Fixing the library error code 913 for Windows users!

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press250
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@press250 thanks for the instructions. I have already set up all the PC settings, the only bit that differs is that my ext hard drive hangs off a modem router which cannot be shared from.

But I think the problem I have is likely the hard drive itself - there is some inherent incompatibility ( ancient WD my passport ) so I am about to retest using a newer drive I bought last year for system backups, and see if that works.

Here’s an idea for you: try setting up an experimental share (just a couple of albums) on your Windows machine and see if you can get that working. That would confirm Sonos is living and breathing okay, and then you can try different things with your external hard drive.

A
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@press250 thanks for the instructions. I have already set up all the PC settings, the only bit that differs is that my ext hard drive hangs off a modem router which cannot be shared from.

But I think the problem I have is likely the hard drive itself - there is some inherent incompatibility ( ancient WD my passport ) so I am about to retest using a newer drive I bought last year for system backups, and see if that works.

Here’s an idea for you: try setting up an experimental share (just a couple of albums) on your Windows machine and see if you can get that working. That would confirm Sonos is living and breathing okay, and then you can try different things with your external hard drive.

Already did that - yes local file folders work and currently playing music off my internal SSD.

Sonos just not reading off my WD mypassport, permissioned to death, whether shared locally or hanging off my SMBv2 enabled router. Just tried sharing locally using my new Seagate and the shared album got read in, about to try it off the router.

Wish me luck. and dammit - I don’t want to buy *ANOTHER* ext drive!!!

A
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Ok found the friggin issues - there are two.

EDIT: Seems the SMBv2 gate issue disappeared - I can now see under it. Either my router is also getting snarky or Sonos is being a dick.

To enable SMBv2 on my Arcadyan “Smart” router I have to create a SMB2 account which acts as a gate but the problem is it masks the ext drive directories and Sonos cannot see under it, so you need to add the ENTIRE drive name to the share address.So if your SMB2 account is Joeblack, and your drive is seagate\my music, you will need to put in \\<my computer name>\Joeblack\seagate\my music.

Second issue - for whatever reason Sonos really really doesn’t want to read the WD MyPassport off the router or off the PC. So looks like any ext drives older than 5 years might not work with the update.

Looks like I AM buying a new drive since the old wd is not big enough to be my backup drive.

 

A
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OK Issue 2 - seems like Sonos does not like to read an entire library of 200+ artists with multiple albums. Choosing the subdir of 1 band, not a problem, choose my library dir, no can do. Anyone else find this?

C
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For those buying a new drive, please take care. All the WD drives but the super expensive ones don’t have NAS capability. You can only access your own data in your own house through a WD-mediated web interface.

I got a Buffalo NAS drive, which is far less expensive and is made for grownups to use.

A
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@Chlorine Thanks for the advice. Looks like either Sonos has a cap on how much it can read off an external drive ( which was not a problem a couple of weeks ago ) or the software is borked.

Even with my new seagate, Sonos won’t read the entire library off my network router - will complain that the router is not powered on - but not a problem if it is just something like 5GB of files only. Not a problem if the drive is set up as a local shared drive on my PC but defeats the purpose of an offline library, Will stop testing now before I throw my entire system off my 3rd floor balcony...

I am going to wait to see if the next patch will fix it and will play music from my PC hard drives instead. Sadly choices for good external hard drives that do not cost a bomb is a bit limited in Au. ( Hello, Amazon US! )

P

Thanks. This worked for me on Windows 10. My Music Library is back.

M
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Was able to finesse my music library from a NAS to a local portable HD. For some reason, I could not get it to work on a folder on my desktop, same error message. I ran out of space on the portable HD, so it looks like I will be buying a bigger one!

I just don’t like leaving my laptop on all the time for music,  but it doesnt seem to be an option at his point...

A
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@makinsellajr Did the portable work? What’s the capacity? I found that the controller was fine with something below ~10-20GB, but at some magical point it comes back with an error and refuses to read even though the drive is recognised.

I am holding off buying a new one until/if a patch comes out to see if anything is fixed and keeping an eye out on what the smarter techie guys in the community find with their testing.

M
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@Aikigrl 

The portable worked and it's 500 GB. It's also not very "new" I used it originally for my old fives before I got the NAS. 

