If you’re ok with doing it, can you plug in the USB drive to a PC or Mac and share the folder over the network? Then point Sonos to that network share and see if it indexes from there? That would help narrow down if it is a problem with indexing or the router. 

If you use the desktop app, do NOT use either of the first two of three options for sharing your local music library or an external drive. They don’t work and never will again…!! 

It means that the indexer has not flagged some sort of invalid character and aborted the run.

Note: I’m assuming that the updated firmware still uses this flag. Originally, I thought that you were using S1. I would not have posted the comment if I had known that you were using S2.

I attached the drive to my PC and Sonos indexed it properly. So at least I know it’s not a Sonos size limitation, or a problem with the hard drive itself.
 

I checked with TPLink (via email) and they confirmed my router is SMBv2. An interesting note they made was that TPLink supports 10,000 media files…I’m trying to confirm that they mean that limit is for the router’s built-in media server, not a samba connection. I provided them more detail on my situation to see if they have any further insight on the possible issue. Although 10,000 media files would be still be more than what Sonos is currently indexing via the router before it starts misbehaving.

This really sounds like another issue with the SMB credits issue I had asked the moderators to flag as a bug. Try running the indexing operation/re-adding the share a few times as that eventually worked for me, and some others as outlined in other threads here.

On a Level 2 support call now

And yet they seem to imply I am the only one with this problem.  So sad.

@sambrosius nope, not just you. Have tried to do more reading in the community and it seems like the problem with Sonos accessing/indexing a usb on router via smbv2 predates the new app - it’s just more evident now since they dropped support for Smbv1 recently forcing more people to change over. There was a thread about a year ago where one of the Sonos people said it was a known issue that was being looked at, but had no time frame for a resolution. It doesn’t appear it was a priority to resolve the problem, which makes the forced change to smbv2/3 more bizzare. I haven’t tried to Sonos support route yet, since others have tried with no resolution, and I just don’t have time right now hour+ phone calls. If you glean any new info, let me know.

@Ianp I saw that some people had success re-adding the share a few times, but that hasn’t worked so far. If I start from scratch and the indexing fails, nothing gets saved at all in the library, not even the reference to the shared folder. I’ve tried it a number of times in a row, just in case. If I click on the speaker icons (they show up on my PC under the Network area), I can see a few different folders relating to app functions, including a folder for a music library where the indexed files would normally show when things index properly, but those folders remain empty when trying a fresh indexing of the full music catalog. If I do things in smaller increments, it initially works, but I stop having indexing success once Sonos’ saved library index reaches around 20GB and 6,000 files (give or take when I’ve experimented with random groupings).

It’s a head scratcher; I can sort of understand if it has trouble indexing everything at once, or with a single share, but you’d think splitting the catalog over 10 individual shares, with 12GB each - as I’ve been able to index up to 15GB worth of files at once - would work to at least get them initially saved. But it doesn’t, for me. The router wouldn’t know what Sonos has already indexed at other times, so I don’t see how the router would be implementing a limit on subsequent indexing, it must be a Sonos issue (?), but yet not one everyone with a usb drive enabled router + smbv2 experiences. Everything worked fine for me under smbv1. I wonder what is different in the smbv2 protocol that is affecting the indexing.

A head scratcher indeed. See if you can find the smb.log file, and check in there for errors, in particular the SMB credits error.

I seem to have a very similar problem:

I’m trying to add my sonos music library back to sonos after an update removed it.  I’m adding from a NAS and get an error when trying to add it back saying no longer available.  If I split the music folder into very small chunks it will add without a problem.  Any ideas anyone?

Are you able to keep adding tracks in small chunks, or have you found a limit that once you’ve added X amount (either GB size or file number), that you get errors trying to add more?

@Ianp There is just a general system log, but I don’t see anything that looks like an error message, or anything about smb credit errors.

TPlink got back to me after they initially told me about a 10,000 file limitation on the router - I had inquired whether that limitation was for the media server or the smb protocol, and also detailed the issue I was having with Sonos indexing. TPLink didn’t specifically answer the question about whether the limit was related to the media server or smb, but provided me with a beta firmware upgrade for the router with a 100,000 file scan limit to try. Sadly, it didn’t fix the Sonos problem. But I give them kudos for getting back to me within a couple days and with new firmware to try.

Well, in the words of the effervescent Doc. Brown - “Great Scott!” After a new firmware update to my speakers a short while ago, I was able to index my library without issue. And as a bonus, compilation albums appear to be showing correctly. Maybe whatever was messed up with the compilation indexing was also affecting overall indexing? Anyway, glad to be able to play my personal collection again. Thanks to everyone who threw in their input on this thread.

Okay, here is how I got around the SMB horrible issue to work for me.

I created a folder called Sonos01 and copied all music with 01*.mp3 in the name into the folder.  Then I went through and cut the names (manually, yes it is insane) down to 10 characters and removed all quote marks and commas.

I was able to get 01 to index (I did it by 01* because it was an easy way to search and chop up my library.

I then did the same for 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, and 13plus (copied everything that wasn’t in the first 12.

I DID NOT CHANGE ANY OF THE METADATA. I simply changed the file name.

This allowed me to load almost the entire 16,000 songs I have.

Was it easy? Yes.

Was it a total pain in the ass? Yes.

Would I recommend anyone buy Sonos if they plan on using NAS? Hell No.

But….

I was able to get my music loaded and indexed.  The problem will be loading new music purchases in the future, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Hope this helps.

Great work @sambrosius and great to hear that you now have a fully indexed music collection. If you want to standardise your filenames (ignoring metadata just as you did), there are tools which can automate this. For example, truncate all filenames to a certain number of characters, remove certain characters from all filenames. However, I would always tread carefully and recommend testing on a copy of your library rather than wrecking the real thing!!!

I noticed Ken picked his reply about file limits as the best answer to my original post, but in my case that was not the issue, as I used the exact same library as I always did, with no changes to file names, or number of files. What seemed to fix it for me was the latest firmware update - right after I applied the speaker update, my entire library of 25,000ish files indexed in one go, just like it used to under smbv1. 

 Not sure if this was mentioned, but maybe when the compilation issue was fixed it removed all those unnecessary extra albums from the index allowing a full index to work.

It would appear there were other fixes in the firmware around indexing that seem to have fixed the weird SMB issues… so anyone who had problems with not being able to complete an indexing (different to the compilation multiple entries problem) should update to the very latest speaker firmware and re-index. 

Of course the useless Sonos release notes indicate this is an Android only issue, but as we should be used to by now, that’s just more nonsense. 

Same problem here, for a 100GB library

​@mhd my problem resolved itself with a firmware update they did about a month ago. Maybe double check if there is a firmware update available for your speakers.

Thanks for your suggestion. Everything was updated, firmware, software, etc. The last update broke everything (again). I downgraded to S1 and everything works again (except my SL speakers that are no longer supporting S1 - although they did at some point). Done with S2, spent way too much time with it, as everyone else here.