Glo 200 books and only 131 MB left on Kobo Glo

[tea2]

Could someone kindly suggest what might be taking up so much space on my Glo? According to Calibre's spreadsheet, these particular books should take up about 389 MB. The total space is 1.3 GB. Thank you!

I have some sideloaded books on my SD card, but this is without the card.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by tea2

Could someone kindly suggest what might be taking up so much space on my Glo? According to Calibre's spreadsheet, these particular books should take up about 389 MB. The total space is 1.3 GB. Thank you!

I have some sideloaded books on my SD card, but this is without the card.

You might want to check the .kobo\images directory and the .kobo\kepub directories to see how many files are in those two directories. Images from previews and other no longer used images tend to build up in the images directory.

If you are using Calibre with DavidFor's KoboUtilities plugin, it will automate removing unused images from the images directory.

Regards,
David

[Ripplinger]

As DNSB said, some publishers like to put HUGE images in ebooks, which are generally useless unless you're reading on your desktop or tablet. There's no reason a well-done image needs to be larger than your screen resolution, yet I often buy books that have multiple oversized covers and images over 2.5MB each. A well-done compression will look identical when viewed on your e-ink screen. Of course if you open the images on your PC and zoom in, you will notice differences and some pixelation, but that's not visible on an e-ink screen that supports a max of 1024x768, and often 800x600.

The other thing is check the books for embedded fonts. I really wish publishers would stop insisting on what font we view since one of the main advantages of ereaders is letting people switch font styles and sizes to accommodate their eyesight. The size difference per book will be between 2.5-4MB with embedded fonts, and once you remove the embedded fonts it will drop down to a normal size of 250-600KB.

Both are nothing but a huge waste of space to me and I always remove both before transferring books to my ereaders.

[GeoffR]

Another thing to check, if you are running an automated backup prograqm on the computer that you plug your reader into, make sure it is not storing anything on the reader.

Also, do you add new covers for your books in Calibre? I do this, I find most books have cover images that are far too small/low resolution, so I add a bigger/higher resolution ones to Calibre from the publisher's website. But beware that for some books, if Calibre can locate an existing cover image in the book, it will replace it with the new cover as it sends the book to the reader. Because of this the size of the epub file on the reader can be much larger than the size in Calibre. (The size reported in Calibre doesn't include the separate cover image)

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Also, do you add new covers for your books in Calibre? I do this, I find most books have cover images that are far too small/low resolution, so I add a bigger/higher resolution ones to Calibre from the publisher's website. But beware that for some books, if Calibre can locate an existing cover image in the book, it will replace it with the new cover as it sends the book to the reader. Because of this the size of the epub file on the reader can be much larger than the size in Calibre. (The size reported in Calibre doesn't include the separate cover image)

Every time I change a cover, I run the book through modify epub to remove legacy jackets and insert or remove covers and mostly remove embedded fonts (I keep them in a few specific cases).

[speakingtohe]

If you do a search (Windows) for *.* and sort by file size it should show you if any large files are the problem. If not sort by name as it is possible to have the same books on there twice in main memory, although you should be able to see this in calibre.

Helen

[davidfor]

Or try something like WinDirStat. That will give a good idea where the the space is being used on the driver when connected. If you are not using windows, the WinDirStat suggests Linux and Mac alternatives.

[tea2]

Thanks very much for the suggestions, all. I've only had time to try the plug-in, and that got rid of about 4 mb. I've been backing up books on Calibre and changing the occasional cover, but not really playing around with files otherwise. I'm on a Mac, so I'll see what I can find to look at the files.

At work I read on a tablet and on a dedicated ereader at home, so for me one issue is more syncing bookmarks than space. Speed isn't a factor yet; the reader hasn't been slow for reading, though syncing does take quite a while.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by tea2

At work I read on a tablet and on a dedicated ereader at home, so for me one issue is more syncing bookmarks than space. Speed isn't a factor yet; the reader hasn't been slow for reading, though syncing does take quite a while.

If the wifi sync takes a long time, especially the "Loading Content" phase, this might indicate that there are a lot of recommendations in the device's database. These not only slow down syncing, but consume some space on the filesystem too, mainly for cover images.

The issue was disussed a bit in this thread, you might want to use Calibre to check how many recommendations there are, and if excessive perhaps delete the old ones.