SD Card Troubleshooting

[Roy White]

I have a really dumb newby question... I just bought a reader and am waiting for delivery.... I know I'm going to max out the memory (I've already downloaded lessee.. checking now... 256 books... I'm like a squirrel hiding acorns here. i love old books and have went through the manybooks website downloading any and all i found even slightly interesting) so I bought a memory sd card from amazon. I got this product... (SanDisk 2 GB Extreme III SD Memory Card) I hope that was the right one????

My question is, (And bear with me because i'm kind of computer challenged...)

Do I just what, slip the card into the device like I do my camera memory card and never open the reader again using the software and usb cables to transfer files to it or do I have to buy another umm.. Card reader.. (Whatever that is) and transfer files to the card, then put the card into the reader every time I get new books, (Which I'm certain will be regularly)

I was kind of hoping for the former rather than the latter procedure.

Can anyone hold my hand and lead me through the baby steps...

Thanks. Roy

[NatCh]

That SD card should be fine, some folks have reported issues with larger than 2GB, but the only thing you're likely to run into is that the Reader will slow the card down.

As to getting texts onto the card, either approach you've mentioned will work fine. The drawback to the former is that you have to use the ConnSoft to transfer the files. The downside to the latter is that the page calculations will be done by the Reader (instead of your PC (via ConnSoft)), so it'll take time re-indexing the entire card every time you re-insert it.

You may find that you don't want to keep a lot of files on your Reader, or a memory card for that matter, since the Reader uses a flat file system -- it displays all the files on the card and in its memory in a single list, 10 at a time. So opening the last of your 256 files would require paging through 26 screens of file names.

Most of us have found that it's simpler to keep only the book we're currently reading, plus the next few we plan to read, and leave it at that. Of course, you'll have to decide what approach works best for you.

[mogui]

I am using a Kingston Elite Pro 4G in my Reader. It is formatted as FAT32. To the best of my knowlege it is not an SDHD card. All of the content on my card shows in the Reader catalog with a small card icon beside it. I have 18 books on the card as well as 9 songs and 46 photos. The files (73 total) on the card are organized into folders by type. The reader takes approximately 20 seconds to catalog the card when it is inserted.

I also have a Kingston 512MB card that was formatted as a FAT file system by my camera. When I insert it in my reader and connect to it via the Connect software, it is recognized. When I put a book on it, the Reader adds a "Sony Reader" folder that contains a "books" folder and a "database" folder. The Reader takes about 5 seconds to catalog this card. The Reader found some MP3s I had in a folder on the card though the folder had not been created by the Reader. Yes, my camera plays MP3s.

Kingston is a name brand that I have used before. I am in China so I never know if some electronics I buy are not knock-offs, but this card works well. I use a 4G capacity card reader that looks like a USB flash drive, only a little wider. It makes a convenient 4G USB flash drive when I choose to use it for that. I paid less than US$4 for it here. The 4G card was a hair more than US$40.

I too am disinclined to buy a high another capacity card for this device, now that I have seen the flat-file organization of the Reader. It is tedious going through many pages of the catalog. Maybe in the future, the Reader firmware will support directories. It would also be useful to have a mechanism that would prohibit the Reader from cataloging certain (pehaps specially named) folders so non-Reader content on the card, or a reserve store of reading material, would not burden the cataloging process. This would be easy to do by creating a configuration option that would tell the Reader to catalog only the "Sony Reader" folder and its subfolders.

As an experiment, I loaded an additional 595 files of MP3s and associated files (album art, desktop.ini) in 49 folders onto the Kingston 4G card using my card reader. This brought the total size of the files on the card to 2.869G. My reasoning was that if the Reader could not address all 4G of the card, anything over 2G would reveal the difficulty. When I inserted the card into the Reader, it took about 90 seconds to catalog the content. The Reader showed I had only 120 songs onboard. Obviously something was wrong! Then I connected the Reader to my PC and invoked the Connect software. It tried to access the card within the Reader and gave up shortly showing an error in the left menu section.

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.

Conclusion: The Connect software knows the size of the SD card. Does this mean the Reader is correctly addressing all 4G? Probably not. I think the Reader is getting the 4G capacity info from the SD card in some way, but the addressing is not available for the full card. Maybe it sees the card as a 2G card or a 1G card. I suspect this is a Reader limitation. Is it hardware or software? Sony, would you care to comment?

