SD Card Troubleshooting

[yvanleterrible]

I only have time to read one book per 2 or 3 weeks. I still have the same selection on the reader's own memory from two months ago's download.

When I got the reader it was imperative at that point to get the biggest card available. I felt like I absolutely needed my whole library with me at all time. Today's feeling... pffff! What a waste of time. It was a good demonstration while showing the reader off but that was it!

Looking backwards at it, it was exactly like piling up paper books out of the library for quick access. Kind of defeating the real use of a bookshelf isn't it?

The real work should be on the computer itself only... the downloading of a book to the reader's memory is so quick that you have whatever mood choice available in no time. And since you regularly have to charge the device, that's where download time is done ; frequent enough for anyone's needs I say!

MP3s and pictures are an other story though. My card is now used for JPEG comic books.

[mogui]

Originally Posted by dhbailey

You can use a 4GB card with no problem as long as you keep the size of all the loaded data to less than 2 GB -- in other words, as long as you don't try to use the full capacity they work fine. Either SD cards or Memory Sticks. So people who have begun using the 4GB media but haven't reached that capacity think they work fine (which they do for that amount of data.)

That is what I would have assumed based on my former experience testing RAM. Something is funny about the way the Connect software behaves. From my earlier post . . .

Originally Posted by mogui

I then put the SD card back into my card reader and removed about 1G of MP3 files, taking the file size below the 2G point. The Reader took about 70 seconds to catalog the content of the card. It showed I now had 110 songs -- clearly untrue. Then I reconnected the Reader to the PC and started the Connect software. The Connect software now reported the content of my SD card as 18 books (as before), 99 pictures (a lot of album art from the MP3 folders) and 108 songs.

Next I put the SD card back into the card reader. I moved most of the MP3s into one folder and eliminated all of the album art and extra files. I wanted to eliminate folder nesting as a factor. Now I had 1.2G of Mp3s in 264 files. The card had a total of 1.76G in the filesystem. The Reader showed 110 songs. There should have been more than 260. The Connect software showed I had 108 songs on the card. It showed I had about 2.2G left out of a 3.8G capacity, but it wouldn't catalog all of the MP3s.

I would be interested to see other results. I think the Connect software is confused by 4G cards that are nearly half full. My suspicion is that it is prudent to avoid > 2G cards.

Originally Posted by dhbailey

I have fill-tested the 2GB cards and they work just fine.

This is good to know.

I am not unhappy with the flat-file arrangement of the Reader. I can easily reconnect to download another book, so I won't keep my onboard catalog too full.

[RWood]

The same with my 2GB SanDisk SD card. Filled it to the max and it read fine.

[mogui]

I bought a Kingston 2G SD card yesterday. It passed the fill-test and the Reader enumerates the files properly.

Caveat: I discovered music files mixed in with my fill-test MP3s that were not MP3s. They have since been replaced. The Reader will not enumerate them. This may explain some of the questionable results I had earlier about the Connect software and the Reader not cataloging correctly. At this point I am confident that 2G cards can work properly.

I am also quite sure 4G cards will not be completely addressed in the reader and that they will fail in the Connect software if they are filled to > 2G. The 4G cards listed as OK in the wiki page should be fill-tested or moved to the "Working with Restrictions" section of the page.

This latest Kingston SD card has holographic stickers on it and has a number to call (in China) to verify authenticity. The other three Kingston cards came with no such sticker and are probably knock-offs. I will mark the wiki page accordingly.

The Kingston 2G SD card cost about US$22 from a dealer I trust.

[HarryT]

It's been a while since I last bought a memory card. A few days ago I needed a new one for a Sat-Nav system and I was absolutely amazed to see how much they'd fallen in price. I finished up buying a Dane Electronics 2GB SD card for £9.45, including VAT (about US$18). Just crazy!

[dhbailey]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's been a while since I last bought a memory card. A few days ago I needed a new one for a Sat-Nav system and I was absolutely amazed to see how much they'd fallen in price. I finished up buying a Dane Electronics 2GB SD card for £9.45, including VAT (about US$18). Just crazy!

Ain't it grand? I recall when the first flash memory cards started appearing (the SmartMedia cards which have gone the way of the dodo) prices were like $70 for 256MB!

Now if Sony will just address the 4GB card issues and make such a card usable for those of us who wish to use such cards, along with improving the indexing and listing of huge quanitities of books in a soon-to-be-forthcoming firmware update, life will be even better.

As it is, I have stopped using any memory cards at all to lengthen battery-charge life and to increase speed.

[Lime2K]

I was having problems with my kingston 2G card, until i opened up a dos window, and used "format g: /fs:FAT /v:cardname /a:512" <<note that g: is my sd slot, yours may vary!>> \. It came back with an error, and then I dropped the "/a:512" from it, and it worked! Even the windows formatter didn't fix it!

Hopefully this little tidbit will help come other users out there!

[Amalthia]

For some reason while I'm reading a book that is stored on my 1 gig sandisk memory card the card will just disspear and I have to remove the card and re-insert it for the memory card to be recognized by the reader, this happens randomly, it could be completely still except for me turning the pages, or if I'm holding the book in my hand while reading. It's gotten bad enough that for books I'm reading I've had to move them over to the internal memory card if I don't want the story to crap out on me at random intervals and have to go through the process of resetting it and most of the time I lose my bookmarks when this happens as well.

