Can anyone explain?

[Connecteur]

8TB Samsung T5 EVO SSD playing video files through VLC for Android on a Sony X80K TV.

Suddenly, half the files are not showing up in VLC. The folders are indicated as, "Empty." If I copy them to a USB flash drive, they show up and play fine. The Samsung SSD works fine on other devices, namely a smartphone and a PC. Can anyone explain what's going on?

[radiolistener]

The likely cause is the use of non-ASCII characters in file or folder names. Some software, especially apps not thoroughly tested for multi-language support, may not handle such characters correctly, which can lead to files appearing as missing or folders showing as empty.

[Connecteur]

One message I got was (paraphrasing)  "the file is too large for the destination drive."  Not true at all; the flash drive had over 200 GB of free space, much more than the video file.

[radiolistener]

That message isn’t actually about the available space, but rather about the file system type. Not all file systems support large files — for example, FAT32 has a 4 GB file size limit. If you need to store larger files, you’ll have to reformat the drive to a format such as exFAT or NTFS. However, keep in mind that not all media players or devices can read those file systems, so compatibility should be checked before reformatting.

[Connecteur]

That message isn’t actually about the available space, but rather about the file system type. Not all file systems support large files — for example, FAT32 has a 4 GB file size limit. If you need to store larger files, you’ll have to reformat the drive to a format such as exFAT or NTFS. However, keep in mind that not all media players or devices can read those file systems, so compatibility should be checked before reformatting.

I believe I formatted the drive to exFAT before I loaded it with files.  The real mystery to me is why it worked perfectly for over a year, and the problem only appeared recently.  I've scanned the drive for errors and malware, but none were found.  Now, I can only view most files by first copying them to the aforementioned flash drive.  The last Google TV OS update was July 17, which predates these problems by several months.  Again, it's a mystery to me.

[radiolistener]

Given that the drive is formatted as exFAT and previously worked fine, the most likely cause now is related to file or folder names. Some apps or device software may have issues with non-ASCII characters, very long names, or certain symbols, which can cause files to appear missing or folders to show as empty. Renaming files or folders to simpler and shorter ASCII names is often an effective workaround.

[Connecteur]

Given that the drive is formatted as exFAT and previously worked fine, the most likely cause now is related to file or folder names. Some apps or device software may have issues with non-ASCII characters, very long names, or certain symbols, which can cause files to appear missing or folders to show as empty. Renaming files or folders to simpler and shorter ASCII names is often an effective workaround.

I think you may be correct.  I have two such drives, and the one giving trouble is formatted to NTFS.  The other drive is formatted to exFAT and has given me no trouble.

I may never know why the NTFS drive worked perfectly until just recently.  In any case, I expect the reformat to exFAT will eliminate the problem.

[Connecteur]

As I recall, if you try to transfer too much data to the SSD drive in one chunk, it just overheats and locks up.  It took me several days to transfer over 5 TB of archived data, in smaller portions.

[Halcyon]

As I recall, if you try to transfer too much data to the SSD drive in one chunk, it just overheats and locks up.  It took me several days to transfer over 5 TB of archived data, in smaller portions.

That is definitely not normal behaviour and would either indicate a fault with the drive, or a firmware issue (check to see if there is an update).

There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to entirely fill an SSD in one go.

[Jeroen3]

It could also be bitrot, SSD's do not store data indefinitely, and with modern MLC cells it may degrade within a few years to such a point the controller has to recover the data using the ECC bits each read of the block to provide you with the data. This slows down the drive significantly.

I have experienced this first hand the SSD in my laptop, the normally gen4x4 drive slowed down to only a few hundred Mb/s for certain "old" blocks.
Completely rewriting the disk made it fast again.

You can do a scan with tools like HD Sentinel surfance scan to test this, it also measures the speed of each block.

As I recall, if you try to transfer too much data to the SSD drive in one chunk, it just overheats and locks up.  It took me several days to transfer over 5 TB of archived data, in smaller portions.

Cheaper disks, especially external ones, often use lower grade flash chips and are designed without cache. This means that when all the empty blocks are gone you need to wait until it has erased some, which is slow and costs a lot of energy. This heats the device, and it will thermal throttle if thermals aren't managed. A few watts on a the BGA is enough to degrade the cells. When hot they leak more charge.

