Maximum practical files number?

[Richwood]

I note that the Kobo description on a couple of the current 8 GB Kobo readers lists their capacity as up to 5000 books. Is this genuine or a exaggeration? At what number of files does the response deteriorate to unacceptable levels or things start to hang up or crash intermittently?

[koboy]

Originally Posted by Richwood

I note that the Kobo description on a couple of the current 8 GB Kobo readers lists their capacity as up to 5000 books. Is this genuine or a exaggeration? At what number of files does the response deteriorate to unacceptable levels or things start to hang up or crash intermittently?

i have 3898 books mainly kepubs on my original Aura 6". 7 GB used on my external SD card and 3.5 GB used on the Aura leaving about 500MB.

best wishes koboy

[davidfor]

I've tried loading 30000 books on one of my older ereaders. That wasn't particularly pleasant. But, I have run close to 10000 on whichever device I was using as my primary device without any issues. Scrolling through the library list is fairly pointless, but, if you have an idea of what to search for, it works.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Richwood

I note that the Kobo description on a couple of the current 8 GB Kobo readers lists their capacity as up to 5000 books. Is this genuine or a exaggeration? At what number of files does the response deteriorate to unacceptable levels or things start to hang up or crash intermittently?

You would need ebooks with few images to fit 5000 on an 8GB device. That being said, I have had ~11,000 books on a Clara HD with an 32GB uSD card replacing the factory 8GB card. The two issues I noted were that search is the only way to find books in the library (*) and with the database size pushing RAM size, there were some 1-2 second hesitations at times.

* I don't find scrolling through pages of library or collections as a useful way of finding my next read when there are 2200+ pages. Other's mileage may vary.

[LordP]

Wow, how do you guys remember what you have? How do you choose your next read?

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by LordP

Wow, how do you guys remember what you have? How do you choose your next read?

I don't exactly remember all the books I have on my computer (10736 today), and (very rarely fortunately), I've bought ebooks I already have, but that happened with paper books too (I have thousands), and when I do look for something, it is much easier in calibre than in my library, where paperback sized books are two rows deep.

As for the books on the devices (4294 today on the Libra), I have "to read" collections by genre and catalogs I update often. There are two catalogs on the devices:

• a complete catalog, by author, series, genre, and date added. A character in front of the title indicates whether the book has been read on paper only or on a device, and whether it is in the Archive or only on 7+ inches devices, or just the Forma (for dense PDFs)
• a detailed catalog for books I bought and want to read or re-read, with all the information above, plus one page per book containing the title, author, tags, type (epub/pdf), publisher, year of publication, cover, number of pages and blurb.

Also I do explore the collections. I have enough that most are manageable, especially when split down in unread or currently reading (I open books I want to read sometime in the near future to put them on top of the pile), or finished when I want to reread something. All my books have the number of pages as a subtitle that appears on the list.

And when I can't find something, I explore in Calibre, where I can mix tags, and look at the covers.

All in all, much easier than climbing 4 floors to a former maid's room (my VERY arthritic knees complain loudly when I walk down) and spend time on top of a stepladder moving books around.

I'll add that whether in my library or in Calibre, it is a pleasure to find a book I had completely forgotten and WANT to read - serendipity is my favorite English word.

[sdfgg]

Originally Posted by LordP

Wow, how do you guys remember what you have? How do you choose your next read?

Like DNSB mentions. With the current file handling system that kobo has, it becomes cumbersome at times, specially for file hoarders like myself ( I have a Kobo Clara HD with a 512GB sd card around 75% full )

At the moment I am using Koreader on it, basically just because koreader has a traditional file explorer (folders inside folders), thus avoiding the slowdown caused when searching in big libraries like it has been mentioned.