Author Topic: I lost all my best songs moving!  (Read 7814 times)

silvestreccf

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I move all my best song from Library for a Pendrive for a friend of mine that live in another city, after that, all my songs was lost,
so I thought I was copying, but I was losing 1 000 songs, how can I resolve this problem?

redwing

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You mean you thought you're copying, but the files were actually moved? Well, with some recovery tools, you could recover some unless the space was already overwritten. But I would rather try to get back copies of the songs from the friend.

Novatlan

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This has happened to me so many times.
This is caused by (imho) a GIANT usability bug in Windows.
If you drag files out of any application (including MB) anywhere else and hold Shift while doing it, they will be MOVED, not copied. There is no way to see this, though. The files are just gone from your (in this case) MB folder.

This easily happens when selecting a range of song holding shift. If you are still holding shift while dragging the files, this will happen.

A lot of applications catch this "bug" in the code and ignore shift. MB sadly doesn't. This is not a MB bug, but working around it would take 1 line of code.

silvestreccf

  • Guest
Thanks for the replies,
I really lost my best songs and will give a lot of work put into eacha folder.

look what happened, I put a pendrive, it appears in the MusicBee  sidebar
So I moved the mp3 to the sidebar, when I took the stick and gave my friend the other day all the songs that went into it was gone from my pc.

By that point the option to display the pendrive in the sidebar is irrelevant and dangerous.


redwing

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look what happened, I put a pendrive, it appears in the MusicBee  sidebar
So I moved the mp3 to the sidebar

I don't get this. The pen drive must have been listed as a device, and if you did drag & drop those songs from your library to the device, they must have been "copied" unless you used Folder(move) command. So what exactly did you do to copy them?

phred

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So I moved the mp3 to the sidebar, when I took the stick and gave my friend the other day all the songs that went into it was gone from my pc.
Can't you just get the drive back from your friend and copy the files back into your library?  Seems like a simple enough solution.
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

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ealdric

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1. Ask your friend to either return the original drive or copy the files onto another drive, or disc, and send it to you.

2. When using Windows, always RIGHT-click when dragging files. This gives you the option of moving or copying. The default should be in bold in the menu that pops up.
Win7, MusicBee 2.4.5349

Anti

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> I put a pendrive, it appears in the MusicBee  sidebar

A lot of large, modern pendrives might appear in the 'computer' panel instead of the 'devices' panel.
To stop drives appearing here, you can turn off that panel completely in Prefs.
Or set only certain drives/folders to display: right click -> manage folders -> choose filtered folders.
Then select 'show filtered folders only'.

> the option to display the pendrive in the sidebar is irrelevant and dangerous

No it's not - I use it all the time. It reflects standard Windows behaviour.
You drag anything to anywhere in Windows, and the default is to move it.
To change that to copy, you press CTRL or SHIFT (depending on circumstance) and a little plus icon appears.

Now go ring your little friend, and tell him you want your torrents back!  :P
Last Edit: September 02, 2014, 12:04:46 PM by Anti

redwing

  • Guest
It reflects standard Windows behaviour.
You drag anything to anywhere in Windows, and the default is to move it.

The standard Windows behavior of drag & drop is moving to the same drive, and copying to a different drive.

redwing

  • Guest
I can't make a pen drive appearing under Computer node instead of Devices node. Is it possible?
If it's under Devices node, drag & drop correctly copies songs from the library.
But what happens when it's under Computer node? Does it move files from the library?
Looks like it when I tried between different partitions under Computer node.
If that's the case, shouldn't it copy when songs get drag and drop between different drives?

silvestreccf

  • Guest




I have 107 Gb (10.000 song) of music, I ripped many cds, I gave to my friend i think 1.000 songs of many various artists
Every artist has a folder, most of the songs I gave him was one song by one artist,  In his pen drive all songs its mixed Together

I am reporting this to help understand this feature, move, copy and paste, I'm not criticizing the software in which I really love and the one who does good work in relation to that much music.

And it helps you to not have to do all this work too, or move to phone a cd that you just downloaded in the iTunes Store and when you serach he is not on your PC.

Sorry for my English, I use google translator and sometimes do not even know what to be saying neither it seems I'm talking about.


Anti

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> I have 107 Gb (10.000 song) of music, I ripped many cds, I gave to my friend i think 1.000 songs of many various artists
> Every artist has a folder, most of the songs I gave him was one song by one artist,  In his pen drive all songs its mixed Together

That won't matter if all the tags are present, and you have auto-organise set-up well.
When you import them back into your library, they will be put back in the proper location.

> I can't make a pen drive appearing under Computer node instead of Devices node. Is it possible?
> If it's under Devices node, drag & drop correctly copies songs from the library.
> But what happens when it's under Computer node? Does it move files from the library?
> Looks like it when I tried between different partitions under Computer node.
> If that's the case, shouldn't it copy when songs get drag and drop between different drives?

My modern 32Gb pendrives appear under the computer panel.
I tried with an older 12Gb one and it appeared under the devices panel, as you describe.

So I did some research, and it appears that many pendrive manufacturers have switched a bit flag on their drives which turns them from a 'removable device' into a 'fixed drive'. The reason for this is to do with Windows 8 'to-go' feature:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/jj737992

This is a 'new standard' for removable drives which Microsoft is pushing. Some manufacturers are bending to the pressure, and some aren't, and a lot of current 'bootable' software doesn't work on the new drives.

There is an inconsistency in Musicbee regarding this behaviour. Dragging to the Computer pane moves by default. Dragging to the Devices pane copies by default. So you have to be aware of what you're doing and press CTRL to toggle the action.

However, I would argue that this inconsistency is intended. In the Device panel you almost always want to just copy songs from your library to the device (or vice versa). Whereas in the Computer node, you are more likely to be rearranging your folder structure and moving things around.

My advice is the same as in my previous post - look at the cursor, and use CTRL or SHIFT to toggle to the action you want, because the list of different types of 'location' are growing, and so is software interactivity, so it is getting really difficult to predict what dragging action will be performed in any particular circumstance.

redwing

  • Guest
Thanks for the info, Anti!

But if that's the case, it provides even more compelling reason for MB having to conform to the Windows standard behavior of drag & drop, which is:

- Move to the same drive
- Copy to a different drive
- Hold Shift to force move
- Hold Ctrl to force copy

As you described, unfortunately MB doesn't follow this standard, always moving (instead of copying) files across drives if those drives are listed under Computer node. Not only newer USB sticks but external HDDs also appear under Computer node. This non-standard behavior will only invite disasters to users who would naturally expect Windows standard behavior of drag & drop from MB.

Steven

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if you drag files outside of MB then MB has no idea where you put the files - all MB is doing is making the files available for a drag/drop operation to windows. The rest is up to windows what happens after that (if you drag files outside of MB).
If you are dragging to a device in the left sidebar in MB, i think it should follow the expected behavior but i need to check that. In any case the cursor should also reflect whether move or copy is active.
I will have a look at this at some point and see what if anything can be done

redwing

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if you drag files outside of MB then MB has no idea where you put the files - all MB is doing is making the files available for a drag/drop operation to windows. The rest is up to windows what happens after that (if you drag files outside of MB).

I just tested, and that's true. If I drag files from MB library to Windows Explorer, it conforms to Windows standard.  

If you are dragging to a device in the left sidebar in MB, i think it should follow the expected behavior but i need to check that.

I think it always copies to the devices but can't be sure there are other cases.

But what matters is when drag & drop files from the main panel to the computer node. It always moves files in that case regardless of same/different drive, which needs to be fixed.