Trouble reading micro sd card

[Don Pierce]

I have been using the app for several years with no issues. I use android phones and tablets. Some have 256gb internal memory others have 256gb external micro SD card. I have loaded all of my music on all of them. About 220gb in artist-album-song hierarchy.  

In a Samsung Tab A8 I switched to a 500gb micro SD drive. I transferred all music from the 256 to a 500gb drive and now Poweramp won't read the files. 

When selecting the drive to share with Poweramp I get a warning "to protect your privacy select another folder". I was able to find the album files and add them individually. Major pain with over 400 albums. 

After every five albums loaded I tested to see if files would play. All good.

I then went back to check if any album covers needed to be added. I had to add about 40 covers. All good.

I then scrolled through list to play music. I found all album files from A through E were not displayed. They were still listed in the storage files. I bit the bullet and reloaded all albums A-F. Now I'm missing G-M. Every time I add a new album I lose one down the list. What the heck is going on??? 

Sorry for the book. I wanted all info up front.

 

 

 

[andrewilley]

@Don Pierce First, when using the current Android storage handling processes, you cannot select the root level of any given storage - e.g. the top level of your SD Card. This is a limitation being rolled out by Google for ALL apps, other than a few which have applied for and been authorised to have special access permissions (file explorers, backup apps, that sort of thing - but Max thinks it's unlikely a music player would be considered favourably).

Instead you need to choose a specific folder or folders to allow access to. There's no need to grant permission for every subfolder though, you can simply open your one master folder which contains all of your music (both files and other subfolders) and tap the 'Use this Folder' button, and access will be granted to everything within that folder.

Try removing all of the individual folder permissions and grant access to just the highest level folder which contains all of the others. If your music is scattered as folders all over your storage, I would strongly suggest creating a single 'My Music' folder (or one on internal storage and one on SD Card) and moving everything else inside there before re-applying permissions.

Note: it is still possible to use PA Settings=>Misc=>File Access legacy Mode, which will allow access to at least some of top-level storage, but there is not guarantee that will continue to work in future Android updates. What version of Android and what devices are you using by the way?

Andre

[Don Pierce]

@andrewilleyThanks for your swift reply. I followed your instruction and all works as in the past. Only one hiccup was from my own ignorance. When I tried to create a new music folder I found the drive to be write protected. A quick Google and I found out about the switch on micro SD adapter. 

[andrewilley]

Great, glad you're sorted now. Not many MicroSD cards have write-protect switches, they are more common on larger full size cards (or adapters, which I assume you were using to plug the card into a PC?).

Andre

[Don Pierce]

Correct. Thanks again. 

[Madmax]

I just had a similar experience recently and while researching the issue it brought me to this post.

I originally had an S9 with a 128GB SD card that contained roughly around 80 gig of music. When I updated my phone to an S20, I transferred the card and noticed a few glitches. Not necessarily all involving Poweramp but also syncing in general. Not sure if the card became corrupted but I was no longer able to sync music ripped from CD's through the Windows Media Player. This method worked briefly after the switch but was very glitchy and got to the point it stopped working altogether. It wouldn't recognize the card but if it was removed it would recognize the phone.

I bought a new card and transferred all the info over to it, however I can't get the music to play with the Poweramp app. Everything is showing up including album art and playlists but when you hit play a message that says "Failed to play / Storage unmounted" appears. However the card was mounted properly and acces was granted to the folders.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

[andrewilley]

Are you running on Android 13 (or other recent Android)? Might be worth checking this:

Or try switching to (or from) File Access Legacy Mode and assign permissions again:

Andre

[Madmax]

I appreciate the help but none of these suggestions seem to be working. Super confusing and irritating.

The only other player I have on my phone is the default Samsung player and it is playing everything. Huge bummer.

[andrewilley]

As you're using a new SD Card, which will have a new folder/path location, have you done a Full Rescan to bring the new content into the library and remove the references to the old items? If that doesn't find them, clear the access permissions to the old locations are create them again for the new SD Card (instructions in the links above).

Backup any internally created playlists first. PA ought to be able to resolve the entries to the new file locations, but it's better to have a backup just in case.

Andre

[Madmax]

I was initially using the new SD card to try it out and when I saw the issue, I reverted back to the old one. The thing is, that it is currently doing it on both now. Perhaps it wasn't working right on the original card after the Android 13 update but I didn't notice. I usually listen to music through PA constantly but haven't been listening nearly as much the last couple of weeks because I've been streaming some shows on SXM.

I haven't tried a full rescan yet because I was afraid after reading the WARNING reading. I can attempt to do this though if it might resolve the issue. When I do attempt to play a song and the Failed to play message pops up it says storage unmounted directly underneath it.

[andrewilley]

Every time you insert a 'new' SD Card, Android will assign it a new name and path, which will be different to the one PA has stored in its database.

Long-press on a song title in the list and select Info/Tags. Check the path and filename shown is exactly the same as your mounted storage (e.g. in a file explorer app). Especially the first two sets of four digits, which is the card name. 

A FULL Rescan in Settings=>Library should find all the new locations anyway. But as I said, it would be a good idea to use Settings=>Export Settings/Data first to ensure thing like any internal Playlists, Ratings, etc are backed up. But if this is a new phone, you probably won't have any of those anyway.

Andre

[Madmax]

I did the full rescan and now everything seems to be working properly. A huge relief!

I'm going to have to enable the backup for my album covers from now on because they took a hit once I switched to the new card as well but I was more worried about getting the files to play. Thanks!

 

 

Edited March 27, 2023 by Madmax

[andrewilley]

7 hours ago, Madmax said:

I'm going to have to enable the backup for my album covers from now on because they took a hit once I switched to the new card 

Poweramp shouldn't be caching downloaded album art to SD Card, it should be using internal memory. The filename references are built from the Title/Artist/Album tag information, not from the source audio filenames or paths, so they should still match up with your songs. But as you say, you can use the Export Settings/Data to backup your cover art cache if you want the extra security. 

Andre