Scanning issues

[Hector_Brocklebank]

Ok so I unplug my external drive from the Wiim Ultra and plug it into the laptop, I then add more of my CDs ripped to Flac and then plug it back into the Ultra. If I do a quick scan, it will sometimes show the music added when I look for it, but the number of tracks showing will not have increased from what was previously on it.

If I do a full scan, more times than not, it will scan for a while and then I get a message saying 'connection error', it's becoming a real pain, what's causing this and how do I fix it?

 

[harkpabst]

Unfortunately there's not one single possible reason for issues with scanning memory drives. Instead, there are a couple of things to look out for.

Are the firmware of the WiiM Ultra and the version of the WiiM Home App up to date? If you're on Android, deleting the app cache might be beneficial. On iOS you'd have to uninstall and reinstall the app.

What kind of external drive are you using? The WiiM Ultra can provide up to 1.75 A of current through its USB port (equalling a power output of <= 8.75 W). An external HDD or maybe even a big SSD might need more than that temporarily under heavy load. Scanning the entire drive and writing the index files is just that, heavy load. If you have a powered USB hub, try connecting this to the Ultra and connecting the drive to the hub. If this mitigates the problem, you have found the root cause.

Check the external drive for errors from your computer. Some issues may not occur during normal operation, but only after heavy read and write access.

Some USB pocket drives are not perfectly stable with rising temperature. Playing files might work normally, but the memory chips or controllers might fail when heating up. And some simply don't pay nicely with the Ultra for no obvious reasons.

If you suspect that the index generated by the Ultra is already corrupted you can delete the folder "wiim_cache" in the root directory and start the scanning process from scratch.

Good luck!

 

[Hector_Brocklebank]

Unfortunately there's not one single possible reason for issues with scanning memory drives. Instead, there are a couple of things to look out for.

Are the firmware of the WiiM Ultra and the version of the WiiM Home App up to date? If you're on Android, deleting the app cache might be beneficial. On iOS you'd have to uninstall and reinstall the app.

What kind of external drive are you using? The WiiM Ultra can provide up to 1.75 A of current through its USB port (equalling a power output of <= 8.75 W). An external HDD or maybe even a big SSD might need more than that temporarily under heavy load. Scanning the entire drive and writing the index files is just that, heavy load. If you have a powered USB hub, try connecting this to the Ultra and connecting the drive to the hub. If this mitigates the problem, you have found the root cause.

Check the external drive for errors from your computer. Some issues may not occur during normal operation, but only after heavy read and write access.

Some USB pocket drives are not perfectly stable with rising temperature. Playing files might work normally, but the memory chips or controllers might fail when heating up. And some simply don't pay nicely with the Ultra for no obvious reasons.

If you suspect that the index generated by the Ultra is already corrupted you can delete the folder "wiim_cache" in the root directory and start the scanning process from scratch.

Good luck!

Hi,

The firmware and app are up to date and I'm on Android. The external drive I'm using is 5TB with it's own power supply, only 2.45TB is being used, I checked the drive and no issues.

I just did a full scan again and it showed me folders that aren't even on that hard drive, they are on a separate drive.

 

[Burnside]

Have you tried deleting and re-installing the app or clearing its cache as advised earlier?

 

[Hector_Brocklebank]

Have you tried deleting and re-installing the app or clearing its cache as advised earlier?

I cleared the cache but didn't delete the app.

 

[harkpabst]

The external drive I'm using is 5TB with it's own power supply, only 2.45TB is being used, I checked the drive and no issues.

That's good and rules out problems with insufficient electrical power. Adding an active USB hub would do nothing in this scenario. Also, you're not running out of disk space, which is another potential issue I hadn't mentioned yet.

I just did a full scan again and it showed me folders that aren't even on that hard drive, they are on a separate drive.

Clearing the app cache should be all that is needed in this case, if the culprit is the WiiM Home App. To speed up access to the files without having to query the database on the drive every time it caches the results, which is a good thing, as long as it works a expected.

For how long have you been using this drive with the WiiM Ultra? If the issue with ghost folders is not due to an outdated app cache, I suspect that the database might have been corrupted, indeed. There's no guarantee, but if I was you I would go ahead and delete the folder "wiim_cache" in the root directory of that disk. This will make sure that the files.db database is really created from scratch.

The obvious downside is that this is a full scan, of course, and also the centralised directory for cover art will be created freshly. In other words: This is going to take some time.

 

[Hector_Brocklebank]

I deleted the app cache and the Wiim cache and did another full scan and it's now working, I did notice a lot of album covers is now missing when I open the app, not sure if that means they are missing from the hard drive as well.

I bought the Wiim Ultra in October 2025 so I've been using the hard drive with it since then.