bobman

sorry about the delay there...! but all sorted now thanks, the back up on the Seagate external disk went fine. Thanks for all your help... and a big PHEW all round! really enjoying the new MP3 player - so much more tricks that the old one - playlists, album art, browsing by genre etc. And I've discovered the joy of shuffle! only one niggle really, not sure whether/how I can automatically assign album cover artwork when I import into SS? any ideas? at the moment, it automatically finds it, but after the import I have to go and find it again and drag onto the album file... cheers

as I've ordered the HDD, I think I'll skip the adventure in call-centre hell for today. pretty hopefull the disk will fix my issues, so I'll see how I get on with it, and then call Sony if I'm still having issues... will report back soon. And no, nothing lost so far. that would have made me VERY grumpy! btw presume that 10m / 10GB transfer speed is a stansard HDD connecting via USB? (or techies may tell me we're on USB2 - which is probably faster!)

sorry, didn't answer your question - no is the answer, nothing else to back-up to. That said, I think I'll buy an external disk drive. never really backedup anything before, so always assumed it meant creating a library of DVDs. If i get a 250GB drive for 60 quid or so, I can regularly back-up the valuable stuff - photos, music etc - without messing around with removable media. and presumably this will solve my SS issue... fingers crossed. off to amazon for me! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-FREEAGENT-...5902&sr=8-7 will report back. thanks again for helping

okay Juli, thought you were confused before? read on...! just having a play with Vista organising other non-music files I've been transfering over on a 1GB USB, and I happened upon my music library, exactly where I'd saved it, in my music folder. So far, so sensible. I then noticed each music file (i.e. album) had been imported onto the new laptop in triplicate. Bit annoying, as I assumed each time I'd tried to import it had overwritten the previous attempt. But logical enough considering I'd had three goes. Then I noticed that all of the first imported files were empty (as I thought they were - hence tracks being visible to SS, but not playable), but some of the second imports contained the tracks, and then ALL of the third versions contained tracks! I do not get it! On further inspection, nothing at all was imported first time. Second time imported only the files containing MP3s, and third time reimported MP3 files and also imported ATRAC ones. other odd things include that some of my playlists have seemingly been imported 4/5 times, with the tracklist being split over versions 4 and 5. I don't mind this too much; i half expect SS to get confused by tracks taken from albums within the library. Also, I've noticed that it's imported my albums starting with the oldest first. So, I could wade through the folder, delete versions 1 and 2 of everything (for neatness, if nothing else) and that would leave me with a working library of all of my oldest music up to a certain point. Then hope Sony can help me restore DVDs 2 and 3. Or, on the basis that each restore appears to have been more 'successful' than the last, I could delete the lot and start again (not much logic in that, but logic doesn't appear to be a factor!). all very weird. Got a bad feeling that Sony are going to be stumped too... sorry for the mini-essay!

thanks for all your help, Juli. On the basis that I can't call Sony until Monday, and this will drive me mad until then, I think I'll try installing SS4.3 on the old laptop and starting again. Although I think I remember reading from the help section that I can't use media that's been used before (re-writable or not) for some reason - so that's another tenner for more DVDs! I certainly haven't noticed any settings that might affect things... As for formatting, I was never prompted to format - to be honest, I'm not exactly sure what 'formating' of brand new blank disks means - but I suppose it could be the problem? To back up the laptop, I downloaded some free DVD burning software which is probably fairly rudimentary (http://www.burnworld.com/burnoncddvd/) so who knows if the problem springs from here?

thanks Juli, it's pretty annoying! it's as if, for whatever reason, there's nothing at the end of DVD disk 1 to tell SS's restore wizard to restore DVD disk 2 next; it just says it has completed the restore and to click finish. I even tried replacing DVD1 with the second one before clicking 'finish', but that made no difference. the weird thing is that, when I insert disk 1, the restore wizard recognises that the full restored library is about 10GB. Also, throughout the restore of disk 1, the progress bar says how long has elapsed out of a total of about 30mins, and disk one says it's complete at around 14mins (just as you might expect: i.e. 14mins being just under 50% of the 30mins, just as the 4.7GB capacity DVD would be just under 50% of the 10GB library), so the wizard clearly recognises that there's more to come. the one last thing i can think to try is to upgrade my old laptop from SS3.1 to 4.3 and start the back up again from scratch. No idea if/why they might make a difference, but that's all I can think of. had a quick look for a support line to call - would this be the one you meant? http://www.sony.co.uk/view/ShowArticle.act...;site=odw_en_GB 0800 169 5263 - but only open Mon-Fri, grrrrr! thanks again.

