Cannot access USB audio library

[Brantome]

So... a minor miracle occurred. I've had my phone on Home Music Share search for a LONG time, and when I looked at it it shows the WiiM Ultra! Here's where the wheels come off, though...

Clicking it takes at least 15-20 seconds to change to the next screen, and only a small fraction of my music library is showing. Rescanning resulted in the same count. But when I rescanned several times, the number is going up very slowly.

I'm excited to see SOMETHING happening, even though it is only finding a fraction of my music. This last scan got 9 more songs than the last scan.... and now 6 more. ????

I'm thinking I just need to WAIT. I didn't expect this to take days, and now I'm wondering if this drive is somehow just slow? I've scanned for corruption and tools I have show none, and it is a fairly fast thumb drive.

So, I will just wait. Thank you for all your help. I will amend my trouble ticket. Maybe there is hope after all.

I have seen that occur from time to time when my Amp/Ultra scans some usb drives. You just need to keep asking it to scan until you think it’s caught everything. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme nor reason as to why it sometimes scans the lot and other times it doesn’t. Hopefully your ticket is at least giving WiiM some clues as to when it does misbehave…

 

[codewritinfool]

I don't see how that would improve the situation, to be honest.

@codewritinfool , I'm using a SanDisk SDCZ48-512G-G46 thumb drive with my Ultra and it's working flawlessly. It appears to be a similar, maybe slightly cheaper version of your's in a different form factor.

Do you happen to have any other DLNA servers running (e.g. a Windows Computer, a NAS or anything else)? Can you see them under Home Network Share if no USB drive is attached? WiiM Home on iOS or Android?

May I ask how you have your SanDisk formatted (what filesystem type), and also ask how many songs are on it?

 

[harkpabst]

May I ask how you have your SanDisk formatted (what filesystem type), and also ask how many songs are on it?

Don't even remember the formatting from the top of my head. I don't remember using Rufus to change it to FAT32, so it's probably just like it came from Amazon. I don't have physical access right now, so can't check.

The contents is around 11.000 songs mostly FLAC, a small number of MP3s, all organized and tagged by MusicBee.

Scanning was blisteringly fast with the Ultra. Right when the Amp came out (or rather when I got mine, some months ago) I did have the issue of very slow scans and multiple re-indexing runs. But it's long been fixed with the Amp.

Do you intend to use an external hard disk with separate power supply if it won't fly with a thumb drive?

 

[harkpabst]

And just as a side note (I don't think it's very likely): Do you happen to have enabled some fancy security hackery on your access point to somehow isolate clients from each other for certain protocols?

Your user name just got me thinking ...

 

[codewritinfool]

I don't know. I'm thinking of ordering the same drive you have and using the default formatting and seeing what happens.

Of course, I'm going to wait on this rescan business for a day or two if that's what it takes. At the moment the app is sluggish on all screens related to USB, so I think there is a lot of background stuff happening and I should just be patient.

 

[codewritinfool]

And just as a side note (I don't think it's very likely): Do you happen to have enabled some fancy security hackery on your access point to somehow isolate clients from each other for certain protocols?

Your user name just got me thinking ...

Lol, no. I have been an embedded systems guy for more than 30 years and also have a specialty in cybersecurity, especially related to IoT and devices like this. It is on its own network along with my phone and thermostats and cameras and other IoT-like devices, but there is plenty of bandwidth and no real restrictions on any protocols or ports, but you can bet that I have the tools to monitor and probe such things if I need to.

 

[codewritinfool]

Well, it went offline again yesterday and hasn’t been back yet. I noticed that the pc version of the WiiM program has timeout messages that occasionally flash up. So I am convinced that it is busy doing something and it is likely caused by the thumb drive itself. I’ve ordered ta different one and will use the default format and see how that works.

 

[simbun]

Well, it went offline again yesterday and hasn’t been back yet. I noticed that the pc version of the WiiM program has timeout messages that occasionally flash up. So I am convinced that it is busy doing something and it is likely caused by the thumb drive itself. I’ve ordered ta different one and will use the default format and see how that works.