Does anyone have any ideas or solutions? am I the only one this is happening to?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Amothea

For some reason while I'm reading a book that is stored on my 1 gig sandisk memory card the card will just disspear and I have to remove the card and re-insert it for the memory card to be recognized by the reader, this happens randomly, it could be completely still except for me turning the pages, or if I'm holding the book in my hand while reading. It's gotten bad enough that for books I'm reading I've had to move them over to the internal memory card if I don't want the story to crap out on me at random intervals and have to go through the process of resetting it and most of the time I lose my bookmarks when this happens as well.

Does anyone have any ideas or solutions? am I the only one this is happening to?

The only thing I can suggest is try a different SD memory card in case the one you have is faulty.

Jon

[abcwangfoo]

Hello,new here.My name is Pat.I have Karaoke Machine.It lets you record voice,using SD card.I,had been able to do record&add to computer.
Then tried it other day&couldn't get file to play my recording.So,I formatted(1st. time) well;didnt help. So,i put SD back,in Kar. Mac.& deleted files to start over.I press record&all 000000 show up,even as Iam recording.It is not working.

[mogui]

Originally Posted by abcwangfoo

Hello,new here.My name is Pat.I have Karaoke Machine.It lets you record voice,using SD card.I,had been able to do record&add to computer.
Then tried it other day&couldn't get file to play my recording.So,I formatted(1st. time) well;didnt help. So,i put SD back,in Kar. Mac.& deleted files to start over.I press record&all 000000 show up,even as Iam recording.It is not working.

Maybe I do not understand your intention, but this forum is about ebooks and readers for ebooks. We do not concern ourselves so much with SD cards in other equipment. For that reason I don't have any idea how I could help. Perhaps someone else has an idea.

[junkml]

Originally Posted by Amothea

For some reason while I'm reading a book that is stored on my 1 gig sandisk memory card the card will just disspear and I have to remove the card and re-insert it for the memory card to be recognized by the reader, this happens randomly, it could be completely still except for me turning the pages, or if I'm holding the book in my hand while reading. It's gotten bad enough that for books I'm reading I've had to move them over to the internal memory card if I don't want the story to crap out on me at random intervals and have to go through the process of resetting it and most of the time I lose my bookmarks when this happens as well.

Does anyone have any ideas or solutions? am I the only one this is happening to?

You are not the only one. I have the same problem on both my reader and my wife's reader, with 3 different SD cards.

If you find an answer, or anyone else does, I would be very interested in hearing it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by junkml

You are not the only one. I have the same problem on both my reader and my wife's reader, with 3 different SD cards.

If you find an answer, or anyone else does, I would be very interested in hearing it.

From what I gather, the SD card should be FAT formatted. You will need a card reader for your computer so you can format the SD card as FAT and not FAT32 or NTFS. And the Reader doe snot support 4GB SD cards. So if they are larger then 2GB, forget them and get a 2GB SD card to try.

[thefarbetween]

Originally Posted by mogui

[size=2]
It is probable then that the limitations to the SD/MMC addressing capability of the Reader are firmware limitations. I found a statement that the SD cards have a greater growth capacity in terms of memory size than the MMC cards. It is possible that the current ceiling of 2G on the Reader's SD capacity reflects an industry-wide tendency to adhere to the capacity limits of the MMC standard for the sake of being compatible with both formats simultaneously using the same firmware. It is also likely that the SD/MMC host controllers available on the market present addressing limitations.

shiiiiit i just went out and bought a 16g SD card because the thought of being able to wrecklessly hoard more ebooks than anyone could ever read in 200 lifetimes made me wet. I actually have a folder with about 13 gigs worth of ebooks and i figured it would take a sec to load all that. and this morning it actually did say over 3,000 books on the home screen, and i even opened one. and then i was like "awesome. let's max this thing out" so i rounded up another gig or so of books.

i took the card out of my reader and loaded those onto it- put it back in the reader and it started loading for an hour or so. At this point i'm thinking it's having to load all 15 or so gigs again.

I know it is completely unnecessary to have this much on your reader. I admit it is probably some weird OCD thing. I have always been kind of a book hoarder (paper books) so Ive been collecting ebooks for years now specifically for the day that i had a reader. I figured since theres a search function, why not get the biggest card money could buy and and simply dump anything resembling an ebook onto it?

my question is, will 16 gigs actually NOT WORK? at all? because it did seem like it had loaded all of them this morning.

[elcreative]

You might want to note the age of this thread

It's been a couple of years since even the 505 had a firmware update to support SDHC and I'm happily using a 16GB card. Having said that, there is a problem in that the more books you add, the slower the intitial restart whilst the reader reindexes everything.

I've got that problem solved as I have a 505 customised with PRS+ but these options aren't available for later models.

Originally Posted by thefarbetween

shiiiiit i just went out and bought a 16g SD card because the thought of being able to wrecklessly hoard more ebooks than anyone could ever read in 200 lifetimes made me wet. I actually have a folder with about 13 gigs worth of ebooks and i figured it would take a sec to load all that. and this morning it actually did say over 3,000 books on the home screen, and i even opened one. and then i was like "awesome. let's max this thing out" so i rounded up another gig or so of books.

i took the card out of my reader and loaded those onto it- put it back in the reader and it started loading for an hour or so. At this point i'm thinking it's having to load all 15 or so gigs again.

I know it is completely unnecessary to have this much on your reader. I admit it is probably some weird OCD thing. I have always been kind of a book hoarder (paper books) so Ive been collecting ebooks for years now specifically for the day that i had a reader. I figured since theres a search function, why not get the biggest card money could buy and and simply dump anything resembling an ebook onto it?

my question is, will 16 gigs actually NOT WORK? at all? because it did seem like it had loaded all of them this morning.