PRS-700 suddenly gone wacko

[starrigger]

Sounds crazy, but this started with my shutting down my 700, to experiment with how cumbersome that would be as a way to prolong battery life. Up to then, it was working perfectly.

When I powered it back on, it displayed only part of the book collection. Everything on the main memory was gone. But books on the SD card still showed. Augh! I turned it off again, and back on. Now all the books were gone! Aiieee! Fiddled a bit more, and did a reset. Took out the SD card. Plugged it into the USB port. Eventually it came back, and now showed the books in main memory. But all tags and Collections information and memory of where I was in various books: poof!

Now I've got it back on USB charging, with the SD card back in. (It had not indicated a low battery--down maybe one bar.) It shows up in Calibre now, but only the main memory--SD card is invisible--and all the tags are missing from the books on the Reader.

So I seem to have clobbered the database somehow, and maybe knocked out the SD card, all in one go.

Any suggestions on how best to put things right?

[Pangolyn]

Wow! Um, sorry about my suggestion. It works for me and has worked the past month that I've been doing it.

I use Calibre for most of my books but have a few in the Sony program that I got from the Sony store, so I regularly back up my internal memory by treating it like a flash drive and just copying all of the data to a directory on my computer. That won't help you, though...

Its battery power was low on vacation in January so I plugged it in to my wife's laptop via USB to charge, but her computer shut down while it was charging. I later tried to use my reader and found that everything was wiped out. I assumed that it was the classic 'eject before removing so you don't corrupt memory' problem. I reloaded from a backup when we got back home and it worked great. Fortunately I always carry a backup of some of my books on the SD card I use in my camera so I at least had something to read.

Good luck! Tell us what finally worked to get everything back.

[Lady Blue]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Sounds crazy, but this started with my shutting down my 700, to experiment with how cumbersome that would be as a way to prolong battery life. Up to then, it was working perfectly.

When I powered it back on, it displayed only part of the book collection. Everything on the main memory was gone. But books on the SD card still showed. Augh! I turned it off again, and back on. Now all the books were gone! Aiieee! Fiddled a bit more, and did a reset. Took out the SD card. Plugged it into the USB port. Eventually it came back, and now showed the books in main memory. But all tags and Collections information and memory of where I was in various books: poof!

Now I've got it back on USB charging, with the SD card back in. (It had not indicated a low battery--down maybe one bar.) It shows up in Calibre now, but only the main memory--SD card is invisible--and all the tags are missing from the books on the Reader.

So I seem to have clobbered the database somehow, and maybe knocked out the SD card, all in one go.

Any suggestions on how best to put things right?

I've never used Calibre and I have the 550, not the 700. But it's been my experience that by performing a reset the collections will disappear on the Reader. Also, I found out early on that any time you remove the SD card from the Reader the collections are also wiped out (although the books are still there.) In my case I have to sync the Reader with the Sony Library, which has my collections sorted out, in order for the collections to reappear on the Reader and SD card.

I have about (just under) 1500 books on my Reader, divided between the Reader natively, the SD card and the MS card. It's been my experience that when I sync my Reader and unplug it from my computer it seems to take a long time to repopulate, or index all of the books, thus I don't sync it very often. I use the AC wall charger that came with my 500 to charge the Reader because by the time the Reader is finished going through it's paces and showing all my books and collections (from the sync action) the battery is usually already down one or two bars and so needs to be charged again soon.

This indexing (I'm sure there's a better word for it) is what uses alot of the battery power, so I try not to plug it into my computer very often unless I have SEVERAL books to add to the Reader at once. Otherwise the result is a vicious circle of charging via USB, unplug the Reader, wait a long time for the Reader to re-index everything, and by then half the charge is gone already. I wouldn't be without the wall charger (a very important accessory to me.)

Also from my own experience, I found I need to be more patient with the Reader when it's indexing after unplugging from the computer. It DOES seem to take forever with so many books on it, but you can't rush it or unnecessarily think something is wrong, when there isn't. Also, I've found that when the arrow on the screen stops spinning and the Reader still doesn't show the collections, just leave it alone and turned on. I've found that the arrows will start spinning again and the next time it stops all the books and collections will be there. I used to get frustrated because I thought it wasn't working right but found I just had to be very patient (probably because of having so many books for it to index, I don't know.)

As for prolonging battery life, I'm sure the 700 uses power more quickly than the 500 or 550 simply by using the integrated light. But on my Readers the power lasts a very long time when just reading. I don't even bother turning it on and off all the time. If I'm reading and I lay it down somewhere expecting to pick it up again and continue reading anytime soon, I just leave it turned on. If it sits long enough without turning a page it will turn itself off after awhile. No harm done and no extra power used.

Since I don't know how the Reader works or reacts with Calibre, my soap box dialog above probably didn't help much. I'm sure someone with Calibre experience will be along shortly to help you out.

Don't fret. I'm sure help is on the way.

Oh, and there's no charge for the questionable usefulness of the above information.

[Pangolyn]

I use the light only at night, but something else in that thing sucks battery power when it is sleeping. I'm sure the touchscreen uses power when the machine is on, which is something the 500/505 doesn't have to worry about. I still like the 505 because it really is easier to read, but I wanted the 700 for annotation (I have over 300 annotations right now).

I wouldn't blame Calibre at all for this problem--if anything, I've found that the Sony software has a difficult time keeping the categories intact. At least you have backups of all of your books in Calibre so hopefully all you lost were your bookmarks! Again, you may want to do like I do and keep a copy of your books on another SD card in your camera so that you won't get stuck with a brick while on vacation.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Pangolyn

Wow! Um, sorry about my suggestion. It works for me and has worked the past month that I've been doing it.

I'm sure there's nothing wrong with your suggestion about powering down. That shouldn't affect a device that's working right.

My SD card is apparently slag, as I can't read it on my laptop, either. So now my question is whether the Reader somehow slagged it on startup, or it self-immolated all on its own. It's a cheap MicroCenter store brand card, so I suppose it could be the latter.

My books are safe; they're all in Calibre and/or the Sony Library. But I'm a little hazy on how the onboard database works, so I'm not sure whether I should suspect corruption and wipe it clean, or just muddle on ahead and either retag the books right on the device, or delete books and recopy from Calibre. (That latter would probably be faster, actually.)

Lady Blue, thanks, some of what you said is true of the 700, also (though my collection was only around 400 books, so things weren't that slow--plus the 700's faster processor probably reduces the lag). But I had previously been through a couple of instances when I seemed to have a brick, and it turned out I just needed to be patient. So I didn't draw any conclusions, until it finished its recovery and--what the frak--my books were missing.

I've reset in the past, and don't recall it affecting the collections on the 700, so that may be one difference between the 50x and the 700.

I guess I'll just stick with the main memory until Woot comes up with a deal on SD cards. That'll limit me to only a couple hundred books on my "to read" pile, but I guess maybe that could be considered enough.

[Tomcatt]

Your not the only one with a funny 700. Mine does the same thing you just listed and maybe the same time yours went down. But I think my 512mb duo card may be bad. I'm going to off load it and format it with my PSP, reinstall my files and drop it back into the 700 and somke test it.

[starrigger]

Plato (my 700) has been working fine since I removed the SD card. I've moved some books on and some books off, and retagged some in place. Everything seems to be functioning as it should. I notice how much faster it seems to respond to menu functions (such as calling up collections) without the SD card. I don't know if that's just due to a smaller number of books, or if the SD card in and of itself slowed down the processing.