[Connecteur]

I thought for sure I had it solved.  I checked the SSD with Samsung Magician, which is supposed to read the condition of wear on it, but it got a perfect score.

I thought it needed to be reformatted from NTFS to exFAT, which I did, and recopied all the data from backup to it, which took a day.

I plugged it into my TV, fully confident that I had solved the problem, but the same folders still show as empty, both on VLC and with a file manager app for Google TV (Android).

It's a deeper mystery because the files are fully accessible on a PC, and even on my S24 smartphone, but not on the Sony TV, even after all the latest updates.

[Connecteur]

Update: Now I'm doing a deep diagnostic scan on the drive using Samsung Magician.  It reads and writes each block on the whole drive.  It says "12 hours remaining" so I'll leave it to work in the background until it's done.

[harerod]

From what I have read so far, I'd suspect length of path. Different filesystems and operating systems have different limits for path length. The occasional German umlaut doesn't pose a challenge, but long Japanese unicode filenames and paths sometimes cause issues. Suggestion: as a test, try shortening the paths of the offending files on a system that doesn't show issues. 8TB? Nice. I have had a 2TB T5 running 24/7 on my local server without issues for about a year by now. No overheating issues. It only loses write speed when the buffers get full (1GB++?).

[Connecteur]

From what I have read so far, I'd suspect length of path. Different filesystems and operating systems have different limits for path length. The occasional German umlaut doesn't pose a challenge, but long Japanese unicode filenames and paths sometimes cause issues. Suggestion: as a test, try shortening the paths of the offending files on a system that doesn't show issues. 8TB? Nice. I have had a 2TB T5 running 24/7 on my local server without issues for about a year by now. No overheating issues. It only loses write speed when the buffers get full (1GB++?).

That makes sense. I was getting an error message that sounded a bit like it didn't like a file name when I was copying files.  But that doesn't explain why half the files were missing from the drive when I used them on my TV.  Thanks anyhow, I feel like I may be getting closer to the solution.

[Connecteur]

From what I have read so far, I'd suspect length of path. Different filesystems and operating systems have different limits for path length. The occasional German umlaut doesn't pose a challenge, but long Japanese unicode filenames and paths sometimes cause issues. Suggestion: as a test, try shortening the paths of the offending files on a system that doesn't show issues. 8TB? Nice. I have had a 2TB T5 running 24/7 on my local server without issues for about a year by now. No overheating issues. It only loses write speed when the buffers get full (1GB++?).

That makes sense. I was getting an error message that sounded a bit like it didn't like a file name when I was copying files.  But that doesn't explain why half the files were missing from the drive when I used them on my TV.  Thanks anyhow, I feel like I may be getting closer to the solution.

Well, I tried two more things and still no result.  I ran Samsung Magician for a full test, which took 12 hours.  Not one bad sector or error were found.  I also shortened some file names, but the Sony TV still reports the folders which contain them as "Empty."

My only workaround at the moment is to copy the files to a USB flash drive, and access the files from that.

[Connecteur]

The Samsung T5 EVO 8TB SSD is a lovely thing, not much larger than a pack of gum, but I did have problems at first, I copied the entire 7TB archive over to the SSD, thinking I could come back when it was done.  But it had slowed to only a few kb/s after 24 hours, and it was going to take forever to transfer.  The SSD got very hot, and the buffer was probably being overloaded. So I learned that the only way around this problem is to copy smaller chunks of data at a time (maybe 50GB maximum) but at any rate, it got done in good order.

[Jeroen3]

It is very well possible the content on the disk is not supported by the TV and thus will not be shown at all. (my philips does this)

[harerod]

The Samsung T5 EVO 8TB SSD is a lovely thing, not much larger than a pack of gum, but I did have problems at first, I copied the entire 7TB archive over to the SSD, thinking I could come back when it was done.  But it had slowed to only a few kb/s after 24 hours, and it was going to take forever to transfer.  The SSD got very hot, and the buffer was probably being overloaded. So I learned that the only way around this problem is to copy smaller chunks of data at a time (maybe 50GB maximum) but at any rate, it got done in good order.

