Reformatting mp3 using Mac

[wolfybl]

I have a Sandisk m240 Mp3 player 1GB. I use it almost every day. I have had it since Sept 2008. I have had a few problems with it, but they were small issues that I could overlook.
One of those problems is, every time that I put more than 100 songs on my mp3 player (it can hold about 240 depending on size of file), there would always be one song that came up as "unknown". I could play the file, but it would still be "unknown", even when I knew perfectly well that the file was ripped off a cd (that I own) to my computer (which plays it perfectly fine). That problem I was able to overlook because the file would still play.
Now, the original problem that I am asking for help with, is that I recently loaded the player with music. I regularly delete the files after I play them to vary what I am listening to. There are two files that came up as "unknown". When I attempted to play them, they skipped to the next track of the player. I ignored this setback and played the rest of the tracks on the player.
In fact, I had to go into my music folder and drag one of the files to my mp3 player, in order to actually play the file. Now, I deleted all the music files on the player, but those two files still come up and they are still "unknown". This is really frustrating to me because they do not show up when I connect the mp3 player to my computer. I believe they are "hidden files", but cannot prove it.
I even tried reformatting the player, using a method that I saw on this website. Unfortunately, that did not work.
Now, the player is not formatted AND I still have those two files on the player. I do not know what else to do.

Please help me.

 

[TitanShadow]

I would format the player as a drive. I assume it comes up in Finder as a drive? Well, I say open up disk utility and format it as a DOS FAT device. This should wipe everything out and the MP3 player should be able to rebuild its basic file structure. Of course, you should be aware that this might be an issue - I've never used that kind of MP3 player before - and it is possible that settings files are floating around in the file system.

The only other ways I can see to erase positively everything from the device is to see if either the device itself as a format/initialize/erase option in the menu system (not likely) or to go in and poke around in the directory structure via the Terminal using "lh -a" in various folders which should show you all files, hidden or not.

You might also try using a Windows machine to to a check on the file system of the device, if you can have it show up as a disk drive in Windows have Windows check it for issues, you could be dealing with problems in the file table as well.

 

[geekyboy]

If you have access to a Windows machine I would use the supplied recovery/reinstall disk (if you have one) that came with for MP3 player to reformat.

I think what is happening is that when the Player is attached to the Mac the OSX system adds hidden files to the drive. For example, an MP3 song file called 'my song.mp3' would also have an invisible file called '.my song.mp3'. This file beginning with a dot is a hidden reference file on the Mac but a DOS system still sees this as a valid file as it contains the .mp3 extension.

I use a free programme called Hidden Cleaner which you use to eject the disk (instead of the usual move to Trash/Eject). This removes all mac hidden files before ejecting the disk and also frees up space.

I've had no trouble with my USB mini MP3 Media player since using this method.