Clara BW Is it possible to upgrade storage size?

[asstolpho]

Hello, everyone! I hope you're all doing well and having fun with your latest books. I hope this is the right place to ask.

I'm an avid comic/manga reader and I usually read different titles during long trips. We recently ran into a Clara BW, which seems to be easier to hold and carry than a Libra 2, and we wanted to give it a try. But the storage is only 16GB, of which only 11GB are available.

I saw some videos of people opening their Kobos and replacing the original SD card for a bigger card with a partition... But I read someone else say that the card in Kobo Clara BW is actually fused.

Is this true? Is it still possible to replace the card if that's the case? Any tips, recommendations or doable alternatives? Is the SD card partition really needed?

Also, if you happen to be a KOReader user... I read they have a cloud option to download and manage files through Wi-fi connection. Is that a good alternative?

Thanks! Have a nice week, everyone!

[DNSB]

The Clara BW (along with the Clara Colour and the Libra Colour) have eMMC storage which is soldered to the motherboard.

Is it still possible to replace the card? Not nearly as simple as replacing the µSD card but if you happen to have access to a surface mount rework station and an eMMC programmer, you could remove the current eMMC, copy it's contents to a larger eMMC and mount the larger eMMC on the motherboard.

[salamanderjuice]

The Clara BW uses soldered storage so it's not really possible anymore.

I have a similar problem. I use a self-hosted Calibre-Web instance (it's separate from Calibre) that allows me to sync my library with my Kobo wirelessly and download books as needed. From my Kobo's perspective Calibre-Web is the "Kobo Store". This all works within the stock UI rather than something like KOReader.

[asstolpho]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The Clara BW (along with the Clara Colour and the Libra Colour) have eMMC storage which is soldered to the motherboard.

Is it still possible to replace the card? Not nearly as simple as replacing the µSD card but if you happen to have access to a surface mount rework station and an eMMC programmer, you could remove the current eMMC, copy it's contents to a larger eMMC and mount the larger eMMC on the motherboard.

That's interesing!! I'll probably have to rely on someone else to do that for me... eMMC seem to be a bit expensive to get but I might consider if there aren't any other affordable options. Thank you SO much for telling me! The cards seems to be a bit easier, but I'm to blame for not considering this option earlier

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

The Clara BW uses soldered storage so it's not really possible anymore.

I have a similar problem. I use a self-hosted Calibre-Web instance (it's separate from Calibre) that allows me to sync my library with my Kobo wirelessly and download books as needed. From my Kobo's perspective Calibre-Web is the "Kobo Store". This all works within the stock UI rather than something like KOReader.

Thank you for the info!! I should have searched more. BW sounded like a better choice than HD, but this is an unfortunate disadvantage...

Are you happy so far with the sync option? I'm not sure if it's easy to set up or not, but the idea sounds honestly appealing to deal with the limited capacity most Kobos have. And it definitely sounds waaay more affordable than replacing the storage So that's good!! Thanks again for the help!

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by asstolpho

That's interesing!! I'll probably have to rely on someone else to do that for me... eMMC seem to be a bit expensive to get but I might consider if there aren't any other affordable options. Thank you SO much for telling me! The cards seems to be a bit easier, but I'm to blame for not considering this option earlier


Thank you for the info!! I should have searched more. BW sounded like a better choice than HD, but this is an unfortunate disadvantage...

Are you happy so far with the sync option? I'm not sure if it's easy to set up or not, but the idea sounds honestly appealing to deal with the limited capacity most Kobos have. And it definitely sounds waaay more affordable than replacing the storage So that's good!! Thanks again for the help!

I'm happy with the Calibre-Web sync option. It's the best solution I have found to managing 100 GB+ of books from a variety of sources. You will need some sort of computer running in the background to hold the library and do the sync. An old PC or a Raspberry Pi can do it though. I haven't bothered setting up syncing outside my home network, it can be done but it's more difficult and potentially more risky if not done right. If I am going on a trip or something I just download a few before hand.

I like it better than using USB syncing even if I had enough storage. If I add a new book to my Calibre-Web library it will also get automatically synced to the Kobo over Wifi.

[Quoth]

Removing an existing eMMC without damage is hard. Soldering one in with a cheap Chinese BGA rework station as the first part on a new PCB is easy. Harder on an existing PCB without masks, heatsinks and tape.