We can demonstrate that a given card works in the Reader, but it requires further effort to determine if the Reader can use the full capacity of the card. Here is the fill-test. Load your SD card almost to capacity with a known number of files of a given type: songs, books, pictures. Now see if the Reader can enumerate them correctly and that the Connect software can see them. I suspect further that if you try to put more than a given amount of files on your reader using the Connect software (beyond the addressing capability of your Reader), the Connect software will go toes-up. I have not demonstrated this. it is only a suspicion.

It would be useful if we could report card models and brands that do not work on the wiki page. My suspicion is that Sony engineered the interface correctly, and that there are some card makers that are using flaky electronics. Working from that assumption would give us an idea if there is a pattern to the "incompatibility". There are knock-off cards on the market, so the picture may be muddied by that.

The only time I have had trouble with USB flash devices has been when I have an insecure connection to the PC and then inadvertently power up-and-down quickly. This erases them by destroying the file system. In every case I have been able to reformat them and use them again. It is a good idea to insert them firmly and make sure the USB device is supported physically if it is heavy or in a bad location, so it cannot pull itself loose.

Originally Posted by melchioe

Anyone else have the issue where the card is not seen in Connect if the Reader is already plugged in when Connect it started? This might have some bearing on some of the card issues reported in this thread...

When I first connect the Reader via USB and then start the Connect software, the Connect software successfully catalogs my SD card. I am using the February Reader firmware upgrade (Version 1.0.02.01300) as well as the current Connect software (1.1.00.13290). My Reader reports the battery level correctly after charging provided I disconnect the power cable and reconnect it -- per the reports of others.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mogui

Conclusion: The Connect software knows the size of the SD card. Does this mean the Reader is correctly addressing all 4G? Probably not. I think the Reader is getting the 4G capacity info from the SD card in some way, but the addressing is not available for the full card. Maybe it sees the card as a 2G card or a 1G card. I suspect this is a Reader limitation. Is it hardware or software? Sony, would you care to comment?

Reports from a number of users suggest that cards >2GB don't work correctly in the Reader. 2GB cards work fine - best to stick to those, if you want to use a memory card.

[mogui]

SD cards support a serial interface mode (SPI) that is compatible with MMC cards, though applications can use the faster 4-bit parallel SD mode. If the demands of an application permit, it is logical to use the SPI mode which, though slower, gives MMC card compatibility with only one software stack rather than the two stacks required to support both SD and SPI modes.

Additionally the SD standard is not open to open-source developers, so Linux based devices are not likely to support SD mode. Sony might have its own proprietary drivers under license however.

Compatibility issues exist when older cards are used that adhered to a previous set of standards. Some commands have changed. Some micro-SD cards do not use the SPI interface, so if our Reader uses only SPI (likely) these would not work. SDHC cards do not work. They are a newer standard and a different interface that does not provide backward compatibility to SD/MMC interfaces.

SDHC cards can be addressed up to 32G. It does not appear that the Reader supports SDHC functionality.

The interface to an SD card is via a 4-bit data bus that is usually used in (SPI) one-bit serial mode. Obviously then, the physical addressing of memory is accomplished via registers internal to the SD card, which registers are accessed via a system of software commands. The standard does not permit variations in the physical interfaces of various SD cards, though the physical interface of the MMC card has fewer pins. Wikipedia states that the theoretical memory addressing capacity of an SD card is 128G using 28-bit sector addressing. They don't say whether it is 128G bits or bytes. If bits, that would confer a 16G byte limitation.

The SD Group Technical Committee specifies that SD cards can have a capacity of up to and including 2G. It seems that those producing SD cards in excess of 2G are doing so in violation of the specs. One manufacturers's site projects SD cards of up to 16G capacity.

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.

[NatCh]

I believe that Sony only claims that the Reader is compatible up to 2GB.

[Roy White]

Wow you guys are truly geeks... (And I am totally joking with that comment) Reminds me of some of the speeches of Bill Clinton. I knew the words he was using but I just couldnt figure out what he was talking about!

Natch thanks for the answer. Now I know I dont have to go buy a card reader. I already bought one of those M Edge cases for my reader i dont even have yet.

I'm probably going to put hundreds of books on the reader. I LOVE the idea of lugging hundreds if not thousands of books around with me to read at my leisure. I tend to be a bit eclectic about my reading choices depending on mood and setting and would love to have the diversity of choice 300 or more books offers. From Robert frosts Poems If I'm looking at a sunset to Patrick McManus hilarious outdoor hyperbole if I only have a few minutes waiting in line somewhere.

