Node stops indexing 2TB USB drive at 38,000 songs
Answered
I copied my iTunes library and my hi-res downloads to a brand new, just formatted (FAT32) empty USB HDD, and the Node indexed 38,000 of them and is now sitting stuck at that number, for 5 hours. I don't know how many files I have, but it's probably a little in excess of 1TB. I know it's not done and ready to play, since the green light is still on and the unit is otherwise inoperable.
Just last week I put my iTunes library (950GB) on another USB drive, without the addition of the hi-res albums, and it indexed them fine. The only differences now are: the drive capacity, the additional hi-res files, and this time I copied my iTunes playlist folder over as well.
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Official comment
Presume you are connecting the USB drive directly to the Node, if so this is not really the way to do it with such a large number of tracks. A NAS or network share would be better, there may be a track limit on attached storage, please see the limitations in this link.
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......since the green light is still on and the unit is otherwise inoperable
Green light on your Node? If so, you probably have a network issue.
Solid green: Hotspot Mode
Solid white: Indexing1 -
I’ll take a closer look. My recollection is that it looks white from an angle, but green from straight on. Maybe the thing needs to be rebooted.
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After leaving it a few more hours, the blue light came on, and the app told me a USB device was detected. But when I click on it, it shows no contents. So I rebooted, and now it’s counting up the tracks again, but the light that’s on looks like both white and green LEDs are lit at the same time. It’s not the intense green that flashes on startup. In the meantime, while it appears to be indexing, I’m able to access all other content just fine - streaming services, network library files. I’ll let it go overnight, but I fully expect the count will stop again at 38,000, and when I check it again tomorrow morning, I’ll bet it will show no USB content.
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Unfortunately, all I have for a server is my iMac, and its internal drive isn't large enough, so my library is on an external USB drive attached to it. That works fine for listening at the computer, but the Bluesound support people confirmed for me long ago that the Node's network abilities are limited, and it can't see anything other than the computer's internal drive. Any external drive attached to the computer is invisible to it. So my copying the library onto a second drive to plug directly into the Node was my hope for a workaround.
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Yes... external drives on a Mac are problematic, also requires them to be formatted in a certain filing system and when the Mac goes to sleep so does your music.
You may want to invest in a NAS, Western Digital have a refurbished store and whilst not cheap they are much more affordable. You could then get all your music in one place.
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I'm as far from networking literate as one can get, so the idea of my setting up a NAS successfully seems unlikely. For one thing, I'd need to know before buying one that it will work plugged into the LAN port of a wifi mesh node (or maybe into the LAN port of my iMac) instead of into the modem/router. And even then I believe the configuration/setup would be beyond my abilities. I was about to pull my hair out just setting up the network share to get the Node to find my iMac. The fact that it finally ended up working* I attribute to pure chance, and I'm hesitant to do anything to change the network for fear of crashing the whole thing. But I appreciate the suggestion.
*By "working," I mean I can listen to the few albums I have stored on the iMac, but there are some that have minor glitches, like missing album art (the image files are all right there, in the same folder as the tracks, just like the albums that display correctly - including the same type, size and resolution of image files), and in one odd case, several albums, stored in their own separate folders, appear together in the same "album" in the BluOS app, with the tracks all jumbled in together. But like I said, I view it as near-miraculous that I got it this far, and I hate to mess with it further.
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LOL.
Being honest getting artwork / metadata correct can be hard work but once you know or get the knack it becomes second nature, appreciate that computers / technology is not for everyone and even with a the assistance of a few applications some may not be able to make it work.
A NAS is best connected to the Router directly or a network switch connoted to the Router, as soon as the Ethernet port on a Mesh point is mentioned it can go either way.
The “jumble” of albums which have merged is again down to metadata, this can easily happen if some of the tags match.
Bluesound make the Vault which would if funds allow be the perfect device for you replacing the Node. It would need an Ethernet connection back to your router but you literally pop a CD in and wait, after sometime the CD is ripped (copied) to the Vault and made ready to play along with the artwork. Some albums however do not have the artwork but this is down to the online databases having missing information... so now you are back to editing the metadata.
If I may suggest the rise of online streaming services could be your saviour, pretty much every CD I have is now available to be streamed with the exception (not checked recently) of an old European Broadcast Union test CD which is hardly classed as music or important. On line streaming means no library to worry about, metadata or artwork and a vast amount of music available.
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I've thought about a Vault, but if it requires ethernet to the router, it just won't happen in our house. Best I can do is plug it into the ethernet jack in the mesh node that's in my listening room.
I subscribe to Tidal and Qobuz, and agree about the vast amount of music out there, but I still have quite a bit in my collection that aren't available from either of them, especially older classical records. But, I still have all those recordings in my physical media library, whether on LP or CD (or SACD), so it's not like I can't listen to them at all just because they won't be delivered by the Node. In that regard, this all very much a "first-world problem," as they say.
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I purchased a Node 2i yesterday. I have currently got a 3Tb hard drive with about 68,000 tracks connected to the USB port on the Node 2i. I seems to have indexed all of them successfully. I’ve not found anything missing.
I was planning for this to be a temporary arrangement. My plan tomorrow was to try and get my Windows 10 Computer connected via network to Node. But all my music is on a 3Gb USB hard drive which connects to my Windows computer. From reading this post it sounds as if the Node will only see internal hard drives. This is a potential issue. I used to use a Slim Devices Transporter which could access my USB external hard drive. Any thoughts? Is there any way to get the Node to see external hard drives connected to my computer? Thanks everyone.1 -
Hi Andrew,
There is no problem using shared external drives on your Windows computer.0
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