I have a laptop on which I run Xubuntu. I was downloading some music on the sd card which I use on my Zen mp3 player. Afterward when I turned on the mp3 player there was a box that read, "Errors were detected. Media might not be safely removed during copy. Proceed?" and an option of "yes" or "no."
When I click "yes," everything appears to work just fine. How can I get rid of this glitch so that the mp3 player will run smoothly? Thank you!

I don't know about the player but how old is the SD and hopefully you keep backups?

The SD card is roughly three years old. But I don't have anywhere NEAR that number of write cycles! Basically, it still plays--it's just that something is on there that shouldn't be. So far as I can tell, there aren't any "errors"--only the box claiming there are! There must be a way to clean up an SD card without eliminating everything. Any suggestions?

Look at the SD card in a distro that has a Partition editor available (any good front end for Parted). Without "mounting"... run a check on the device and see if you can't correct the errors...

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Can you just reformat?or justfor the mp3's...

I don't know if I understand what's being suggested here. My distro is Xubuntu and I'm not familiar with the Partition editor, if it has one. (Would it be under "accessories"?) How would I check the disk without mounting it? That's the only way the computer can "talk" to the mp3 player, right?

On reformatting, I would have to wipe all the music off the sd card to do that, correct? Not a problem, but isn't there a chance whatever glitch is on the sd card is also in the back up? Are the three codes you listed below independent of each other or are these all part of the same reformatting instruction? The second one appears to be installing a new application. What does "cp" do? What does "cat /proc/partitions" do?

Your suggestions are much appreciated! There's no way I can fix this without wiping clean and starting over?

What about fsck? How do you run that?

Should always keep backups tho, the second link in my signature has more info on that in it's first link(1), #8 is good too.

Under "accessories" and\or "systems tools" you will find a "terminal" or "console" program for a command line then try the man command like so:you should be able to just copy the mp3's to your hard-drive\USB\DVD\etc... format the card and put mp3's back on it.
For "fsck" try "man" again. I always had trouble finding the SD to mount\un if not by GUI so "cat" reading that systems file should help. I probably should have left out the "sudo apt-get install gddrescue" until you find out if the files are corrupt (more than likely only one or none hopefully?) Transferring a corrupt mp3 to a newly formatted card won't cause the same problem just playing that file. Only a suggestion.

Thank you for this information. I don't get it, though...what does "cp" do and how do I apply it to the sd card on the mp3? The only way I can get the mp3 sd card to interface with the computer is by mounting it. Apparently I'm not supposed to do that when running this program. I don't know how to get my computer to recognize the sd card "unmounted." Is "cp" the same kind of program as fsck? Appreciate your feedback.

Something I should ask here: Do I need to do these procedures through a sd card reader or can they be done directly through the mp3 player itself? I don't have a card reader so my only option is to go through the mp3 player. If I need a card reader can anyone recommend one that is adequate for this purpose? Thanks!

The player should do the same as a card reader? I would also recommend using a player like Clementine, it will mount (right click to "safely remove" ) the player and can add plus organize music to the device.

cp is the command line copy program. You can copy/backup your files using the GUI file manager if you prefer. (I think it's Thunar in Xubuntu)

The problems you're having are common with embedded devices like phones and mp3 players. They use an abridged implementation of the FAT16 (sometimes FAT32) file system that does no file system checks. This inevitably results in file system corruption over time.

Keeping a backup of your files and occasionally reformatting the SD card is the best way resolve this.
format as FAT16 for cards 2GiB or less and FAT32 for cards greater than 2GiB.
(note that some phones and mp3 players may be unable to read FAT32 formatted cards.)

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