Hi,

I have a collection of several thousand files including both TXT and PDF files.

When I try to load these onto an SD card and plug it into the PRS-700 the device goes into, and remains in, the Loading screen for over 1/2 hour and never exits. Is there any way to "get this right"? I've been trying to load things via Calibre (I'm a Mac user but have XP in a virtual machine) but no
matter what I do the 700 just spins and spins and spins.

I'm trying to ignore the fact that this indexing step is just poor software design, in particular because it doesn't even tell you how far it's gotten. :angry:

Any hints?

When I try to load these onto an SD card and plug it into the PRS-700 the device goes into, and remains in, the Loading screen for over 1/2 hour and never exits.

Hmm....

of several thousand files


Well, there's your problem right there.

BOb

What? The thing can't handle thousands of files?

What? The thing can't handle thousands of files?


You didn't specify what types of the many files you are using, but
my guess is that the reader is trying to update its TOC and generating
an extended index. Keep in mind, the processor is not your everyday
Intel 1.x gHz so if you dump various files in sitting, the reader has to
index each and every one so it knows where to point when you select
those files.

What? The thing can't handle thousands of files?

Can't say that about 700 but PRS-500 and PRS-505 definitely cant. Even loading 500 books on PRS-500 makes it veeeeeeryyyyyy slooooooooow.

On my 700 it took about 2-3 minutes to index an sd card with about 1050 files - lrf and pdf books arranged in 6 folders containing about 175 books each.

However it took 6-7 minutes to index about 800 files of which about 650 were jpg pictures.

So I guess the number and type of files make a difference.

The one thing I would be leery about is dealing with non-lrf/pdf files (rtf, txt) that have lots of jumbled text - for example UC OCR's - since the Sony/700 software tries to make sense of them and that can take a while.

Better convert them to lrf first using Calibre and then load them on the 700

What? The thing can't handle thousands of files?

Well... you say "thousands" you don't say if it is 2 or 20 thousands.

Bottom line... when you add an SD card to the device it has to index the files on it in order to create the library view which lists all the books and allows you to sort by Author/Title/etc. As was said above, this is not a speedy device... but not even that there is ALOT of i/o that has to happen to do this.

Also, you say it "never stops" then you say 1/2 hour. Did you give up after a half hour?

So, two possibilities...

It just takes longer than you are willing to wait.
There is a problem with the SD card or it's format.

I would recommend putting less on the SD card... to try and get a fell for how long it takes to index. Lets say, put 1000 on it, and see how long that takes.

BTW: I think this indexing happens when you add books via USB transfer too... so that won't speed it up. But, you could try to transfer a few hundred at a time, remove and let it index. Although I don't know if it indexes just new files you put on it, or all again. I expect it is the former.

BOb

The big difference between my 700 and my 500, when loaded with lots of books on the memory card as well as in memory is that once the reader indexes all the books (or whatever it does when first disconnected after loading a lot of books), it's just as fast as when there are only a few books in the main memory of my 500.

With my 500, when I used the memory card and put a lot of books on it, it would take a long time to open a book I was already reading and a long time to put a bookmark and a long time to remove a bookmark.

The 700 exhibits no such behavior -- the most books I've put on it so far have been 2040, mixture of large PDFs, tons of LRFs and about 400 TXT files.

So just be patient when the little thing starts spinning and go do something else and wait -- once it stops it'll be worth it.

And with the alphabetical index down the right side of the library listing and the ability to go to a specific page number it's easy to get to where you want to be in such a large list, unlike the 500, which was a royal pain to sort through.

It looks like the thing that makes the box choke is directories. I've organized about a thousand files into two directories on the SD and that took a lot less time for it to
load, about 3 to 5 minutes. I'm going to try a larger set of files now.

Still having some problems, now trying to get 6,000+ files onto the card. I am making sure none of the larger files are making it choke (manuals etc.).

Still having some problems, now trying to get 6,000+ files onto the card. I am making sure none of the larger files are making it choke (manuals etc.).

Try keeping the number of files per directory down to 100 max. That might help and it doesn't make things look any different on the device itself.

On a hunch, I would say the processor is chocking on larger files and its ability
to index all the details fast enough. If you did them in smaller batches, I would
bet there wouldn't be any problems.