Problems uploading via USB

[Bill Green]

(Sorry it's a bit of a long read)

I've had my Brennan now a few months and have loaded just over 1,000 albums with probably another 2,000 to go.

My routine is this - I work on a box of 100 CD's at a time. I upload everything Brennan recognises (via an external cd drive) and anything it doesn't i upload to my laptop via dbpoweramp - This can be up to 20-30 CD's a box.

I then transfer the CD's via a USB stick that has been formatted on the Brennan (USB's checked via a link i was sent on here) back to the Brennan.

A few days back I checked for a CD on the Brennan that I had transferred and it wasn't there? I formatted a new USB stick, copied the cd's once again and they transferred...however on the 2nd and 3rd times I used the USB for transferring it was only transferring 3 or 4 folders and then stopping. Checking right back there are quite a few CD's that haven't copied over. It's almost as if somewhere along the line (i'm using both a laptop and a desktop) my USB is creating a partition that the Brennan wont read.

Yesterday for example with the USB mounted I checked the web interface and some cd's were 'docked' and others were not.

It is going to be a very long and painful process to check what has been missed.

Anyone any ideas what is happening?

I am wondering if the solution is to not transfer anything until I have completed my entire collection. Fortunately I haven't deleted anything. Then stick them on a hard drive and copy the entire thing over and just letting it overwrite the ones it has copied?

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Bill,

Are you uploading the music files through the WebUI 'Upload' function?  If you are then I think that you may have hit a limitation in the WebUI in regard to the length of artist/album names.

If you let us know your upload method then we'll look at the next move.

Regards,

Peter.

[Bill Green]

No my method is:-

a) upload to hard drive on lap top via dbpoweramp

b) When I have about 20-30 discs i upload them from the hard drive on to a USB

C) I plug the USB in to the Brennon and import via import from 'A'

I only use the webUI to check what has transferred. When viewing with the USB still in I can see the artistes in orange that are on the USB which is duplicated in white when transferred. However checking lately not all of the artiste folders appear in orange in this situation. Some do, some don't? One of the artistes was 'MUD' 'Greatest Hits' so doubt its a problem with name length

Thank you

[Daniel Taylor]

The ones you've loaded will only appear in orange if they are still on the USB stick.  Orange indicates what's on the USB stick, white indicates what's on the B2 disk.

[Bill Green]

Yes, I'm aware - I check firstly that what is in orange has actually copied over onto B2 but a lot of the artistes which I know are on the USB stick are not showing up in orange (or white) after I have done the import.
Nothing I do seems to rectify it. Now I have discovered the problem I have found quite a few that haven't copied over out of a small sample I've checked.
It will be painstakingly slow to go through every CD i have attempted to import and discover the exact amount.  

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Bill,

My apologies; I misread your first post.

It could be that the music files are actually on the B2, but the WebUI is misreporting on what is there.   So I reckon it would be useful to not make any chages or additions to the B2 until an assessment is done of the current situation.  To address this I would make the following suggestion.

1.  Run 'Scan Disk' on the B2.

2.  Post here the details of the 'Settings & Status' window (below is my B2's report)

Software Version B2 Nov 2 2020 11:23:29

20196 tracks in 1490 albums 627 artists

0 WAV 6835 FLAC 13361 MP3 0 AAC

Capacity 1000.00G Used 237.56Gb

USB 61 tracks in 5 albums 3 artists

9 Youtubes

Once this info is available, then we will have a better view of what might be happening.

Regards,

Peter.

[Bill Green]

Software Version B2B Nov 2 2020 11:30:19

15826 tracks in 1069 albums 461 artists

124 WAV 15702 FLAC 0 MP3 0 AAC

Capacity 2000.00G Used 382.22Gb

1 Youtubes

(No idea why there are WAV files on there, but that's unimportant)

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Bill,

I've processed your information and it looks to me like your B2 does have all (or at least nearly all) of the music tracks stored on the B2's HDD.

From the stats, my 'Brennan Estimator' spreadsheet comes up with the B2's 'music' directory volume quite close to your figure, so that is a good start.  The 'Estimator' also gives me a figure of 1,530 folders if you perform a full 'Export'.  Would you be able to run an 'Export' and get a count of the number of folders?

I'm thinking that the WebUI is not reporting correctly.  If you could run a 'clear cache' on the browser and see if that produces better results?

Also, do you have NAS running between the B2 and your PC/Mac. This is a really good mechanism for seeing what is really on the B2's HDD.

Regards,

Peter.

 

[PMB]

Hi Bill,

Were every Album you copied over arranged as Artist, Album and Tracks?

Are any of the Albums you copied across stored under 'unknown' or 'various' artists?

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Bill Green]

Thanks all for the help, it is really appreciated, but I'm perhaps not being clear with my problem.

I regularly transfer 40-50 Cd's at a time from USB stick to Brennan via 'import from A'.

i have kept no track (up to now) of exactly how many CD's I have transferred via Brennan direct and imported by USB so the amount of actual cd's on the BB2 is not an issue.

Recently I have noticed though that not all the discs are copying across. Fortunately I have kept folders on my hard drive labeled 'transfer 1' transfer 2' etc etc.

Checking back on transfer 18 for example, despite clear cache, scan disc etc I can see that 'Mud', Motorhead, and Linda Gail Lewis  have not gone over and only 3 of the 4 albums by Madness have transferred.

A spot check on 'transfer 1' shows me that the Adam and the Ants folder has not copied over (i have checked the web interface and the bb2 remote control).

