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Author Topic: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units  (Read 3794 times)

MarSies

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Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« on: January 16, 2014, 04:41:38 am »

MC has not changed in the way it handles portables in the last (major) versions. I hope it will get some attention to improve this. The most important issue is that it does not recognize the portables correctly. One exception, the iPods, flawless!

I have two Blackberry Playbooks and a Blackberry Q10 phone. If Playbook1 is connected to my W8.1-64 PC it is connected through drive Z:. If I disconnected Playbook1 and connect Playbook2 then the same drive Z: is used. And MC does not see the difference and Playbook2 is treated as Playbook1. That is wrong!


My Q10 phone has RAM and an SD card. If I connect it drive Z: is used for the connection to RAM and W: for the SD card (I use X: and Y: for my CD-drives). And as you might guess MC thinks the Q10 RAM drive is Playbook1 and I can use the SD card, that works. If I connect all three devices simultaneously it is a disaster.

Another annoying thing is that it can take MC more then 30 minutes to recognize  a handheld (exceptions of iPods, flawless). The handheld is seen in windows and can be accessed through a filemanager. MC does not see it and there is no way to tell MC that the drive is connected. Sometimes it does not see the handheld at all. Only option I have is to configure the same handheld again, for instance with the name "Handheld". As soon as that is done MC makes also "Handheld(1)". All of a sudden the first one is recognized/seen and it shows two names.


What can be done about this..
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MarSies

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2014, 02:48:45 am »

Could someone of JRiver please take a look at this post!

Marsies .....
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InflatableMouse

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2014, 04:12:02 am »

They read all posts they just don't respond to all posts.

You're not the first to run into trouble with multiple portable devices so I'm sure its on the list of things to look at and improve.
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MarSies

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2014, 07:34:18 am »

Since I've reported this a long time ago I hoped that with MC19 it would be improved, unfortunately not.

I would appreciate a comment that a solution is under construction or just an acknowledgement of my post.


Marsies .....
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Mr ChriZ

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2014, 08:12:37 am »

Since I've reported this a long time ago I hoped that with MC19 it would be improved, unfortunately not.

I would appreciate a comment that a solution is under construction or just an acknowledgement of my post.


Marsies .....

The problem lies that if they spend all their time responding to posts they won't get any development done.
It might sound simple but if they spend several minutes on each post and they receive even just ten posts to reply to each day they've lost an hour of development time before the days even started.  Just give your post a gentle but polite nudge now and then and if enough posts fall in a similar vein then they will probably take a serious look at it.

JimH

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #5 on: January 21, 2014, 08:47:10 am »

You might be able to name the devices differently.
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MarSies

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #6 on: January 21, 2014, 10:31:49 am »

JimH, is this issue confirmed with your proposal?

Using another name does not help. MC can't distinguish Playbook-A from Playbook-B. And when it does not recognize one of my Playbooks and I configure the name again it renames it with a number (1) behind the name. If I do it again it goes to (2), and so on. It's not a solution but if I could tell MC which device is connected it would ease the pain  ;)

And I understand that not every issue can be thoroughly examined.

Marsies .....
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Duke2010

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #7 on: February 19, 2014, 11:25:40 am »

I have a Windows Phone 8 device and I also wish that device sync worked better. I have been with JRiver for quite a few versions now and basically sync doesnt work. I think a lot of it comes down to the devices in question but Im sure more work could be done to make things work better.

I think this across the board actually. I think its time for JRiver to slow down on adding more and more features and work on cleaning up what they already have. Make the app cleaner and simpler, more intuitive and generally look nicer. Its all starting to look dated now, very 90s looking.  Same goes for Gizmo (Why no Gizmo for WP?).
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connersw

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #8 on: February 19, 2014, 03:34:02 pm »

MarSies:  Are all your drive letters used?  Have you tried assigning specific drive letters for each of your devices?

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-change-drive-letter-in-windows-8-1/

(Why no Gizmo for WP?).

Not Gizmo, nMedium:  http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=70793.0
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MarSies

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #9 on: February 20, 2014, 04:24:29 am »

Hey Duke2010, I'm very happy with your post.

I understand that not every issue can be tackled. Only this issue concerning handhelds has been there for a very long time. Myself I don't use all the new features. I'd like to have more stability and a lot of those annoying (little) things solved/improved.


@connersw, I don't use all my drive letters, plenty left. The program Blackberry Link maps all the blackberry devices from Z downwards where windows starts from the bottom. Giving the devices a specific drive letter will not solve the issue. And the link you gave me does not work for USB devices, only for internal storage.

MC simply does not always recognize the handhelds (only iPods are recognized 14 times out of 15). The handheld can be seen by the file manager and even the explorer from within MC. There is also no list of configured handhelds available to force MC into using one that I point out.

Workaround for my phone is to remove the SD card and slide it into a card reader. That works better then from my phone. Guess I'll have to wait for a real solution ..
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connersw

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #10 on: February 20, 2014, 07:12:46 am »

Did you try it?  I use it with USB drives all the time to ensure that Windows always assigns the drive to the same letter, rather than the first available one.  It's useful when mapping USB drives as network drives so that regardless of what USB port you use, or what else is plugged in, the drive always comes up as the same letter.  Obviously, you need to have the drive plugged in before you can do it.

The only caveats:
1) I don't use Windows 8.1; however, I have done it on Windows XP/Vista/7.  It should be the same.
2) I'm not sure if it will differentiate between your two Blackberry Playbooks, but it should.

Try plugging them both in at the same time and deliberately assigning them away from Z:\.
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MarSies

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #11 on: February 20, 2014, 09:30:19 am »

Blackberry devices are always mapped starting from Z: and they don't show up at the disk manager. Other USB devices like my Sony camera with disk can be perfectly connected to a drive letter.

I have just connected a Playbook and it shows up as Z: and I can access it. Only not visible in MC as a device. Solution is to configure it again as a device and then it shows up with a (1) behind the name, or a (2). Depending on how many times I have reconfigurred it names.

And is I connect my Blackberry phone first then the internal RAM is seen as Z: and the SD card as W: (x and y are my disk drives)


Suggestions are very welcome  :)
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TCube

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #12 on: February 20, 2014, 09:52:50 am »

Top of my head a Usb Network Hub ? Always handy and maybe this will straighten up your Windows OS, if it does and MC doesn't then you've got a pbm  ;)
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connersw

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #13 on: February 20, 2014, 11:37:25 am »

I don't have a Blackberry, but within Android there is a setting to connect as a Mass Storage Device.  Does Blackberry OS have such a setting?  That might allow you to assign the drive letter. 

Edit:  http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/BlackBerry-Curve/Mass-Storage-Mode/td-p/50578
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Duke2010

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Re: Not happy with the way MC handles portable units
« Reply #14 on: February 21, 2014, 04:18:40 am »

I will give it a go to assign a drive letter, will take a look tonight.
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