Hi all,

I'm not quite a newbie having been using Linux for around a year now and think I know some of the basics at least. In the main it does what I want, some things better than they ever did on Window while some things frustratingly more awkward!

I have a load of music files that I'd like to search through and transfer some to the external sd card of my android phone. This was something that was a doddle during my Windows days but seems unbelievably difficult now. Back then I used a media player I loved, Mediamonkey, and could simply drag and drop whichever tracks I wanted, or right click and move to a device that way. Sadly this doesn't work too well with WINE though so is fine on XP through Virtualbox, apart from a lack of USB function.

I'm using Linux Mint 17.1 with a KDE desktop.

When I plug my phone into a USB port, it is recognised straight away as an android phone and I can navigate around it with no problems in Dolphin. I could look for each individual file and transfer them that way but with around 30,000 mp3s the task would take quite some time!

None of the media players I've tried so far recognise the phone or the storage on it.

I've installed Windows XP on Virtualbox and have Mediamonkey on there with all my audio files. I can't seem to get Virtualbox to recognise any USB devices so I can't transfer files that way either.

I find it annoying that, in effect, Android is a variety of Linux yet connectivity between the two is so complicated. Airdroid has been the best way that I've found but that's not an option.

I've been trying for 4 hours now and have got nowhere. If anyone can help I'd be grateful Thanks

i'm not quite sure where the problem is, if the phone's memory or sd card register as a normal usb device.
you should be good to go.
you can browse your phone and see the music files in your file manager?
is it a problem with your media player then?
you just have to either tell your music player to include those paths in their library, or use a music player that is able to play straight from file.

like e.g. vlc.

or did i misunderstand your problem?

Can you transfer the files from the media player to the computer to the phone?

It's kind of roundabout, but it should work.

What kind of media player is it?

By far the easiest way to do this is to use a card reader, and transfer the files directly to the SD card. Barring that, use Airdroid on the phone, and you can use your browser to transfer the files via wifi. Using USB with an Android phone is a losing proposition.

this advice would apply if op had trouble connecting their phone to their computer on a filesystem level, but afaiu that is not the issue.

He wants to transfer files from his computer to his phone's external SD card. By far the easiest way to do that is with a card reader, directly to the card. Using a media player as an intermediate device slows things greatly, and makes it more complicated. It matters not whether there is any problem connecting the phone to the computer, that's always the slowest way to do a transfer. You get less than USB speeds, either directly to the phone and to the SD card, or through a third device. Just use a card reader and drag and drop, then put the card back into the phone.