Going to reformat my Zune

[wheresmybacon]

The day I got my Zune I immediately synched it with the entirety of my extremely unorganized music library. It was almost full after that. Fast forward to today, and it's fairly "clean" in terms of tags, but I realize that a vast majority of the stuff on it I don't listen to.

Rather than going through and individually picking out albums and tracks I don't want, I'd rather just start fresh. I've read a couple FAQ's and the reformatting process doesn't seem too difficult, but I have one main question and would appreciate any other pertinent info from anyone who's done this before. First my question:

After the reformat, do you get to rename your Zune and add a fresh directory from which your music syncs?

My main concern is that it's going to try to resync with the same old crap I just got rid of.

If there's anything else you'd like to offer in the way of tips, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

 

[bucwylde23]

I reformat my zune all the time..

Right click on your zune on the left, then hit Erase zune device.

Once the Zune has been erased, and you choose a new name for the zune, Right click on it right away and click on "Do not sync automatically"

That way it will require you to manually add everything that you want. You never have to hit that "do not sync automatically option" again unless you reformat your zune.

 

[wheresmybacon]

Sweet info. Thanks!

 

[tatteredpotato]

Yea, first thing I did was turn off the Automatic sync. It's annoying when you have tons of music on your computer, but only listen to a small portion of it with any regularity.

 

[tdawg]

Originally posted by: ObscureCaucasian
Yea, first thing I did was turn off the Automatic sync. It's annoying when you have tons of music on your computer, but only listen to a small portion of it with any regularity.

This is one of the features I think iTunes got right. To keep a song from being transferred to your iPod, you just have to uncheck it in the library. Then you can still have auto-sync on and it will only mirror what's checked in the library to your iPod.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Originally posted by: tdawg

Originally posted by: ObscureCaucasian
Yea, first thing I did was turn off the Automatic sync. It's annoying when you have tons of music on your computer, but only listen to a small portion of it with any regularity.

This is one of the features I think iTunes got right. To keep a song from being transferred to your iPod, you just have to uncheck it in the library. Then you can still have auto-sync on and it will only mirror what's checked in the library to your iPod.

Interesting, although usually I don't keep switching music, so manual sync seems best for me I think.

 

[tdawg]

Originally posted by: ObscureCaucasian

Originally posted by: tdawg

Originally posted by: ObscureCaucasian
Yea, first thing I did was turn off the Automatic sync. It's annoying when you have tons of music on your computer, but only listen to a small portion of it with any regularity.

This is one of the features I think iTunes got right. To keep a song from being transferred to your iPod, you just have to uncheck it in the library. Then you can still have auto-sync on and it will only mirror what's checked in the library to your iPod.

Interesting, although usually I don't keep switching music, so manual sync seems best for me I think.

The big difference between these two methods is that when you have music on your iPod that you're kind of sick with, you just uncheck the tracks in the iTunes library and on the next sync, those tracks that were on your iPod will be taken off. This isn't such a big deal if it's one distinct cd that you could just as easily remove manually, but for a bunch of random tracks, I personally think the iTunes method is easier. Plus, with the auto-sync feature enabled, any new tracks added to the iTunes library will update to your iPod, so you don't forget to put that new cd on your player before heading off to work, only to find that you can't listen to it.

 

[bucwylde23]

The itunes way works fine, but the thing about iTunes that really pisses me off is it doesn't monitor my music folder and automatically detect new songs that I've added. If it does, I can't find the option. I hate adding 3 or 4 new albums and then had to go in manually to "add folder".

 

[tatteredpotato]

Originally posted by: tdawg

Originally posted by: ObscureCaucasian

Originally posted by: tdawg

Originally posted by: ObscureCaucasian
Yea, first thing I did was turn off the Automatic sync. It's annoying when you have tons of music on your computer, but only listen to a small portion of it with any regularity.

This is one of the features I think iTunes got right. To keep a song from being transferred to your iPod, you just have to uncheck it in the library. Then you can still have auto-sync on and it will only mirror what's checked in the library to your iPod.

Interesting, although usually I don't keep switching music, so manual sync seems best for me I think.

The big difference between these two methods is that when you have music on your iPod that you're kind of sick with, you just uncheck the tracks in the iTunes library and on the next sync, those tracks that were on your iPod will be taken off. This isn't such a big deal if it's one distinct cd that you could just as easily remove manually, but for a bunch of random tracks, I personally think the iTunes method is easier. Plus, with the auto-sync feature enabled, any new tracks added to the iTunes library will update to your iPod, so you don't forget to put that new cd on your player before heading off to work, only to find that you can't listen to it.

I can see the feature being much more valuable and convenient on lower capacity players (which MS is supposed to be releasing this fall), but I have only been using about 15 gigs of my Zune so far.

The one annoying thing is the reverse sync method. My HDD crashed and I had to reinstall Windows. I also lost my Music library along with it. Now the files are on my Zune, but since Windows was reinstalled, the Zune sees it as a new computer and in turn only lets me connect as a guest (i can load songs but not take them off).

 

[wheresmybacon]

OK so last night I removed all the media from my Zune and renamed it. I removed the device from the cable to check and sure enough, everything was gone. Sweet! Very easy.

This morning before work I clear out the only folder I sync - I have that music in another location additionally - then I put 6 albums back in there as a little test. I make sure in options that there's only one folder - the one with my newly added albums - that the software should sync with. I manually force a sync, and it's taking an unusually long time. I head off to work with it still syncing.

I go home for lunch and check my device and the Zune software. For reasons I cannot explain, it's synced the entirety of my old library as well as a whole bunch of other stuff that I'd either removed or spent hours on cleaning (tags). :| :| :| :| :| :|

W

T

F

I have no idea what happened. How could it possibly retreive those old albums when they're not in the sync folder? In fact, not only are they not in the sync folder they're on another FSCKING computer. I'm thinking it's somehow still referencing a UNC path or mapped drive I'd long since removed, but I don't know how.

What did I do wrong?

 

[maziwanka]

just bought one at woot. 30 gigs for 150 bucks is irresistible. also bought a new pair of shure earphones se210 for like 130ish. i love music and this is my first mp3 player