[ tl;dr summary edit: MusicBee in certain circumstances lets you set up an auto-organized library on a large USB stick or SD card, but it only sort-of works. Is it safe to do it anyway? Is there any way around it? ]
I just got a $50 Windows 10 tablet to use as an mp3 player. MusicBee looks great as the software for it! I'm new to MusicBee, and don't normally use Windows - I'm coming from iTunes on the Mac.
I put a 32 GB SD card in it for the music library, but I'm starting to get the feeling that this setup isn't really supported. I could use some advice about whether it can be made to work, or if I'd be better off with some other software like iTunes for Windows, or foobar2000, or???
I've installed MusicBee 3.0.5929 internally on C:, and created the MusicBee library (the folder with the database files) on D:, the SD card. I configured it to be auto-organized, and all the files will be on D:. That seemed to go well, I didn't get any errors setting it up.
But the first problem is when I add files with "scan folder for new files"; it correctly moves the files into the auto-organized folder, and says ""File rescan/ add completed - xxx new files added". But they aren't actually added in MusicBee. They don't show up in the Music section, unless I do another "scan folder" on the auto-organized folder. I already made a bug report about that.
Now I've discovered that when I edit some tags, it doesn't keep the files organized automatically. I have to manually run "Organise Files" afterwards to move/rename the files according to the new tags. Well, at least it's possible, but it's a pain and I don't know what other problems I might run into...
I think it's because the SD card is recognized as "removable". Not really sure what that means, as there's no such concept on the Mac. I read in some older forum posts that MusicBee won't allow auto-organizing on removable storage. But with MusicBee 3, it seems to work - at least partially. Not sure if the "bug" is that it doesn't work fully, or that it works at all!
I googled a bit and it seems it's a hardware thing in the flash drive that can't be overcome without some highly dodgy looking hacks to the Windows disk drivers. Maybe it made sense a few years ago, when people only had slow 1 GB USB sticks that obviously wouldn't be used to hold their main music library. But these days with 128 GB, 50 MB/s flash drives for $30, it's a different world. Maybe there is (or could be) an option or workaround, to remove the restrictions on using them in the same way we used to use a 250 GB USB hard drive?