First of all - I got a T7 2TB, my mistake. My read/write accesses are limited by Gigabit Ethernet, i.e. <120MByte/s.
At any rate, your T5 shouldn't get very hot. I don't know which OS you are using, under Raspi/Linux I use smartctl to access device info like temperature:
sudo apt install smartmontools
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda -d sntasmedia
Since I briefly considered getting a T5@8TB, I read through comments on Amazon. Write rates seem to drop to 10's of MByte/s when the device gets full, say, last quarter. This is no surprise, as Samsung uses the flash memory itself, albeit with less bits per cell, as cache during writes. From what I gather, a hot device would indicate a dfective device. Also, Mac-users seem to have more issues with the device than other users.

[Connecteur]

I just had a chat with Samsung tech support.  After I explained the problem in detail, they ended the chat with "Please contact our tech support at :_________"
So they have no answer either.

When I copy the files from my archive to the SSD, I use Windows. When I watch them on my TV from my SSD, I am using the Google TV OS on the Sony TV.

[Connecteur]

The troubling fact remains, that the SSD works fine on any other device, and any other SSD or flash device plays the same files on the TV.  The puzzling part is the incompatibility between the particular SSD and the TV.  I have an identical SSD that works perfectly on the TV.  The "faulty" SSD checks out perfectly in every test.

[paulca]

It sounds like the TV (especially being Sony) is using junk filesystem code.

I believe both ISO9660 and early/simple "FAT" filesystems require extension for "long" and/or "unicode" file names.  In "embedded" devices these often get "hashed together on a weekend" and don't work properly.

The result is usually "missing files".  However, be warned, "miss identified" files are also common.

To reproduce this for effect, install extended 2fs drivers on Windows.  Now open a disk with the following files:

MyFiles
myfiles

In windows it will show only one of them... but which one is it?  The answer is... it depends.

My experience of "integrating embedded media devices" around my house was not pleasant.  The next problem you are like to discover is that the TV will want to generate thumbnails or even animated thumbnails for videos.  It will then launch a dozen threads and spend the next 2 hours thrashing the SSD (or network) out of it's wits.  All on a CPU in the "atom" class.

My first LG smart TV when pointed at a DLNA server queued up 450 requests for thumbnails and crashed (load) the server.... AND the TV.

[paulca]

What I would do...

Write a short bash script to rename all files and folders into simple ASCII short form.

Code: [Select]

for i in `find .`
do
   newName=`echo $i | sed -e 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9\.]*//' `
   mv $i $newName
done
or similar

[Connecteur]

What I would do...

Write a short bash script to rename all files and folders into simple ASCII short form.

Code: [Select]

for i in `find .`
do
   newName=`echo $i | sed -e 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9\.]*//' `
   mv $i $newName
done
or similar

I've already played around with shortening and simplifying file names,
to no effect.

[Connecteur]

It sounds like the TV (especially being Sony) is using junk filesystem code.

I believe both ISO9660 and early/simple "FAT" filesystems require extension for "long" and/or "unicode" file names.  In "embedded" devices these often get "hashed together on a weekend" and don't work properly.

The result is usually "missing files".  However, be warned, "miss identified" files are also common.

To reproduce this for effect, install extended 2fs drivers on Windows.  Now open a disk with the following files:

MyFiles
myfiles

In windows it will show only one of them... but which one is it?  The answer is... it depends.

My experience of "integrating embedded media devices" around my house was not pleasant.  The next problem you are like to discover is that the TV will want to generate thumbnails or even animated thumbnails for videos.  It will then launch a dozen threads and spend the next 2 hours thrashing the SSD (or network) out of it's wits.  All on a CPU in the "atom" class.

My first LG smart TV when pointed at a DLNA server queued up 450 requests for thumbnails and crashed (load) the server.... AND the TV.

Odd that this problem would suddenly appear a few weeks ago, with no Sony system software update having happened recently.

This is a deep mystery that no one so far has been able to unravel.

[amyk]

How full is the drive? Are only the newer files not showing up?

An 8TB drive can exceed the 2TB limit that's common when some filesystem code assumes a maximum of 2^32 512-byte sectors.