USB OTG cable duplicated my music and picture files

[Casey Cheung]

I visited a local Fry's Electronics store and purchased a no-name cheap USB OTG cable that connects from the bottom of my Samsung 7.7 Tab to a USB drive stick on the other end. I wasn't trying to copy or paste any files, I simply wanted to test out this cheap cord to see if my tablet would recognize my Sandisk 128GB USB stick. The tablet recognized the USB stick just fine, and I opened a few files here and there to make sure everything opened just fine, which it did. However, after unplugging the USB stick, I noticed that my picture files have all been duplicated and have 2 pics of everything now. Even worse, my music MP3 files now show 4 (four!) of the same song files using the stock music app, as well as Winamp music player app. But the weird thing is that my memory card in reality shows only 1 music file for each song instead of 4. I even tried deleting the entire music folder that was messed up, and replacing with a new folder, but I still get 4 of the same music files showing for each song through the music player apps. Weird, and so annoying! I don't feel like using this stupid cord anymore for fear this duplication problem will happen again. Anyone else have the same experience?

 

[aspenman]

That's very odd. Try a better cable: Amazon.com: T & S Electronics Micro USB OTG Cable - LIFETIME WARRANTY! (On-The-Go Cable, Micro USB OTG to USB 2.0 Adapter, Compatible with Nexus 7 & Nexus 10 and all OTG compatible devices): Computers & Accessories

 

[thoots]

I don't think this is a cable problem or an adapter problem -- duplicated files happens. Essentially, you just "clear the data" from the applications menu -- search all of the forums for "duplicate MP3" files, and you should find plenty of information about how to clean up the duplicates.

 

[Casey Cheung]

By the way, I finally got rid of the duplication by going to the stock Music app, and deleting all songs, then re-installed my music folder by doing a copy/paste through my Windows laptop. As for the duplicate pictures, I didn't have too many, I simply went to Gallery and manually deleted each duplicate pic.

 

[thoots]

I wound up with duplicated songs in the Music Player app, and tried to clear it via the "Clear data" button in the Applications settings menu, but that didn't work.

So, then I just went to the Storage menu, and "unmounted" the SD card, then I chose to mount it again. Then, I went into the Music Player app, which showed "No songs," but the "busy" round icon was spinning at the top of the app, as it was scanning my memory again. It took a few minutes to find everything and get it all displaying again, but once it was done, I was back to normal, with no repeated songs.

So, complete success, and it was easy as pie -- just unmount and remount, and that's it. No waiting, no actually removing the card, just unmount, remount, then head to the Music Player app and watch it repopulate its list of songs.