It's setup as my d: drive. For now at least I have most of my library. We will see what happens! 

A
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@makinsellajr Thanks for that - that method also worked for me but I chose to use the full library backup on my PC instead since it is already there and I don’t want too many peripherals hanging off my PC.

Good luck - think we’re all going to need it the way things are going with the updates. Maybe it’s time to consider either updating the setup with newer gear or go elsewhere.

press250
Userlevel 7
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Already did that - yes local file folders work and currently playing music off my internal SSD.

Sonos just not reading off my WD mypassport, permissioned to death, whether shared locally or hanging off my SMBv2 enabled router. Just tried sharing locally using my new Seagate and the shared album got read in, about to try it off the router.

Wish me luck. and dammit - I don’t want to buy *ANOTHER* ext drive!!!

I feel your pain and admire your diligence! A couple of thoughts for you:

  • Have you tried formatting the ext drive with a different file system? I can imagine how the ‘wrong’ filesystem might limit the usable size of the drive, specifically when it is connected to your router. I might give exFAT a try, as it is simpler and generally more compatible than NTFS more capable than FAT32. (At the risk of stating the obvious, re-formatting the ext drive will totally erase its contents.)
  • When you connect your ext drive to your Windows machine, I am hard pressed to imagine how Sonos would ‘know’ the difference between an external drive and your ‘native’ internal drive. An SMBv2 shared directory on your internal drive and an SMBv2 shared directory on your ext drive look identical to “the outside world” as Windows will abstract away the differences between the ext drive and an internal drive. I’m not suggesting you are wrong, I’m simply saying it is a real conundrum.
A
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@press250 Thanks for the advice. I already spent 3 hours fully reformatting the drive and recopying the music library back in - did not try exFAT just went for NTFS. I don’t know what’s wrong either but looking at some of my testing of slowly adding more and more albums to the drive once I got Sonos to read in 1 album to begin with, it seems to hit a wall around the 20Gb mark.

I am not wasting any more of my time on trying to set up an offline music library since the stupid controller can read the files on my PC. Will wait for an update to see if this fixes it or consider biting the bullet and get a new system after 10 years of my playbar

press250
Userlevel 7
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@press250 Thanks for the advice. I already spent 3 hours fully reformatting the drive and recopying the music library back in - did not try exFAT just went for NTFS. I don’t know what’s wrong either but looking at some of my testing of slowly adding more and more albums to the drive once I got Sonos to read in 1 album to begin with, it seems to hit a wall around the 20Gb mark.

I am not wasting any more of my time on trying to set up an offline music library since the stupid controller can read the files on my PC. Will wait for an update to see if this fixes it or consider biting the bullet and get a new system after 10 years of my playbar

I totally understand your frustration! None of us wanted ANY part of his mess, we just wanted to listen to music. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’ve seen plenty of inexplicable/funky behavior from NTFS formatted external drives connected to things that aren’t a Windows PC. So if you want to try something with a better chance of working with your router — after a well-deserved break from experimenting — re-format the external drive with exFAT.

I tried finding an Arcadyan smart router/gateway to peek at the user manual for hints … no luck. If you have a name (or better still, a model number) that could help.

A
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@press250 The router is a modem provided by my local telco - I will go check out what it truly is when I have the brain power. The only reason I use it is because my actual home network router doesn't have a USB port and I don't have enough home data to set up a big girl NAS array just yet.

TBH I think I have had enough for the moment - I will go outside to listen to the birds yell at me for seeds and drink my coffee on this sunny monday morning.

A

Every “solution” to the 913 error code that has been posted here doesn’t work. IMO Sonos should be named in a class action lawsuit for causing so much pain among so many people. They’ve obviously screwed up the software that has made their equipment “unuseable” and there should be compensation. Even solutions that they provide in their chat and phone communications leave you frustrated. This company has been in business for enough years to afford them the ability to write a code that’ll solve this exacerbating issue quickly. It’s just a matter of paying the right people to do it..

J

I tried this solution on 05/27/24 and it worked for me with a Port and Windows11 on an old desktop. I am not computer savvy, just follow the instructions as stated.

Thank you for the solution.

A

I tried the posted solution again and this time it worked. WTF!!

