Hi,
You are not alone, many have problems, many so-called “experts” give useless advices.
More than one year to struggle with that !
After Rpi 3+ I have Rpi 4 : same problem.
Tried 3 different hdds.
I even asked if someone had really managed to make Volumio with an USB HDD : nobody answered…
I only use Rpi with an external DAC, as an UPNP (with Foobar).
I give up 
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(continued)
IMHO Volumio is bloatware.
I shift to Daphile or any working software…etc.
Regards,
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The most common issue with an external HDD, is lack of power from the Pi. Either you need an external power supply to power the USB HDD or via the same power supply but with an additional power lead.
The pi is limited to a max power. When exceeded it will reduce the voltage on the USB to limit the total power, which causes all kind of strange behavior.
So far I’ve only been able to get this stable by using a HDD enclosure from KingDian (powered by the pi) and with an old HyperX enclosure form Kingston.
But it’s difficult to solve this on a remote basis, as we’re all are “so-called-experts”
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I have tried 3 different HDDs, each one with its own PSU
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and the DAC, external powered?
Keep in mind that the MAX current for all 4 USB ports combined is 1.2A , so 0.3A per USB port. or any combination like 2 ports, 0.6A per port.
Are you able to monitor the voltage on the USB port, to see if there is a dip when powering the Pi?
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Yes, the DAC is a separately powered DAC/headphone amp. I don’t know how to monitor voltage of the USB port, but if that is the problem, I do have a powered USB hub I could use for the hard drive, and connect that to the Pi… but that’s close to what Sernly_57 did with no results
Am I correct in understanding that, when you select “Albums”, Volumio actually returns all the indexed albums in one go (7890 entries in this case)?
I am sorry but I have no other suggestion.
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Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen? Select Albums and they all show up?
Well, now when I select Albums nothing happens at all (or takes far too long for me to wait for it.) But a couple of days ago that appears to be what happened. I got one page of album icons, and scrolled it up and sure enough, about 20 seconds later the 2nd screen of albums appeared. Of course this is unworkable and I concluded this was possibly too big of a library
After these 2 pages have loaded, will it have the same delay next time you go into the albums and visit these pages?
As I can confirm that I’ve experienced this behavior occasionally. But only when the library is still being build. As the turning wheel is not very persistence while the library is being built.
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A sane implementation would provide pagination so that only a subset of the entries are loaded and returned each time for display. Pagination can be in the form of page numbers (like Google search results) or on-the-fly loading where further results are fetched as you scroll to the end of the page (like Facebook). If Volumio simply fetches and returns all albums in one go, then you can expect the response time to be slow with a library of your size. Basically this is what happens when you select Albums (someone correct me if I’m wrong):
- Volumio fetches data for all 7890 albums
- Volumio sends this data to the browser
- For each album, the browser queries Volumio for the album artwork (i.e. 7890 requests made within a short interval)
- Volumio fetches artwork and returns it to the browser (i.e. 7890 responses)
- Browser displays album data and artwork (all on a single page)
So there’s considerable load on the Volumio device, network and browser. All this contributes to the slow response time.
Subsequent loading of the same pages should be faster because of caching, but remember the browser would still have to handle 7890 objects even when they are loaded from cache, so response time would still be far from ideal.
I have around 900 albums and use Jellyfin running on a separate device for library management. You might want to check it out. You can cast audio to the Volumio device through the web interface Jellyfin provides (which is way way better than Volumio’s), or use the plugin that I wrote.
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IMO the Volumio FE <—> BE communication is showing signs of age and is quite rough around the edges. As I recall, the websocket calls are quite rudimentary, just passing around JS objects, and doesn’t really support pagination.
I wish this gets rewritten into something more modular and expandable soon (hopefully vue based) 
The right configuration is HDD no bigger than 2tb and in a cage with own power, every album in is own directory with the cover photo in it eliminate all the trush file like txt uncheck the option of cover search in internet is too slow for large collections
Already done !
You are talking about albums, or about directories ???
You mean that the cover (and back) must be inserted (tagged) in the album, rather than separate ?
Only the front if you put the back the app can take the back as cover
Interesting.
TWO questions :
1 - So, you have found that volumio freezes if there are two pics in every folder (cover and back, as in my Foobar setup) ?
2 - More, is it mandatory to include the (cover) pic in the tags ?
I will try that on a backup disk, but later, as I’m leaving for a very long trip.
Regards,
Hi Michele and other goodwill guys,
I am still unable to recover my albums list from an HDD.
Its HDD structure has directories AND subdirectories …maybe sub-sub ones and so on.
Is there any importance about the number of levels in the dir. structure ?
That might be an explanation.
For the moment I am far away and cannot check, but it does not keep me from thinking !
Regards,
Hi,
As written elsewhere in this forum, I have found corrupted files, and files with wrong title (or even no title).
To discover that, I used this small program : audiotester, in vuplayer.com
At last I can read my 2Tb external disk on Volumio.
However, the album list is vey slow to load and not alphabetically sorted : why ?
Regards,
Do you have file types other than those tested by ‘audiotester’? You have not supplied a system log file in any of your posts.
Would you share some system logs please?
Preferable from a fresh reboot, and after a rescan.
Sorry again.
Delete the previous log.
“ketalar’s after reboot and rescan”
id : 323fc935658e5ddfe80100a855795e00
http://logs.volumio.org/volumio/IIU6Ect.html
Regards,