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Old 09-03-2009, 06:42 AM   #1
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When 150 becomes 4000!

Hi guys,
I've been reading this forum for quite sometime, but never posted before - so firstly, thanks for all the info each of you have provided over time. It is a wealth of knowledge.
I currently have a Sony PRS-505 and am from the UK. I normally have a small selection of books on the internal memory and have experimented with varying amounts on the SD card - to this day, I've had no problem - though I must say I've not exceeded 300 books on an SDHC (though some of them are big! PDF textbooks etc).
I often drop a couple of books onto an SD card at the drop of a hat, insert the card and seconds later get to choose from my new selection. However, over the past few days, I put the whole classic books cd - so 100 books onto my SD card as really wanted to work my way through these (honestly!) - I had no more than 50 other books on the SDHC card, which is my main card (and has contained a lot more before and worked fine), however, getting to the point - I now insert this card and an hour or so later, my reader comes to life listing 4216 books! How the flip of the flippety flip?

It appears as though the indexing has gone mental and on average it has duplicated each book 20 times - others more, others less. When looking at where it thinks these files are, it lists a directory on the card as many times as the book appears. For instance, I have a directory called Japanese, that contains some language books - 2 books in fact, but the index will list Japanese\Japanese\Japanese\Japanese\Japanese\Japan ese\<book name> for a lot of the duplicated books on the card.

Checking the card in a machine with a card reader, the structure is normal and has not created these recurring directories. Also suprisingly, the reader still finds these files to read, even though the structure doesn't exist.

Does anyone have a clue what is happening or any solutions? I've read some things about duplicated books and collections, but I've not found too much detail - which may just be me - I've searched a lot, but found nothing like this.

Even if I clear the card down now and start again, it is doing the same thing to varying degrees. Even just using small files - and I didn't believe 150 odd small files was anywhere near some of these strange Sony limits!

The only thing I can think of that has been done differently when this happened, was downloading and trying V3 of the Sony Reader Library software and attempting to set up some collections. But now, even if I remove these collections and start again (remove most of the books etc) it always does the same!

Very confused! Any ideas?

Thanks very much,
Adam.
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Old 09-03-2009, 07:35 AM   #2
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If you don't mind loading all books one more time, then
- wipe your SD card (format in in Windows, for instance)
- On the reader, go to Settings > Advanced Settings > Format internal memory

Note: this will wipe your reader clean (duh, but it can't hurt to mention). For me this clears up any issues with collections etc.

Then try dropping the whole CD again, 100 books loaded in one go really shouldn't pose that much of a problem for the reader.
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Old 09-03-2009, 07:41 AM   #3
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Thanks, I'll try give that a go later. It was the next step I kept thinking about, but hoped there'd be some extra simple solution somewhere - though that is wishful thinking for this software!

If I can, I'll try get my netbook out at work and see if I can give it a go earlier. I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks for your response.

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Old 09-03-2009, 07:49 AM   #4
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I happen to like brutal solutions to simple problems.
You could try deleting the cache.xml and/or media.xml on the reader. But I still like the hardcore option better

Perhaps some other reader will come along with a gentler suggestion.
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Old 09-03-2009, 08:04 AM   #5
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Yeah I know what you mean about the brutal solutions - I quite like them myself - but also like to know what is really going on. But seeing as the latter is most likely never going to happen, the brutal solution is probably the best bet!
I forgot to mention that I did remove the xml files - infact, I took all signs of the Sony presence from the memory card, but it still goes back and generates thousands of books! I'm really not sure how it manages it - plus it seems to come up with a new number each time I remove the Sony stuff - give or take 500 duplicates.
It would be quite an amuzing problem if it wasn't so annoying!
I'm wondering if even reformatting everything will help. Then again, it's a midway point to reloading the firmware! (Which just in case it's worth mentioning, the firmware is the latest version I believe, but did come already loaded when I bought the reader).
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Old 09-03-2009, 09:59 AM   #6
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Just to let you know - I have formatted the internal memory and the card. This time I added the Classic book through the sony reader and therefore into Sony's normal file structure. That all went fine and they displayed in the reader as single books.

