Toshiba Gigabeat S Error Destroys All Content

[Jason Dunn]

<img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/toshiba-gigabeat-s-removing-media-items-crash.jpg" /><br /><br />Know what that's a (poor) picture of? A Toshiba Gigabeat S erasing all of its content. How did it happen? I have no idea. I picked up my Gigabeat S, and turned it on. I noticed it was very low on power (it seems to suck battery life in standby mode), so I moved it toward the power bar I had set up with the AC adaptor. I went to plug it in, and was presented with a screen on the device saying something like "To recover from an error, the device must remove all content". The only option was to select OK. I selected OK, and the device showed me the above screen while it removed all content on the hard drive. Sure enough, after perhaps 30 seconds the device rebooted into its default state and I had no content on it. Not a single song, photo, or video. I was baffled - why on earth would a device like this have a built-in function designed to wipe out all content?<br /><br />Can you imagine having this happen while you're travelling? What if you had transferred over photos from your digital camera (a cool feature on the device) and they were your only copies? I have no idea why the device did this, but it's been working fine ever since - so I somehow doubt that it's a defective unit. Has anyone else seen this, or read about it elsewhere?

[Janak Parekh]

It's obvious... your Gigabeat is upset you bought a Zune, and is punishing you. ;)

(In all seriousness, this is a pretty disturbing error. It's like a spontaneous hard reset on a Pocket PC, except there's so much more content...)

--janak

[Jason Dunn]

It's obvious... your Gigabeat is upset you bought a Zune, and is punishing you. ;)

Except that this happened about a month ago and I just found time to write about it now. Maybe the Gigabeat KNEW I was planning on getting a Zune. ;-)

[Felix Torres]

Odd, I had my Gigabeat clean itself out a week or so ago.
Probably my fault, though.

I was fooling around with the XBOX media-over-usb functionality after the fall update and I had both the Gigabeat and a thumbdrive connected at the same time. (Actually, I played video off the Gigabeat, then I plugged in the thumbdrive and played photos and video off that.) I unplugged the thumbdrive while everything was working and then I turned off the Xbox.
As I went to turn off the still-attached Gigabeat, it reported it was deleting all content. Didn't ask; didn't pop up any error messages; it just did it.

Never did it before; hasn't done it since.
&lt;shrug>
I thought it was an errant MTP command from the 360 that did it since it had to deal with both an MTP and a MSD at the same time.

I was planning to resync the Gigabeat around that time anyway so it was no problem for me and I didn't have any DRM'ed content on board so the only thing lost were the two sample songs that came with the Gigabeat. I sort'of miss one but I'm not crying.

Hope it is not a common thing; I've had it for about six months without incident...

As for sucking battery on standby; yes it does.
The price of Windows Mobile instant-on, I guess; it has the same battery drain habits as PDAs...
Of course, since it charges off USB and plays through the 360, that's not much of a problem for me these days...

[Felix Torres]

It's obvious... your Gigabeat is upset you bought a Zune, and is punishing you. ;)

Except that this happened about a month ago and I just found time to write about it now. Maybe the Gigabeat KNEW I was planning on getting a Zune. ;-)

Hmm, a month ago?
Not two-three weeks?
Say shortly after the 360 fall update?
Hmmm, I wonder...

[BugDude10]

Janak Parekh wrote:
It's obvious... your Gigabeat is upset you bought a Zune, and is punishing you.



Except that this happened about a month ago and I just found time to write about it now. Maybe the Gigabeat KNEW I was planning on getting a Zune.

Maybe it was just jealous that you hadn't yet started GigabeatThoughts.com...

In all seriousness, I would be livid if any of my players ever did that. I'm not a tech professional, but I can't imagine any situation that would require a full content-delete before it could reset itself.

[bcries]

In all seriousness, I would be livid if any of my players ever did that. I'm not a tech professional, but I can't imagine any situation that would require a full content-delete before it could reset itself.
I'm not a tech professional either, but a corrupt partition record or FAT is a show-stopper for a PC, requiring a boot disk and re-partition or re-format. Should the same fate befall a hard-drive based player, you might have otherwise been stuck sending it in for service.

It might actually be a good thing, I think, that the firmware is instead smart enough - when faced with such a fatal error - to just reformat the drive and get you back on your feet. Our real beef shouldn't be with this functionality (which saves the user from sending it in for warranty service, at which point you'd lose your data anyway), but instead with whatever caused the fatal drive error.

My basic point: bravo to the self-healing player, whatever the consequences. If it were an Apple device, they might have just tried really really hard to make it bug-free - but on the rare occasion of an error, you'd get an ambiguous "sad face" symbol and a dead device ;)

[aroma]

It's obvious... your Gigabeat is upset you bought a Zune, and is punishing you. ;)

When I first saw Jason's post, I was SO hoping to be the first to post this comment. Oh well.

That does suck. That the exact reason I always try to have at least two copies of my photos I take while traveling. Loosing my music wouldn't be a huge disaster, but loosing my only copy of photos would be devistating.