A

Very much doubt this helps (seems far too simple given the issues people are experiencing), but I’ll add anyway.

Had the 913 error (unable to access chosen music library folders, including external drive) after the update, and viewing the message boards just made my brain bleed. I have a certain level of ‘expertise’, or so I thought, however the steps required (in hope of a possible solution) were beyond my patience threshold.

The solution, for my ‘set-up’ (Windows 10, I’m not having 11!) was Folder Properties>Sharing>Advanced Sharing, and tick ‘Share this folder’. Bingo.

Apologies if, as I suspect, this is obvious (and therefore of no help) to some, perhaps most, but hopefully will work for some of the relativiely uninitiated, such as me. Likely has been suggested previously.

L
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ACBundy--Your solution didn’t work for me because the Sonos app gives me the 913 error when I go to add it.

E

I am streaming from a Window10 PC, and this fix really worked well in my case !

I also had to right-click on the Music folder, > Give access to > Specific User , and select the Sonos Wireless Hifi system .

After this, adding the music library in the Sonos application worked !

Streaming the libary (on the PC) from the Sonos app on my Android tablet is  now also working again, but I am still missing the small icon pictures of the albums … They do show up on my PC, but I only get the text names of the albums and songs on the Android tablet.

But I now can select and stream the music to my Sonos system !

Happy with that ( at least for now  😊).

 

E

So a big thanks also to “helpingiskind” @HelpingIsKind 

So as far as windows users go, sorry not sure about iOS users here, but the crucial things after updating the windows app for W10+, you need to turn on “Advanced Sharing” in windows, and make sure that your music library whether it’s stored on a NAS or just an ext usb drive, or internal drive is added to your library. So this is the example that helpingiskind gave:

Please right-click on the Music Folder > Properties > Advanced Sharing > Add Sonos Wireless HiFi System to Read/Write:

Then go to Sonos settings on your laptop and add “My Music folder” and it will sync.

 

 

Because the android app is terrible, I rolled back to the version 78 and found the .apk for that and then the app works like it’s used to and marries to the W10 controller app nicely….which has also caused the update issues along with the apps for android/apple to be very annoying!

 

Good luck and lets hope the next update from Sonos makes things nice n easy for everyone..

Hope this helps everyone and thanks to everyone elses ideas across this forum!

 

It did. Thank you. I've been trying everything under the sun for weeks now with absolutely no luck regarding this 913 error code, and updating my music folder….until now. I followed the above instructions step be step, and it worked perfectly for me. I had my Windows music folder shared the whole time, but it appears that my fix was as simple as clicking from read only, to read/write. There's no doubt that Sonos probably should've tried better to make this an easier transition, but users should also read things too before jumping off the deep end. And yes, Sonos should have spelled things out and clearly communicated better than what they have. Unfortunately, they've pissed off a lot of people. I've invested over 5K in my Sonos system, and have been very happy with them. This last update frustrated me to no end, but i just kept reading and trying. Its software, and there's always a work through. Hope everyone who jumped overboard can climb back on the ship and try this simple fix.

L
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Emjee-- Thank you for this.  It partially worked for me.  By that I mean, I was able to add one of two music folders that I have on an external drive.  When I tried to add the second one, I received the dreaded 913 error.  I can’t understand why this is the case, as both folders reside on the same external drive.  I’m tempted to merge the “bad” one in with the “good (e.g. recognized)” folder, but if I do that I’ll lose a lot of the way I’ve organizes the files.

A
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@Lee M - that was a similar issue I encountered - I can add only so many folders in my ext drive before 913 appeared, seems to be volume related and could be drive type related. Mine is an unpowered USB ext drive, I have not tried a powered ext drive to see if that works yet.

I am playing my music from a music library folder on my PC internal hard drive now and that works with no issues - no offline music controlled by my phone with the PC off for the moment.

L
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Aikgrl--I don’t think it’s related to the number of folders; I’m only trying to add a second.  Both are on the same powered external drive.  But that aside, the new iOS app is a nightmare.  Half the time it says my Sonos devices are not connected (my WiFi is very strong -- no trouble with other devices ever); even when connected, changing rooms or finding things are so much harder than before the update. Ugh!

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