hi there, major problems with my back up and restore... Just bought a new laptop with Vista, plus a new Sony Walkman N808 which shipped with SS4.3. Having read all the instructions to back up my old database on my old laptop, I have hit trouble - - backed up database (about 10GB) to 3x DVDs from my old laptop running XP and SS 3.1. No problems at all. - loaded SS 4.3 onto the new laptop running Vista. No problem again. - opened SS4.3 on the new laptop and followed the restore instructions, all this went fine, it asked for the first backup DVD, it checked with the server for authentication and that was fine, and the process looked as though it had worked perfectly. - however, at no stage did it give me any option to restore DVDs 2 and 3, so I had a look in SS and the whole library was mapped out and appeared to present as it should be, but most of the tracks 'couldn't be found' - which makes sense, considering 2 of the disks hadn't been restored. - I tried going through the restore again, starting with disk 2 - but it wouldn't let me, saying that I need to start with disk 1. - I even tried restoring from disk 1 again, and it all went fine again - working perfectly, but no mention of inserting disks 2 and 3. So here I am, pretty stuck and no idea what to try next. Please can someone help - I have a new laptop and new N808 Walkman that I can't use! cheers

hi there, I have a Sony MP3 player and lots of MP3s in SonicStage. My wife has just got an ipod... Can we both use the same MP3 library - her via itunes, me via SS? i.e. can both software packages reference the same MP3 files - or would I have to run two duplicate copies of the library if I wanted to do this...? cheers

thanks Juli and Debbie, new laptop arrived, so I'm ready to go... one last concern before I dive into backing up my ATRAC/MP3 library in SS3.1 on my old laptop, ready for the move to SS4.3 on my new one. your advice on the the back up tool sounds as though it's all fairly straightforward (fingers crossed!), but the issue is this - a while ago, at the point when I stopped ripping to ATRAC and started ripping to MP3, I (somehow) switched my library's location. So half my library is found in one place on my hard disk, the other half in another. I have tried cut n' pasting the library into one place, but then SS couldn't locate the moved files (I presume the file location is part of each track's name, so changing the location means that the name and location don't match?). Anyway, in order to get a single location library on the new laptop, would the best way be to do two back-ups, and restore both (I presume I get asked to specify this?) to the same location? does that all make sense? thanks a lot

wow, thanks Debbie - in fact, my 808 arrived this morning (and is charging as we speak!), so it's less of an issue. I wish I'd known about this sooner - although I wonder if quality would be an issue with a converter like this; going from my low-bitrate ATRACs (64kps) to 128kps MP3s must be lower quality that from CD direct to 128kps MP3, right? anyway, I'm sticking with SS for now. Maybe I'll give the converter a go and see how I get on, otherwise I can just re-rip (is rip the right term?) to MP3 the CDs I originally converted to ATRAC. In the meantime, my main worry is this - My old laptop has my music library on it (running SS3.1) and I'm planning to back-up my library to the desktop and then load up SS4.3 to use my 808. The issue is that I'm planning to get a new PC after xmas, so am I likely to have any problems around reloading SS4.3 and my players (808 and 407) not working with the new laptop as they've been 'registered' to the old one. sorry if this is a silly question, not sure if it's a DRM issue, or some other anti-piracy measure, but I'm a bit paranoid about the players working only with the PCs they were first used with (presumably to stop me giving my player to a mate so he can dowload all my music for free?). am I being daft?

hang on a minute, I think I've just read that the 818 does NOT play ATRAC - so that scuppers it for me, half my library is ATRAC (until I realised that they wed me to Sony players, so started creating MP3s instead!). looks like I should stick with SS and get the 808. So I'd be even more keen to get answers to my questions about running the 407, 808 and SS4.3 thanks again.

Hi everyone, could really use some advice please... I have a 407 which I use SS3.1 with. I'm still using this for the train to work, but am planning to buy a new MP3 player to use at home (to broadcast to some wireless speakers around the house http://www.withandwithoutwires.com/wireles...ls-(ces20).html - anyone tried them?). The issue is whether I need the 808 or 818. I understand that the former uses SS4.3 and the latter just drags and drops with Windows Explorer, but I'm a bit confused about the best way to run both the 407 and a new 818/808... - Firstly, would I need to upgrade to SS4.3 to use the 808? - Would the 407 still work with SS4.3? - Is there any great benefit of using SS4.3 over 3.1? - Is the upgrade smooth and easy (part of my library is ATRAC3, part MP3)? Having said all that... I'm not that attached to using SS at all with the new player, so could I get the 818, and then just continue using SS3.1 as I am now - i.e. for transfering CDs to MP3, and for transfer to the 407? That would certainly be the simplest option - I presume there's no great benefit of using the 808 with SS as opposed to the 818 with Explorer i.e. you don't lose any functionality through not using SS? As you can see, I'm not that techy, so have no idea about the subtle upsides and downsides of all this! Hope all this makes sense. Thanks a lot.