I 'think' the problem is with the USB stick and formatting to FAT32. Recent activity has the USB working first time, then subsequent copies not everything copies (i have run the diagnostic check on the USB AND I ignore the warning 'windows has encountered a problem with the usb, prease scan disc' when i put the usb back in the pc to copy more music) I have tried 'deleting files' from the USB via windows and reformatting the disc in the Brennan but still getting the same problems.

Would the answer be to wait until I have finished all my backing up, then investing in a mini hard drive and doing a mass import of 400-500 CD's and just letting what's already on the BB2 over-write itself?

It would involve probably writing down everything i am copying over and checking it has made it, but I can think of no other solution?

[Bill Green]

Hi Paul.

All albums were imported on to my Hard Drive in the first instance via DBpower so all arranged in exactly the same way 'Artist, Album, tracks'.

Some of those not copied over were 'various' artists, but only a few

[Leslie Brownlee]

Hi Bill, as Peter says NAS is a good way of seeing what's on your B2. It can allows you the compare the B2 with another drive on or connected to your PC. See attached screenshot. You can even drag and drop files between drives. If you've ripped a lot of CDs to your PC in your desired final format it also circumvents having to wait for the B2 to compress the ripped WAV files. Can be done in batches and you can check files have transferred ok as you go. 

[Bill Green]

Thanks Leslie.
I don't have NAS but it wouldn't really help in this instance.
I mostly load direct to the BB2, but cd's it doesn't recognise i load on either of my 2 pc's at home (laptop and desktop).

I'm thinking that the best way to go is wait till i am done with uploading, collate all the music on to a hard drive then doing a mass upload to BB2 and letting any duplicates just overwrite. It will be mind bogglingly slow to go through every album and see what has transferred and what hasn't.
I don't really want to invest in (and learn about) NAS just to get my music on the BB2. i thought it would be easy!

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

Regarding B2 and NAS, just to be clear you understand what people here are saying, you can make the B2 visible on your home network as a "NAS" by (from the front panel) selecting  "Settings->Maintenance->Start NAS"

Once this is done you can see the contents of your B2's disk (the music directory and all the files) from your PC or MAC using their normal file system viewing utility (in Windows this would be File Explorer), the B2 just becomes another PC or MAC folder. 

Honestly, it IS worth your effort in trying this as it will remove all confusion about what is or is not on your B2.

It will also remove the need for you having to copy things onto the USB to load them onto the B2, loading files onto te B2 simply becomes a copy and paste exercise.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Bill,

You can get a listing of every artist, album and track that is present in your B2 by running the following steps.

1.  Run 'Scan Disk' on your B2

2.  Plug a USB stick into the B2 USB C port (a small capacity USB stick will be fine)

3.  Fom the B2's front panel, select 'Main Menu' --> 'Settings' --> 'Maintenance' --> 'b2db to USB C'. (this copies the B2's music index to the USB stick)

4.  Download 'Notepad++' from the web (if you don't have it already; this is just a text file editor, but is much better than 'Notepad' or 'Wordpad')

5.  Plug the USB stick from step 1 into your PC.

6.  Open 'Notepad++' on your PC and from this open up the 'b2db' file that is located on the USB stick.

7.  You will see a listing of every artist/ album and track this is stored in your B2.

Then, at this point, you will know EXACTLY what your B2 contains, and you can build from there.

Regards,

Peter.

[Dave White]

Trying to set up NAS for the B2 doesn't work for me.  I followed your steps, noting the sign-in information that scrolls by.  After I hit the button to start NAS, the B2 says DONE.  However, it never appears in File Explorer, not under Network nor anywhere else.  If I go back to Settings->Maintenance->Start NAS, and repeat the process, I get the same result.   My B2 is connected via Ethernet and running the latest B2B version.  My computer is also connected via ethernet.  Tried connecting computer to wireless and turning off VPN, but no change with either attempt.  Any ideas?

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Dave,

The problem lies within your PC.  Given that you are running the latest B2B software, when you ran 'Start NAS' on the B2 and saw the message 'Done' then that means the B2 NAS is running. That only needs to be done once on the B2.

To sort out the PC, you can run either wired or wireless, there is no difference, except that a wired connection is more reliable and faster than wireless in general.

You have already run steps 1 to 3, so go to step 4.

Enabling NAS on B2 and PC

1. On the B2 -- 'Main menu' check the scrolling display for 'IP Address' and note this down (something like '192.168.1.56' 

2. On the B2, check your current version of software; on the B2 Remote, press 'Info' twice - good if your version is 09 Jan 2020 or newer. 

3. On the B2, go to  'Settings->Maintenance->Start NAS' (You only have to do it once). This is to enable NAS on B2

4.  On your PC, open Windows Explorer as shown in Snip-1 attachment

    In the left side panel, locate the icon 'This PC' (or could be your PC name as in the example in the attached snips (in my case 'PL-Laptop'

5. Right-click on this icon and select 'Map network drive'

6. In the 'Map Network Drive' panel, fill out the fields as shown in Snip-2 attachment. Use the IP address that you noted in step 1 above.

7. In the 'Folder' field, enter '\\192.168.1.56\music' without the quotes but substitute your IP address for the one shown here.

8. Tick box 'Reconnect at Sign In'

9. DO NOT select 'Browse'; select 'Finish'

10. A Windows panel 'Enter Network Credentials' will open up.  Enter 'root' for User and 'brennan' for the password (without the quotes)

11. Tick box 'Remember my credentials' and click on 'OK'

An Explorer window should open up showing your B2 'music' files. It might take a minute ot two to appear, so patience is the order of the day!

You should now have a NAS connection running between your B2 and your PC.  You can manipulate, move, copy music (and other files) to and from your B2.

Let us know how you get on.

Regards,

Peter.