Raspberry Pi basics

[kidstypike]

How are these two drives powered? If powered from the Pi, they may not be getting enough power, I'd certainly remove the one that is apparently not working and reboot.

[RonM]

How are these two drives powered? If powered from the Pi, they may not be getting enough power, I'd certainly remove the one that is apparently not working and reboot.

There's only one drive, the first one is an unmounted phantom of unknown origin. Perhaps the problem. The drive is indeed powered from the Pi, but draws less than .6, the Pi4 specs say the USB ports support twice that. I checked before I mounted.

R.

[RonM]

all seems correct (although odd about the first USB drive error). And I wonder why it didn't use "sdb1" as in the earlier example. I assume you browsed and selected the "Music" and "Playlist" folders from within LMS > Settings (not just typing those in, if that is even possible). I don't know how to remove the USB mounts, but I suspect the issue is on how the USB drive is mounted and it would be nice to get it remounted as "sda1" I suspect (just guessing).

Yes, I selected the folders.

I'm not sure how to unmount and remount the drive, or even how to restart the process from scratch now that pcp is installed. Be nice to get rid of that phantom drive.

I wouldn't think the power issue would be the problem, since it saw the drive with no difficulty, and the power draw should be well within spec, but of course is possible. I can try with a different strategy for the drive if a reinstall doesn't work.

R.

[Redrum]

Yes, I selected the folders.

I'm not sure how to unmount and remount the drive, or even how to restart the process from scratch now that pcp is installed. Be nice to get rid of that phantom drive.

I wouldn't think the power issue would be the problem, since it saw the drive with no difficulty, and the power draw should be well within spec, but of course is possible. I can try with a different strategy for the drive if a reinstall doesn't work.

R.

To the best of my understanding, the drive is not mounted unless you check the radio box and click "set usb mount". Similarly, you unmount by removing the check and clicking "set usb mount". What is listed is what pCP "sees as available for use". I have not seen anything like this phantom drive you are seeing. I would be suspicious of the fact that the phantom has the error and may be causing your problem.

I think if it were me I would stop the pCP, unplug the drive, bring pCP and LMS back up, and see if both the drive and the phantom are still there or hopefully both gone. Of course to do this you would leave the LMS data on the SD card. Then, maybe if you plug in a thumb drive with a albums worth of music and see if you can mount, access, scan. That might tell you something.

Alternatively, if you have another SD, start a fresh install and start say with a thumb drive, get that working, then move on to your desired drive.

Jim

[garym]

At this point, my next move would be to start over. Rewrite the SD card with PiCorePlayer and resetup.

[Redrum]

At this point, my next move would be to start over. Rewrite the SD card with PiCorePlayer and resetup.

I agree, and I would start by using a different drive, even a thumb drive. There should be no concern regarding power with a stick. Ron, I went back and read your original post, and it seems to indicate that pCP sees your drive, maybe even mounts it (or thinks it does), mounts a phantom as a "bonus" but can't access it. You say it stops when you try to select the LMS music folders, and/or scan.

One thing you could try is to "move lms data" to the presumed mounted drive, and see if that succeeds. You can always move it back. If that also fails it might tell you the drive is not behaving as the rpi wants it to. If it succeeds maybe you can go to the next step and setup samba, then see if you can access your music folders that way. I know that this seems goofy, but I always try eliminate possibilities to zero in on the problem.

You mentioned that it consumes less than 0.6a. I looked on the web and that is true, but it uses 1A in spin up. Still should be ok with total usb supplied power on pi's 1.2A (I think). But, maybe your rpi power supply is inferior or defective? A thumb drive might help identify if this is the case.

Jim

[garym]

Ron, just as a datapoint, I've setup 5 rPis (2 3B+ and 3 4B) with one 4TB WD USB drives attached to each one (powered from rPi), and have had no issues. So in general one can supply power to USB drives via the rPi.

EDIT. The only thing I ever had to do was extend the waittime for USB drive to connect on reboot. for rPi webGUI, go to main page > extras, then bootcodes tab. I changed the 'waitusb" value to 5 and that solved that problem.

[kidstypike]

I agree, and I would start by using a different drive, even a thumb drive. There should be no concern regarding power with a stick. Ron, I went back and read your original post, and it seems to indicate that pCP sees your drive, maybe even mounts it (or thinks it does), mounts a phantom as a "bonus" but can't access it. You say it stops when you try to select the LMS music folders, and/or scan.

One thing you could try is to "move lms data" to the presumed mounted drive, and see if that succeeds. You can always move it back. If that also fails it might tell you the drive is not behaving as the rpi wants it to. If it succeeds maybe you can go to the next step and setup samba, then see if you can access your music folders that way. I know that this seems goofy, but I always try eliminate possibilities to zero in on the problem.

You mentioned that it consumes less than 0.6a. I looked on the web and that is true, but it uses 1A in spin up. Still should be ok with total usb supplied power on pi's 1.2A (I think). But, maybe your rpi power supply is inferior or defective? A thumb drive might help identify if this is the case.

Jim

Agree, with using a thumb drive with a couple or three albums on it. I would also start with a fresh image, resize the file system to 2000MB minimum, install the extra file systems, install LMS and leave the LMS cache/prefs on the SD card which is the default location. Ron's picture in post #139 shows the LMS cache on the USB drive, I think this is the problem.

[garym]

Agree, with using a thumb drive with a couple or three albums on it. I would also start with a fresh image, resize the file system to 2000MB minimum, install the extra file systems, install LMS and leave the LMS cache/prefs on the SD card which is the default location. Ron's picture in post #139 shows the LMS cache on the USB drive, I think this is the problem.

Just clarifying, the cache on the USB drive in Ron's case may be a problem (particularly given the drives are mounting weirdly). But in general (and in my own case), the LMS cache and data can be moved from SD card to the mounted USB drive and works fine.

[kidstypike]

Just clarifying, the cache on the USB drive in Ron's case may be a problem (particularly given the drives are mounting weirdly). But in general (and in my own case), the LMS cache and data can be moved from SD card to the mounted USB drive and works fine.

Yes, I know, my LMS cache is on the same USB SSD as my music files. Why complicate things by moving the LMS cache on what is only a temporary setup?

Lets keep it simple, it's frustrating for noobs and people trying to help, this should be so easy to setup.