Bob-Dubery
Not so long ago I got a new car player. This one has a USB input - not uncommon these days. I then found a really eensy weensy teeny memory stick and started dumping albums onto that.
Problem: The darn things don't play in the proper sequence. Not necessarily a problem for everybody, but it drove me bonkers. I messed around in all the settings on the car player (of which there are many). Annoyingly if I plugged the same stick into my computer then everything played OK.
What's happening is that the memory stick stores data not necessarily in alphabetical sequence. When I use it on windows then WINDOWS does the sorting automagically. When I use it in the car the player has just enough software to read from the sick, and the stick has just enough software to provide access to a file. No sorting. I expected this at folder level, but not WITHIN folders.
OK... as usual, I'm not the only person on the planet with this problem, and some kind, clever person has written a piece of software that solves the problem. It's called DriveSort. It's available from all the usual download sites. It rewrites files in the order you want them in. It can resequence a single folder or the whole drive. You have THREE ways of doing this
1) Long file name
2) Short file name
3) Playlist
In the latter mode instead of sorting by the file name, DriveSort allows you to sequence things exactly as you want them so that the files will be presented to the application (or the hardware) in the exact sequence you specify.
Problem solved. I now have about 90 CDs on that stick, all sorted by artist name, all songs within an album playing in the right sequence. Half the time I can't make up my mind what I want to play, but that's nothing to do with software.
Not useful just for music, but for anything where you want the files to be read in some exact sequence. Say you carry some business presentation around on a little memory card, but you don't know what that card is going to get plugged into...
