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[markf2748]

MC Tree > Drives & Devices lists my CD player and Explorer, which both work more or less ok when clicked. 

But it also lists my three external USB drives, all of which contain a top level music folder structure, as well as many other unrelated top level folders for backing up various files.  After I click directly on one of these drives in the tree, MC takes forever to read it ("Working..." > 5 minutes).  If successful, a Files List view appears with vertical category selection pane on the left.  Often MC crashes and closes before completion.  Note that MC Tree Explorer has no trouble reading these same drives relatively quickly.

This has never really bothered me before, since in practice I never click these drive tree items.  However this seems to be a faulty/buggy corner of MC (unless I am doing something wrong?).  Maybe these drive items should just link to the appropriate section of Explorer?

Windows 11 Pro (64-bit)  MC 31.0.21

[HPBEME]

It is trying to sync those drives with the MC database/library.

You can prevent that operation from starting by going to Options/Handheld and unchecking any/all the sync checkboxes for each drive (select a drive one at a time from the drop down menu at the top of the options window - repeat unchecking the boxes for each drive listed).  After that, drive info will load quickly.

This change results in a Sync button appearing in the top panel (just below the player bar). If you click that, you will get the "working" notification again, which as you noted can take several minutes (or a great deal of minutes depending on the drive size) and sometimes crashes.

You also have the option to right-click on the device in the left-hand tree, and select Remove and Ignore Device from the context menu. The drive itself will still be available in the Explorer node below it.

[markf2748]

@HPBEME - Thanks for your detailed explanation of what is supposed to happen with regards to drives and sync, though some of it seems like wishful thinking at this point.

Things work pretty much as you describe for a 32GB USB thumb drive.

For the larger external USB drives (500GB, 2TB) I never see a Sync button.  When a drive is selected, I just get the info "Working...", the drive starts getting read, and then MC crashes after a few minutes, even with every sync checkbox unchecked for each drive.

Since these larger drives are not "handhelds", the best solution for me at this time appears to be Remove and Ignore Device for all of them.

It's unfortunate that a wiki search on "Drives & Devices" turns up nothing that would clarify this issue, and current UI suggests nothing about "handhelds."  It might at least help if MC put up a warning message when the size/complexity of a drive is beyond what it can manage without a crash.  Also, there should be a way for user to stop the "Working..." instead of having to wait minutes for the crash to occur.

[HPBEME]

For the larger external USB drives (500GB, 2TB) I never see a Sync button.  When a drive is selected, I just get the info "Working...", the drive starts getting read, and then MC crashes after a few minutes, even with every sync checkbox unchecked for each drive.

I think you might just have to give it a few minutes.  Once the sync starts, it might be hard or impossible to interrupt. Perhaps restart MC? My setup behaves as I described with my 2 TB portable hard drive.

Since these larger drives are not "handhelds", the best solution for me at this time appears to be Remove and Ignore Device for all of them.

Wanting to sync to a portable hard drive makes sense - for example, I use my 2 TB portable drive as my music source in my car - so "Handheld" is just a poor word choice IMO.  Probably should be "Portable" since that is all-encompassing (phones or dedicated music players are also portable).

But bottom line, MC's performance here is definitely lacking as you noted in your OP.  Starting a sync should not lock the user out from doing anything else, or cause MC to "gray out" if you click on anything like it does now.  Instead, it should just be a low priority background process that takes however long it takes but doesn't interrupt or crash MC.

[markf2748]

Wanting to sync to a portable hard drive makes sense - for example, I use my 2 TB portable drive as my music source in my car - so "Handheld" is just a poor word choice IMO.  Probably should be "Portable" since that is all-encompassing (phones or dedicated music players are also portable).

Agreed.  The term "handheld" is so misleading that I never even considered using this mechanism to sync my large external drives, two of which are strictly for backups of music and other files.  Instead my workflow uses the program Beyond Compare to do a file comparison for backups, which is a little cumbersome but otherwise rock solid.

[HPBEME]

I have used MC to synchronize my 2 TB drive before, but it is pretty slow, occasionally crashes, and the results in my experience are not consistent.

Like you, I use a separate program for synchronizing with other drives - Free File Sync.  I find it to be a very comprehensive, fast, reliable program, and… Like the name says, it's free! Not only that, you can set up multiple jobs/folders/drives using real time synchronization.

I've heard about Beyond Compare and have been meaning to look into it. Have you ever used Free File Sync? And if so, what would you note as the primary differences with Beyond Compare?

[markf2748]

For the larger external USB drives (500GB, 2TB) I never see a Sync button.  When a drive is selected, I just get the info "Working...", the drive starts getting read, and then MC crashes after a few minutes, even with every sync checkbox unchecked for each drive.

I've revisited this.  When I set up the sync: (1) choose a specific target folder in Options > Handheld > Device Management > Add Device... > Device Path, (2) uncheck "Media Type" boxes in right panel, and (3) select a SmartList or Playlist in the right panel as the sync source (I expect drag/drop a list in tree would work as well), then the sync works nicely, at least so far in my limited testing with relatively short sync lists (<= 100 albums).

If I directly select the external drive letter for a large drive with many root directories (not all music), either under Drives & Devices in the tree or in the Handheld options menu, then I find MC spins for minutes and eventually crashes as previously described, without any warning messages.  Clearly this is undesirable, and would be especially frustrating to a user unfamiliar with the details of sync who "naively" clicked on the drive.