There is also a tendency for neighbouring parts to come off or loose when removing anything like an eMMC. Non-BGA parts are usually just cut off at the body, legs/pads cleaned and new part soldered on. Even a metric fine pitch 80 lead IC can be soldered simply by reflowing the legs on tinned clean pads with a regular 3mm wedge tip iron.

Thus unless the eMMC has accessible leads and you are experienced at SMD rework forget it. I've been replacing SMD ICs, transistors, resistors and capacitors for decades successfully, but never attempting to use an IC after. I've removed, tested and replaced the same SMD transistor or regulator, but I just cut ICs at the body.

[Quoth]

USB is fine up to about 18,000 ebooks on a 32 G device. Few people can read that much in a lifetime.

I've had server(s) (not the same one!) running 24x7 since 1994 and rsync my stuff inc calibre library to it. I did test the Calibre Content server with OPDS and Pocketbook on Android, which beats faffing about with MTP and file locations for an Android app's ebooks. But all my novels are read on a Sage.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by Quoth

USB is fine up to about 18,000 ebooks on a 32 G device. Few people can read that much in a lifetime.

I've had server(s) (not the same one!) running 24x7 since 1994 and rsync my stuff inc calibre library to it. I did test the Calibre Content server with OPDS and Pocketbook on Android, which beats faffing about with MTP and file locations for an Android app's ebooks. But all my novels are read on a Sage.

In the first post they mention manga/comics. A not that great quality regular size tankobon volume is about 50 MBs. A higher quality one can easily be over 100 MB and I have a few omnibuses that are bigger than 300 MB. 32GB is not really that much especially when it's very easy to read through several volumes in a few hours.

Heck even Brandon Sanderson's latest Stormlight archive novel is north of 300 MB because of the chapter header images. Really not that rare to find novels or books bigger than 10 MB these days.

[DNSB]

One friend of mine who mostly reads manga/comics has a Clara HD. After I played with a 128GB µSD card in my Clara HD which I gave up on and dropped back to a 32GB µSD card. The main issue was that using ePub books, I rapidly had the database much larger than the RAM size which caused slowness and other issues. He wanted to give using a larger card a try, so we imaged his existing µSD card to a 128GB µSD card. He was able to store ~1800 mangas/comics on the new card and since the number of books was much lower, the database size was not an issue.

Out of curiosity, was this the 5th book Wind and Truth or the omnibus of 1 to 4 in the series?

One recent ebook I edited had 72 chapters with 4 different chapter header images. For some reason unknown to me though I suspected stupidity, instead of including the 4 different images, they included 72 PNG images at high resolution which added about 110MB to the file size. I changed the image references to point at 4 of the images and deleted the rest which reduced the file size by ~104MB. I then opened the 4 header images and reduced their size to 512x128 pixels and converted to JPG which saved another 5MB. The 512 pixel width was choosen to pretty much match 35% of the screen width on a Kobo Sage since the header images were displayed at that size.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by DNSB

One friend of mine who mostly reads manga/comics has a Clara HD. After I played with a 128GB µSD card in my Clara HD which I gave up on and dropped back to a 32GB µSD card. The main issue was that using ePub books, I rapidly had the database much larger than the RAM size which caused slowness and other issues. He wanted to give using a larger card a try, so we imaged his existing µSD card to a 128GB µSD card. He was able to store ~1800 mangas/comics on the new card and since the number of books was much lower, the database size was not an issue.

Out of curiosity, was this the 5th book Wind and Truth or the omnibus of 1 to 4 in the series?

One recent ebook I edited had 72 chapters with 4 different chapter header images. For some reason unknown to me though I suspected stupidity, instead of including the 4 different images, they included 72 PNG images at high resolution which added about 110MB to the file size. I changed the image references to point at 4 of the images and deleted the rest which reduced the file size by ~104MB. I then opened the 4 header images and reduced their size to 512x128 pixels and converted to JPG which saved another 5MB. The 512 pixel width was choosen to pretty much match 35% of the screen width on a Kobo Sage since the header images were displayed at that size.

5th book, Wind and Truth. Every chapter header is a different ~1MB image at very high res. There's a few color illustrations in there too.