[Felix Torres]

It's obvious... your Gigabeat is upset you bought a Zune, and is punishing you. ;)

When I first saw Jason's post, I was SO hoping to be the first to post this comment. Oh well.

That does suck. That the exact reason I always try to have at least two copies of my photos I take while traveling. Loosing my music wouldn't be a huge disaster, but loosing my only copy of photos would be devistating.

As is, the Gigabeat allows you to copy photos from a camera to its hard drive.
But you'd need to trust it to rely on it as your only source, no?

[Jason Dunn]

It might actually be a good thing, I think, that the firmware is instead smart enough - when faced with such a fatal error - to just reformat the drive and get you back on your feet.

But you're making a huge assumption that there was a drive FAT corruption or something similar, without having any facts or proof. My beef is not that the player was able to "heal" itself, it's that it seemed to have this trouble out of nowhere, and to nuke user content without telling the user what's going on is a very serious thing. It makes me not want to trust the damn thing again, because how do I know it won't do it again? :roll:

[Jason Dunn]

As is, the Gigabeat allows you to copy photos from a camera to its hard drive. But you'd need to trust it to rely on it as your only source, no?

But that's kind of the point - to use the Gigabeat S as a hard-drive based backup of your photos, so you can wipe your memory card and keep shooting photos. If you can't trust the Gigabeat S completely, then it's only good as a backup copy of what you're keeping on the Flash card, and I'll trust Flash over hard drives any day of the week...

[Dyvim]

If the Zune is basically a rebranded Toshiba Gigabeat, how long before someone's Zune does this? Just a thought.

[Felix Torres]

But it isn't.
Zune is based on the same code-base but it is not the same firmware.
Zune has a lot of extra features and a tweaked core OS, even if both are based on Windows Mobile 5.
Might as well wonder about the smartphones and PDAs while you're at it.
The similarily beween Zune and the Gigabeat is about the same as between an iMate and an Axim.; there is a strong family tie but the products are not the same.

[Jason Dunn]

If the Zune is basically a rebranded Toshiba Gigabeat, how long before someone's Zune does this? Just a thought.

You know, funny you should ask...[stay tuned on Zune Thoughts]

[Phoenix]

...How did it happen? I have no idea... the device showed me the above screen while it removed all content on the hard drive... why on earth would a device like this have a built-in function designed to wipe out all content?

Yeah, that pretty crazy. And another reason not to buy a Toshiba.

And although I'd like to check out a Zune, I'm not spending a dime until after I've had time to sit back and watch what the hardware does and until MS has had time to iron out some of the bugs in the software.

Until then, I'm sticking with my Ipod.

[Dyvim]

But it isn't.
Might as well wonder about the smartphones and PDAs while you're at it.

Well if someone released a Toshiba Gigabeat running Smart Phone or Pocket PC flavor of Windows Mobile, I would wonder about it. The Gigabeat and the Zune have more in common than just Windows CE code- they seem to share much of the same hardware as well. And I wouldn't be surprised if the Zune and Gigabeat shared some of the same firmware components as well - such as the device driver for its hard-drive.

[GlennSlayden]

I've had the Gigabeat S for 4 months and used it fairly heavily. During this time it has been kind enough to, without my permission or intervention, reset itself three (3) times, displaying the "Removing Media Items" message. It's completely infuriating.

[Jason Dunn]

I've had the Gigabeat S for 4 months and used it fairly heavily. During this time it has been kind enough to, without my permission or intervention, reset itself three (3) times, displaying the "Removing Media Items" message. It's completely infuriating.

Wow. 8O My experience was more of the "huh, that's odd" kind because I didn't have much (any?) data on it...I can't imagine how infuriated I'd be if it happened to me three times. Have there been any firmware updates for the player?

[drperry]

My gigabeat just had it's 3rd content erasing error, of unknown origin...

Though, it seems to happen when scrolling through the file list...


Still, it takes just a LITTLE time to transfer 10,500 songs...

I would really like to know WHY I can't scroll through my file list at full speed... It makes it hard to get to a song when I've gotta go slow, lol.

[tdmt4]

I need help. You'll have to bear wit me, I'm new to the whole PMP thing. I received the same error message, followed by one saying to connect it to a PC (I did), followed by: Update or restore portable media center using PC application. I recently moved so am using a different computer than I had originally synced wit the player. So I Updated windows media player to windows media player 11 and installed whatever was on the disk that came wit the player. but when I tried to sync an error came up saying that I could not change the sync settings at that time and to try again later. Windows web help said that the message was a result of the device not responding. It gave 3 solutions: Reset (I did), find a firmware update for it (Couldn't find it), or try a different device (jus paid 200 for it, that's not happenin). I also noticed that when it is connected windows media player reads it as being a 1G gigabeat (it's the 30G). I would appreciate any kind of feedback

[Jason Dunn]

I need help.

It sounds like you might need some advice from a community of Gigabeat users. Try here:

http://www.mygigabeat.com/forum/