I just got my reader the other day and I tried popping in a 2 GB Adata SD card and the reader would not recognize it. At least it did not show up in CONNECT Reader. Identical results with a second identical Adata card. Cards are fine as far as I can tell. At least I can read and write to them with a card reader. The Sony reader does recognize an older 1 GB Lexar SD card, so the reader does seem to be okay.

Harvey

Welcome to MobileRead.

Check the formatting of the Adata cards. If formatted in Windows it may be formatted in something other than FAT which is all the Sony Reader can read. (If left to its own Windows will try to format it in FAT32.)

I have a problem with my 4gig Adata card in my Treo. But Transcend works great. I think Adata must do something odd with their cards that affects compatibility.

I seem to recall that we've seen some other brands that didn't play well with the Reader .... :shrug:

I can't get any 4GB card to work to full capacity in the Reader. They all choke when they get more than 2GB of data on them, books or audio makes no difference.

I have tried 2 different Transcend 4GB (150x) SD cards and one SanDisk 4GB Memory Stick Pro.

But I hadn't thought to check how they are formatted -- perhaps today I'll try to format them as FAT instead of FAT32.

Can you format a 4GB card as FAT? I thought that FAT had a 2GB limit?

That's true... you can't access more than 2gig with FAT. In fact, bought a 2gig card exactly because of that reason, and for general compatibility.

But I personally can't imagine why anyone would want to give themselves the headache of 2-4gig of book files on the Reader with an SD!

Perhaps we could have multiple 2 GB cards with additional books stored on them and keep these stored in a pocket of our next Sony Reader case. Add a solar charger and we'll be ready for our next Gilligan experience on a deserted island. :D

like my daddy and his daddy before him and for generations back in time we have always used san disk cards

no solar power here, it rains too much

If formatted in Windows it may be formatted in something other than FAT which is all the Sony Reader can read. (If left to its own Windows will try to format it in FAT32.)
Not true, or at least not true for Memory Stick storage. I have a 4Gb Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo formatted in FAT32 which works fine with the Reader.

However, I also have a 4Gb Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo HIGH SPEED card which doesn't work - something to do with the way the memory is implemented and accessed on the High Speed cards. Likely this is the problem with the Adata card.

That's true... you can't access more than 2gig with FAT. In fact, bought a 2gig card exactly because of that reason, and for general compatibility.
There are some implementations of FAT which support up to 4Gb, although I don't know why anyone would want to use this if FAT32 is supported instead. FAT32 has a much smaller cluster size for any given partition size, with the result that far less space is wasted in "slack space" when you have a large number of relatively small files (such as ebooks).

There are some implementations of FAT which support up to 4Gb, although I don't know why anyone would want to use this if FAT32 is supported instead.True, but we're talking about a situation (the Reader) where FAT32 isn't supported. :nice:

Out of a pile of 15 SD cards, only trouble has been with the Adata ones. One is completely unreadable now (unable to do anything with in any device) and the other suddenly went to half capacity. Both were only used in the reader.

But then again, at 5 bucks they just aren't worth crying over much. Still sticking with Ridata, Sans and (oddly enough) PNY generally from now on.

Uh oh. I got my 4GB Adata card to work by reformatting it (as FAT32) on my notebook. I hope it continues working. I have not tried exceeding 2GB worth of storage on the card with the Sony Reader.

My plan is to have my books on internal memory and music on the card. I know the UI for accessing music isn't ideal because songs appear flat rather than organized by directory or metadata. I hope to eventually splice all the tracks of my classical pieces and operas together (well, maybe by acts) and maybe do some pop mix tracks to get to a manageable number of files.

Well, I reformatted the card using Windows Explorer under Vista and now the reader recognizes it. Originally I had tried with the card manufacturer's format as shipped, which my utilities assured me was FAT.

Harvey

Here's a very simple (Windows only, but adaptable to Linux I'm sure) trick I discovered recently for merging a set of mp3 files. It's perfect for audiobooks!

1) Put the mp3 into a directory by themselves, and go there in a DOS cmd window
2) Type this command: copy /b *.mp3 NewFileName.mp3

The only downside is that the metadata is lost - it will probably have the name from the first mp3, and probably will lose any album art or whatever. Those are probably not an issue for using on the Sony Reader.