Writing musice to SD cards

[mostin]

I've been putting mp3 files on SD cards for the mp3 player in my motorcycle GPS. I'm a rookie. Can someone tell me why I can get almost as many songs (90-95) on a 512mb card as I can on a 2gb (105-110) card? It seems to me that if all the songs average out to approximately the same amount of time, that I should be able to get substantially more on the 2gb card. When the 512mb card is full, I get a message saying it is full. On the 2gb cards, I get a message that says "the file cannot be created". Any ideas? Thank you.

[pepe]

Hi,

what equipment do u use to copy the songs onto the card? (PC, or the GPS itself...?)
if U have an old card reader it is possible that it cannot handle the whole 2G space also.

pepe

[Vulcan]

When the 512mb card is full, I get a message saying it is full. On the 2gb cards, I get a message that says "the file cannot be created". Any ideas? Thank you.

That difference in messages is the clue IMHO. I expect that you are putting the files into the root directory of the card, and that the filenames are longer than just 8.3 characters. The 2GB card is probably FAT16 formatted (which is the normal spec for a 2GB SD card) and you're running out of root directory entries on the 2GB card, since long filenames use more than 1 directory entry per file. This article from MS describes the issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/120138

To prove or disprove that theory, make a subdirectory on the card and copy your music onto that. If you can copy many more files into that subdirectory, then this was the problem.

So either use a subdirectory for your music files (if your MP3 player can use files in a subdirectory) or format the SD card using FAT32 (if your MP3 player can use that format) since FAT32 doesn't have that same limitation of files in the root directory. If your MP3 player can't use either option, then the only other way to fit more files into the FAT16 root directory, is to limit them to the 8.3 filenames described in that article.

Good luck

[mostin]

Thank you for the suggestions. I'll let you know what happens.

[mostin]

Thanks again for the suggestions. I reformatted the SD cards to FAT32 and that solved the problem.

[Vulcan]

I reformatted the SD cards to FAT32 and that solved the problem.

That's great news - now you can enjoy more music on your 2GB cards Thanks for the feedback.

[pepe]

Also good diagnosis, Vulcan!

pepe