Welcome Noah,
I avoid using the DB as I have so many tracks and don't have the patience to wait for it to start up!, I simply use the same file structure as on my PC copies, and I've found I prefer it anyway.
I use this: \Audio\Artist\Album\ 99 - trackname.ogg
That works perfectly on the H series, but as for exclusion of playback, that's impossible. If you can find it - then the iRiver will and that includes a shuffle.
Get yourself familiar with
playlists, WinAmp is good for this.
What I've done is to make a lot of playlists into a folder called \playlists.
I also have some "Complete" lists which contains all my tracks, but also some that exclude many tracks I don't want to hear all the time (like audio books).
I used the same idea for getting the H series to play TRUE random...
Shuffle play isnt that random