say so with fingers tightly crossed. 

I eventually deleted the misbehaving recording and started again from scratch. The CD is not recognised by the database, so everything needed renaming. For Track renaming I sacrificed a few characters from my original text to ensure that the character limit was not transgressed, and I can at last now hear all the tracks, so maybe that was indeed the problem.

I shall be away for a while from today so I won't be using my B2  in the near future. However, I shall try some of the other contributors' suggestions  on my return.

Thanks again,

Bill

[William Ellison]

HI Ray,

Thanks for this comprehensive advice, which I will follow up in due course.

Best wishes, BIll