Creative Zen not recognized? (SOLVED)

[cottfcfan]

Working through issues on LMDE, which ive just installed.
My Creative Zen Xi-fi 16gb, just does nothing when plugged into my compt.
Doesn't mount, or even show up as a volume even Banshee doesn't see it.
Works fine on standard Mint & other distros.
Any ideas anyone?

[ThistleWeb]

Try looking for an app called Gnomad2. I had to use that with my Zen, it's not great but it works kinda like an FTP to transfer files back and forth. Creative have handcuffed their business to railings on the good ship Microsoft, I eventually switched to a Sanza Clip which works out of the box in any OS and mounts as removable storage.

[vrkalak]

Or ... maybe ... (after you plug in the Zen player) use the gParted partition editor to locate the USB partition.

Then you shoud be able to 'mount' the Zen USB partition using the terminal. And have complete access to it, thereafter.

[cottfcfan]

vrkalak.
Thanks for your suggestion. The problem is that Zens aren't like a normal mp3 storage device were you can drag and drop things in and out of them.
Banshee & amarok have worked well with them for a while, and Banshee has worked perfectly with it since Ubuntu 10.04.
The problem is that in LMDE nothing recognizes it. It probably needs some extra software installing from synaptic but I don't know what.
Gnomad2 does work sort of but its very messy.

[ThistleWeb]

Gnomad2 does work, and it's messy yes, but it's the only thing I know of on Linux that will do the job at all. As I said Creative are very Windows centric in their products.

[cottfcfan]

Thisleweb..
Gnomad2 is not the only thing that works with Zens in Linux.
Amarok & Banshee connect & sync perfectly with the xi-fi & have done for a while.
It seems the problem is only in LMDE/Debian.
In standard Mint/Ubuntu it works fine.
So I feel there must be a way to get Banshee to work in LMDE. I just don't know how??

[cottfcfan]

Just installed Amarok with all its kde dependencies, (which I didn't want to have to do) and it recognizes and mounts my Zen.
I can now read, write, and delete from it as before.
So I'll mark this thread as solved.
Still can't understand why it works with Banshee in all other Distros i've tried, but not this one.
Anyway it's working now. Thanks for all your replies.

[zerozero]

i see i'm getting here late (and glad you solved the problem) but i was going to recommend clementine: works great with my creative zen mozaic (and not only), it's already in testing (tho not yet in latest or incoming - made the transition after the last update-pack)

[kuckunniwi]

i see i'm getting here late (and glad you solved the problem) but i was going to recommend clementine: works great with my creative zen mozaic (and not only), it's already in testing (tho not yet in latest or incoming - made the transition after the last update-pack)

I'm trying to retrieve some music FROM my Zen MX, as I recently dropped my 1Tb and all data was lost (about 300Gb of music, and another 300 worth of movies....). I just learned a tough lesson about backing up important data...
I was able to recover 16Gb of music that were on the flashdrive I plug into my car radio, and another 4 from my Zen's SD card. Now I'm trying to access the Zen's internal memory, and nothing appears to work under Mint 13 xfce. The player worked fine under Ubuntu, Kubuntu and WattOS.

Just like everyone else, Thunar doesn't detect it. Mounting it from disk utility or terminal doesn't help.

Clementine detects it, but that's about it. After offering to scan for music, it yields nothing, (0 songs found), so it hasn't been of much use.

So I gave Amarok a shot after having read tales of successful states of Zen being achieved here, and loving how well it worked for me on Kubuntu. I was very pleased to see that it detected capacity (93% full), yet disappointed when it found no music on the player.

Gnomad2 detected the player, and under the "data transfer" section, recognized the folder structure, but is unable to copy folders.

Code: Select all

Error getting file "" from MTP device!
Error 1: LIBMTP_Get_File_To_File_Descriptor(): Bad object format.

(gnomad2:3616): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_destroy: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

Apparently, I can't copy folders, only files, so I had to manually create folders on my hard drive corresponding to each music folder on the Zen, then copy the songs, folder by folder. To top it off, gnomad2 closed itself after every copy, so I had to keep reopening it and waiting for it to scan the device again (I ticked the "scasn jukebox on starup" box, but when it shuts down it apparently doesn't save settings).

And thus has been my ordeal...how I miss my Sandisk Sansa!!!

I think the next and most logical step is to buy a bigger MicroSD card and stick to Deadbeef on my phone....