Did several copy schemes today folks. It apparently sorts them by creation date, which doesn't make a lick of sense. So, if you want your artists in alphabetical order, you have to copy their folders one at a time in order. Which isn't too bad unless a) you have >50GB like Fitmo and I, or b) you discover a new band whose name is not alphabetically last to the music already on the drive.

Has the copy off the drive and back on the drive work for anyone? If I recall, Windows copies files in the reverse order of the file selection. So it starts as Z and works its way to A. If that's not right someone say so.

I'm going to try an alternative. I believe MP3Tag updates the modified date and it does it in the order of the tracks. I really wish folders could be collapsed. It would be SO MUCH EASIER!

It looks to me like it worked. I just selected all the files in MP3Tag and just pressed the save button. It took a good long time to save all 3500 or so files but I think they will show up in the proper order.

I have to add a correction - this is a work in progress for me. MP3Tag will update the song files according to how they're sorted in the program. However, I learned when I got in the car this morning that it doesn't change the folder creation date. That needs to be done as Fitmo said, copying the folders off the USB drive and then back on to it. Boy, they really could have made this easier for us.

Resurrecting an old thread a bit but...


I ran into this trouble as well but the solution I came up with was to put everything into a folder on my computer and arranged the folders how I wanted with alphabetical artist names. Then I copied (not moved!) the folder to a new folder on my computer, and after that finished moved the newly created copies to the empty flash drive. Copying them to a new folder made duplicates with new "created" dates in alphabetical order as that's the order the OS (Windows 7) defaults to copying them and they show up in alphabetical order on the radio.

With a 50GB collection it would be annoying to have to spend 30 minutes each time you add an album but you be doing other things while you wait for the copy operations to finish instead of having to manually copy each folder.

There are some utilities, which I haven't tried, that allow the user to manual modify dates.

I opted for a USB 2.0 flash drive because I only expected to have to copy once. In hindsight, I should've splurged for the USB 3.0.

Not a bad idea, I don't know when I'll have a computer that can use 3.0. To me, computers stay "current" much longer and USB isn't a plug n play hardware swap. It takes me about two hours to copy twenty-some GB of data off the flash drive then back on.