WMP11 question - use flash drive?

N

Nil

I'm trying to help set up a friend with a digital music system using
Windows Media Player 11 on XP. He has a rather old HP laptop, but it's
adequate to play mp3s using WMP, except that he's running out of disk
space. He needs about 20 GB more than he has now, so I figured the
cheapest, easiest solution would be for him to move most of his MP3
library to a 30 GB flash drive. I would then tell WMP to Monitor both
the hard disk location and the flash drive.

I tested the idea on my own XP desktop, but using WMP10 and a 4 GB
flash drive, and it worked fine. I was able to add the flash drive to
WMP's Monitor Folder list, and it saw, cataloged, and played the files
from there just fine. Problem is, his WMP11 will not let me add the
flash drive to the list of monitored locations - you can select it, but
the OK button remains grayed-out and unavailable.

For now I'm using a workaround: I shared his flash drive, and added the
UNC-named location to WMP. It seems be be working, but I'd rather have
it monitor the drive directly so as to avoid an additional layer of
complexity.

Is anyone familiar with this issue, and maybe know how I can make it
work the way I want to? Would downgrading to WMP10 help? Is it the size
of the flash drive that makes his experience different than mine?
 
P

Paul

Nil said:
I'm trying to help set up a friend with a digital music system using
Windows Media Player 11 on XP. He has a rather old HP laptop, but it's
adequate to play mp3s using WMP, except that he's running out of disk
space. He needs about 20 GB more than he has now, so I figured the
cheapest, easiest solution would be for him to move most of his MP3
library to a 30 GB flash drive. I would then tell WMP to Monitor both
the hard disk location and the flash drive.

I tested the idea on my own XP desktop, but using WMP10 and a 4 GB
flash drive, and it worked fine. I was able to add the flash drive to
WMP's Monitor Folder list, and it saw, cataloged, and played the files
from there just fine. Problem is, his WMP11 will not let me add the
flash drive to the list of monitored locations - you can select it, but
the OK button remains grayed-out and unavailable.

For now I'm using a workaround: I shared his flash drive, and added the
UNC-named location to WMP. It seems be be working, but I'd rather have
it monitor the drive directly so as to avoid an additional layer of
complexity.

Is anyone familiar with this issue, and maybe know how I can make it
work the way I want to? Would downgrading to WMP10 help? Is it the size
of the flash drive that makes his experience different than mine?

Try something like this ?

"Folder Monitoring Registry Settings (Windows)"
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd563001(v=vs.85).aspx

The drive letter would need to be consistent. (It helps if the flash
device has a serial number, so no matter what port it gets plugged
into, the device is treated the same.)

As for the type of storage device, if you're going to put 30GB
of files on a USB flash, a copy should also be placed on a hard drive
somewhere. USB flash sticks have a habit of failing at the worst time.

*******

I've set up one partition here as NTFS with compression enabled.
That allows the files to be compressed when they're written to
the drive. It extracts a performance penalty, but provides
a way of getting more space out of a drive. I only used that
feature, until I was finished moving stuff around.

In the file explorer, if you click the partition, and get
properties, there is a box there "Compress drive to save disk space".
It would appear to be compressing the files individually, as near
as I can tell from this. It doesn't look like the entire
volume is treated as a solid block.

"NTFS Compression Algorithm"
http://technet.microsoft.com/library/Cc938433

Another hint at treatment is here. While this article addresses NTFS
implementation on Linux, it gives some idea of the approach to compression.
It seems to suggest, existing files, after you set that "Compress drive
to save disk space" box, won't get compressed until the next time
the file is written. So to take advantage of compression, you might
need some means to rewrite the files. This is just a guess on my part.
I'll leave the (safe) experimentation technique to you :) Using
something like Macrium Reflect Free to move the contents of the partition
around, probably wouldn't compress anything. Whereas, if you were
using something like NTBackup, as far as I know, that's a file by file
backup tool, and on a restore to the compressing partition, the files
would be compressed when written back. I wouldn't actually use
NTBackup - it was just an example. For moving files, I typically
use Robocopy.

http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-advanced/data-compression/

And compression is only worthwhile, if you know major portions
of the content will be compressible. I wouldn't expect typical
music file formats to compress - I wouldn't expect people to be
using .wav files. And there probably aren't enough text files on
the partition, to make significant savings from compressing those.

Compression is a dumb idea, but if there are other constraints in
the picture (no budget for a new drive), it might be another
way to squeeze a bit more mileage out of what is already there.
You could also consider changing the default setting for System
Restore, from the wastefully high percentage it's set to by
default, down to a point where only 1GB to 3GB are available.
But the drive in question, probably wasn't that big to begin
with, so moving the slider isn't going to make the entire
music collection fit.

Paul
 
N

Nil

In message <[email protected]>, Paul <[email protected]>
writes:
[]
As for the type of storage device, if you're going to put 30GB
of files on a USB flash, a copy should also be placed on a hard
drive

or a pile of DVDs or something

In fact, I plan to back the whole shebang up on DVDs. His music
collection is pretty static - he doesn't often get new stuff.
I suppose it's done now (you were talking as if you'd already got
the stick), but for the money - I imagine a 30G USB stick isn't
_that_ cheap - I'd have gone for a USB portable HD.

The stick is a done deal - it only cost about $21. I would have
suggested he buy a smallish USB hard drive, but all the ones I found
were quite a bit more. It's kind of disproportionate, 1 - 2 terabyte
drives for as little as $100, but 100 GB drives were not much cheaper.
 
N

Nil

Try something like this ?

"Folder Monitoring Registry Settings (Windows)"
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd563001(v=
vs.85).aspx

This looks very promising! I will try this when I next get hold of the
machine. Hopefully this will make an end run around whatever obstacle
Microsoft has put in the way of the GUI.
As for the type of storage device, if you're going to put 30GB
of files on a USB flash, a copy should also be placed on a hard
drive somewhere. USB flash sticks have a habit of failing at the
worst time.

I'm going back up all his collection on some DVDs. He rarely buys new
music, so he probably won't acquire much more.
I've set up one partition here as NTFS with compression enabled.
That allows the files to be compressed when they're written to
the drive. It extracts a performance penalty, but provides
a way of getting more space out of a drive. I only used that
feature, until I was finished moving stuff around.

I've always avoided the compression feature, so I hadn't given it much
consideration. I don't think mp3s would compress well, but maybe other
stuff on the drive would.

His current laptop is about 10 years old, and while I would rather have
replaced the hard drive with a larger one, I would disappointed to find
that IDE laptop drives are quite expensive and hard to find these days.
There's lots of SATA ones.

Thanks for some great suggestions, especially that registry edit one. I
searched for something like that, but couldn't find anything even
close.
 

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