However... I decided to test just dropping some other books onto the card. These were picked up fine and within seconds. 152 books on the reader. Then maybe I tried to push it, I added two more directories - one with 3 books in, the other about 7. These aren't picked up by the reader at all now (and have been picked up ok before this all started).

I also decided to create some collections. Any on the internal memory display fine, but any on the SDHC card don't now appear!

This is all very strange. Oh well, at least I don't have book duplications left right and centre! I'll continue to experiment.

Does anyone know what the usual limits are using the Sony Reader Library - or the reader itself? I've read lots of posts regarding the number of files, or the amounts of books that can be put into collections etc - I'm assuming these change depending on the size of individual books etc, but I'd be interested to know if anyone has listed these sorts of limits anywhere. It is probably just my curiousity, but I've not found too much in one place while searching.

Thanks again.
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Old 09-03-2009, 10:43 AM   #7
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Interesting. Right now I have around 570 books on the Sony of which about 200 on a MemoryStick (I have found MS performs better than SD, but this might be observer bias). I've had up to 1000-1500 before the Sony started acting up. I've seen reports of people loading as many as 4000 books, although that takes some tweaking. Also, if your Sony ever has to rebuild its internal database with that many books, it is likely the battery runs out before it finishes.

I use Calibre exclusively to load books, and it strikes me there are many ways that books can be loaded:
- using the Sony 2.0 library
- using the Sony 3.0 library
- dragging and dropping using a file manager
- using Calibre

Perhaps mixing these methods up is a bad idea; I am not sure. Like I said, I use only Calibre to manage my books (in fact, two Calibre installs, one on my main linux machine at home and one on my windows work PC) and I have never had any of the problems you describe. I did have them when I first got the reader, when I used a mixture of drag 'n drop, Sony, and Calibre. Then again, at that time I was also experimenting and fiddling around a lot. As people do when they have a new shiny

edit: one afterthought - what format are these books? Are they all the same format?

Last edited by acidzebra; 09-03-2009 at 10:53 AM.
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Old 09-03-2009, 11:22 AM   #8
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Thanks for your reply. It does look as though these different methods can confuse it somehow. Though I'd expect them to almost be invisible to each other due to the creation of the indexes etc that the device carries out of its own accord anyway.
Oh well, hopefully we'll slowly discover things about this for future reference.

As I started from scratch from your comments (reformat everything etc), the only methods I used this time were drag and drop and Sony Library 3.0
This did however cause the issues in my last post.

So, going back to the beginning, I decided to reformat my SDHC card once more - this time I dug out the "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool" - entirely unrelated to my card, but I have used it in the past when known issues cropped up with the way that windows can format memory cards etc. So I went with this - reformatted the card (didn't use the quick format method), then without using the Reader - I put the card into my Netbook card slot - then piled on over 150 books straight into the card using various directories.

I then had to use the eReader to connect to the Sony Library software so that it could view the memory card. I did this without turning the reader on (well it was in sleep mode), so only the software triggered the index rebuild at the moment. I then created several Collections and ejected the reader (as I normally do).

Upon the reader coming alive once more, it now has every book showing (only once I'm pleased to say) and also includes every collection I put in.

Therefore, fingers crossed it is currently working!

I have no idea if this is a fluke, or if something else (potentially the better formatting of the card) has had something to play in this strange issue.

I'll continue to play around though - no doubt I'll break it again soon - especially as I want to put the classic books into one collection - I'm sure that might confuse something now.

Then there will be the dilema as to how I should continue. I have used both Calibre and the Sony Library before, trying to work out which is best for me - but this most likely lead to my current predicament!

It's always the fiddling and experimenting that breaks things! Though it is always the best way to learn

Thanks for your input acidzebra.
I'll let you know how things go - sorry for making my posts so huge too - I'll stop babbling now... and get back to some work!
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