Syncing via USB cable to Android Samsung Note 2 micro-SD car

[ghi07]

For about 3 years I’ve been wrestling with syncing playlists to my various android devices. I dabbled with wireless syncing when it was released but gave it away as unreliable for me, and continued the arm-wrestle with USB syncing.

That all came to a head about a week ago with the mysterious transient playlists that sometimes appeared and then on the next sync disappeared. If you want to see it in action have a look at my YouTube video: https://youtu.be/nOAsnaly1sk

At this point I’d had enough; I’d spent hundreds of hours over the years on something that should just work. So I began seriously looking for alternatives to MediaMonkey.
But I’m a devil for punishment and decided to have one last shot at getting it to work. So I did a factory reset on my Samsung Galaxy Note 2, reformatted the USB card, reinstalled MMA and here’s what happened:

Test case 1:

In MMW I synced just one playlist to begin with and that worked OK. The tracks copied, the playlist appeared and it worked.
Next in MMW I marked the playlist for deletion. I had Delete other files and playlists from the device (Unselected Library files) checked. I hit Apply and Auto Sync. I confirmed I wanted to delete the files and playlist and that worked.

Test case 2

In MMW I synced two playlists and that worked.
In MMW I marked one playlist for deletion. I hit Apply and Auto Sync. I confirmed I wanted to delete just the one playlist and its files but both playlists and all files disappeared from MMA. With Windows File Explorer I looked at Android\data\com.ventismedia.android.mediamonkey and the album and playlist that should have still shown in MMA were still there.

Test case 3

In MMW I marked the playlist that should still have been showing in MMA for deletion and hit Apply and Auto Sync. Examining the directory on the android device the files had been removed but the playlist was still there. I unplugged the USB cable and then reconnected and found the playlist was then gone.

Test case 4

I repeated test case 2. Same result.

What to try next?

I’m thinking of taking the micro-SD card out of the phone and syncing directly to it. But I’m old, tired and cranky and don’t feel like it right now. It shouldn’t be this hard.

Configuration

Desktop: HP Z100, Windows 10, MediaMonkey Gold 4.1.10.1778, syncing under a standard user account, IE, not admin.
Phone: Samsung Galaxy Note 2 GT-N7100, Android 4.4.2, MediaMonkey Pro 1.1.3.0502

[ghi07]

I must be crazy spending more time on this.

I'm having a go at syncing to a naked micro-SD card rather than to my Samsung Note 2 phone containing the micro-SD card. Here's what I did...

I removed the micros SD card from my phone and plugged it into my Windows desktop computer. I reformatted it, checked that the MMW file Locations were set to \Music and synced two playlist. All worked well, so I put SD card back in my phone, start MMA and set the location of my music to \Music and all is good. I can see playlist and music as I expect and it plays correctly.

So I then remove the card from the phone, plug it back into the computer, start MMW and check the file locations under Sync Options. Now I see that the root directory has changed to Android\data\com.ventismedia.android.mediamonkey\files.

So the next time I sync I have stuff strewn all over the place, some under \music and some under Android\data\com.ventismedia.android.mediamonkey\files.

What is going on?

[ghi07]

OK, so syncing to a naked micro-SD card is working. I take the card out of the phone, stick it in my desktop, run MMW to sync stuff to it, then put it back in my phone.

That's the way to go for me. It a bit of a pain, but less pain than trying to sync to the card in my phone.

[Lowlander]

Significant USB sync improvements have been made with the latest releases of MMA and MMW. Updating to the latest of either should give better USB sync.

[ghi07]

Thanks Lowlander. All the test cases in my first post was using these levels:
Desktop: HP Z100, Windows 10, MediaMonkey Gold 4.1.10.1778, syncing under a standard user account, IE, not admin.
Phone: Samsung Galaxy Note 2 GT-N7100, Android 4.4.2, MediaMonkey Pro 1.1.3.0502

The naked micro-SD card testing was on the name version of MMW, which is still the latest, and on the newer and latest version of MMA (1.1.3.0529).

My plan from here on is to continue using naked micro-SD card syncing. I'm not going to spend more time retesting phone syncing. I'm too old and don't have enough time or patience left.

Cheers, Greg.