I was at WalMart just today with my wife... "Oh Honey! I wanna just buy Mom a card for mothers day!" So I grabbed a card after looking for a total of 55 seconds, she's looking, I'm waiting. Finally I say, "I'm gonna go sit on the patio furniture and wait for you." About 25 minutes later she finally selects her card and is ready to go. Meanwhile I sat there watching people walk by with NO BOOK TO READ! I wish I would have had my reader with me. It would have been a perfect place to drift off to Pern for a few minutes.
Or read a couple of chapters of Isaiah!

I dont think I will mind scrolling through tons of file names to find the book I wanna read as long as it only takes a second to go to the next page of files.
Flat file system?
How is it even possible that the good folks at Sony did not design this thing with subfolder capabilites? Its hard to believe...

I have an excellent MP3 player, The gigabeat so i dont think I'll use the mp3 application at all...

I guess I'll just have to put up with the file system.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Roy White

How is it even possible that the good folks at Sony did not design this thing with subfolder capabilites?

That, Roy, is an excellent question. I wish we knew the answer to that one.

[RWood]

Originally Posted by NatCh

That, Roy, is an excellent question. I wish we knew the answer to that one.

I think the thinking is that many people will forget where they put a book and blame Sony for the lost book. Remember all the stories you have heard of the people who have all of their documents in "My Documents" and have to go through 10 pages of file names to find the letter they wrote that morning. I believe it is easier for them to put up with our comments than it would be to put up with hundreds if not thousands of people calling in and asking where their books are (or even worse for Sony, returning the Reader because the books they put on the Reader are gone.)

[NatCh]

Well, I certainly agree that they'll catch heat no matter what that do with it, so you may be onto something there.

[mogui]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I believe that Sony only claims that the Reader is compatible up to 2GB.

My research with the 4G card agrees, in that my one example of the 4G card fails the fill-test. There are two 4G cards listed as working in the wiki page. I expect a fill-test will confirm my results.

Here is the fill-test. Load your SD card almost to capacity with a known number of files of a given type: song, book or picture. The object is to prove that your card can be addressed uniquely over the entire range. You should be able to use all of the files with your Reader. If you cannot, then the card is not being addressed properly. Make sure the card reader you use to fill the card is capable of addressing the range of your SD card. e.g. I have two card readers. One, a new one, can read/write a 4G SD card and the other, old one, cannot.

We should really fill-test a 2G card to corroborate Sony's claim. Maybe I can pick one up this week. I have a 1G that is wandering around China in a lady's handbag. I will endeavor to test that too when she returns.

[dhbailey]

There are ways of having a card work and there are ways of having the card work, and they aren't necessarily the same.

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.)

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

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Roy White

I have an excellent MP3 player, The gigabeat so i dont think I'll use the mp3 application at all...

Smart move. The MP3 player is quite "dangerous" on the Reader, in that it doesn't have a "Stop" facility, just a "Pause". It's all too easy to leave it playing accidentally (which you obviously won't know unless you have headphones plugged in). When it's playing, the auto-power-off doesn't happen, and you can drain the Reader's battery FLAT in a few hours.

Safest thing is to use a "proper" MP3 player for music (I use my iPod) and use the Reader for what it's best at - reading books.

[UncleDuke]

i only keep a week's worth of books on the reader. every sunday i reload.

the world is my symphony so no mp3s for me.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by RWood

I think the thinking is that many people will forget where they put a book and blame Sony for the lost book. Remember all the stories you have heard of the people who have all of their documents in "My Documents" and have to go through 10 pages of file names to find the letter they wrote that morning. I believe it is easier for them to put up with our comments than it would be to put up with hundreds if not thousands of people calling in and asking where their books are (or even worse for Sony, returning the Reader because the books they put on the Reader are gone.)

The Reader actually isn't alone in showing the file structure "Flat" - the Pocket PC works the same way. It has a standard FAT file system and you can store files in whatever folders you want, but the "Open File" dialog from any application shows you all the files for that application in a "flat" list, no matter what folder they are stored it.

I suspect there's a lot of truth to the suggestion that Sony feel that hierarchical file systems confuse people. We may be doing them an injustice in thinking that they just "forgot" to implement this - it may very well be a deliberate choice based on customer testing. Companies like Sony spend a LOT of time finding out what customers think of products a long time before they release them, and the Reader is not intended to be a product for computer geeks.