Did you ever try to discover the Ultra UPnP server from another control point?

Unless you have a huge collection it shouldn't take more than a few hours.

I'd try a factory reset.

 

[d6jg]

Perhaps an issue with the files themselves I.e. the scanner is having difficulty opening them to perform the indexing. How were they created? Do all files contain embedded artwork or is it a folder.jpg structure?

 

[codewritinfool]

Did you ever try to discover the Ultra UPnP server from another control point?

Unless you have a huge collection it shouldn't take more than a few hours.

I'd try a factory reset.

I verified that the TCP and UDP ports were open.

 

[codewritinfool]

Perhaps an issue with the files themselves I.e. the scanner is having difficulty opening them to perform the indexing. How were they created? Do all files contain embedded artwork or is it a folder.jpg structure?

Simple FLACs and MP3s.

 

[d6jg]

Simple FLACs and MP3s.

In my world (LMS) when people report the scanner getting itself into a loop the cause is usually something in the scan target. Sometimes a shortcut to files outside of the scan target, sometimes a video file that’s found its way into the files and frequently a bunch of corrupt files where it isn’t clear that they are corrupt until you examine the scanner log. Here you are not going to get the luxury of the scan log unless it’s available via the http port?

 

[harkpabst]

Update: I tried a different much smaller flash drive (also a SanDisk, but an older 64GB model) and only put one album on it. It is formatted with the ExFAT filesystem.

Nothing happened anywhere detectable when I plugged it in. I waited hours and looked again, still nothing. I even opened the app fresh to cause a reconnection and try to avoid stale data. Still nothing.

This morning I removed the thumb drive and inspected it on a computer.

The wiim_cache folder exists, and the contents I can see look reasonable.

So, that's a couple of thumb drives, one of them very minimal, and the Ultra sees them and creates the wiim_cache folder and populates it but no way to access the music from the app or the device front panel. I even installed the WiiM Home app on a PC and it behaves the same.

Further info: MiniDLNA ports, both TCP and UDP, are indeed listening on the Ultra. I scanned it to find out.

Would be quite surprising if this one album by chance would be causing all the issues ...

I also would consider a factory reset, though.

 

[d6jg]

Would be quite surprising if this one album by chance would be causing all the issues ...

I also would consider a factory reset, though.

I missed that it was just one album. I’d agree no harm in a factory reset and retry from scratch.

 

[codewritinfool]

Well, my audio library finished copying over to the new drive, which is factory-formatted as FAT32. I put it in the Ultra about 15 minutes ago and it already shows up as USB and has most of my artists / albums in it. Each time I scan it gets a few hundred more so I just need to wait a bit, but this is a HUGE improvement over what I'd been seeing with my old drive, which was a SanDisk SDCZ430-512G-G46.

I think this problem is solved! I sent a log file to WiiM as they requested and will probably send them one of this setup after it stabilizes. Maybe there's a clue in there as to what was happening in case it can be fixed or in case it affects others.

Thanks to @harkpabst for the recommendation of the SanDisk SDCZ48-512G-G4, and thanks to all of you for suggestions and help!

 

[harkpabst]

Glad to hear that. Fingers crossed that this is a permanent fix.

 

[kaidou]

So is it better to have it as exFat or FAT32?

 

[WiiM Support]

So is it better to have it as exFat or FAT32?

Hi Kaidou,

Both FAT32 and NTFS should work. If not, please send us a ticket from the WiiM Home App so we can resolve this promptly. Thank you!

 

[kaidou]

Well now that you mention it, it doesn't show me any files. It's an exFat external hard drive, it has the wiim_cache folder which took forever to be created, but it is there. When I press "Rescan you Music Server", nothing I get 0 songs.

 

[WiiM Support]

Well now that you mention it, it doesn't show me any files. It's an exFat external hard drive, it has the wiim_cache folder which took forever to be created, but it is there. When I press "Rescan you Music Server", nothing I get 0 songs.

Please send us a ticket so we can check it further. Meanwhile, if possible, can you please check if you can use NTFS or FAT32? Thank you for your assistance and patience.