Battery draining quicker than usual - new kindle

[alexter]

Originally Posted by BookCat

So Amazon are sending you a third kindle?

I noticed on your other thread that you're trying to load a whole library onto your kindle all at once. Doing this isn't a good idea. It is probably what is causing the battery problems.

If you load lots of books all at once, each book has to index. Indexing uses lots of power. If just one book is 'stuck' the battery will continue draining fast and indexing will be stuck too.....

A good solution for indexing problems, as when one loads a lot of books (and that is my case too) is to delete the folder "Search Indexes" on the system folder and replace it with a blank TXT file called "Search Indexes" (not Search Indexes.txt). It solved my battery issues as I have more than 13.000 books loaded on my new kindle 32GB.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by alexter

A good solution for indexing problems, as when one loads a lot of books (and that is my case too) is to delete the folder "Search Indexes" on the system folder and replace it with a blank TXT file called "Search Indexes" (not Search Indexes.txt). It solved my battery issues as I have more than 13.000 books loaded on my new kindle 32GB.

but surely that destroys 13,000 books worth of search indexes ?

[alexter]

Originally Posted by stumped

but surely that destroys 13,000 books worth of search indexes ?

You can still search the books by titles. I don't really care for text searching on my kindle. If I ever need to search for a specific text on a given book I just use calibre.
Also, after a couple of months my kindle had only indexed a hundred and so books, so it would still be indexing stuff by the end of its lifetime. Not worth it. I really think amazon should look into this issue as its a known problem regarding battery usage. I even contacted amazon customer support about it and they seem to know it as well. I was even told that calibre could damage my kindle (?!?!?!), and with the new firmware there is a message about battery drainage after offloading a bunch of books. Book indexing should be optional or done only on the book beeing used.

[stumped]

ok- but giving that as a "solution" for other peoples battery drain, without warning that it will destroy all their search indexes, is not good

[alexter]

Originally Posted by stumped

ok- but giving that as a "solution" for other peoples battery drain, without warning that it will destroy all their search indexes, is not good

You can still back up the folder and restore if needed. In my case it didn't destroy anything as I still had 13.000 books unindexed (I have 13.255) and the indexing would never end. IMO its the right thing to do if you have more than, lets say, a thousand books. And what's the point of having a 32GB kindle if not to stuff it with a huge library? The thing is all that indexing and battery drainage I had would eventually shorten the lifespan of my device. As soon as I disconnected it would drop to 97% and to 80% in a couple of hours. Now with no "Search Indexes" folder it lasts for weeks.

[stumped]

well Ok - its an option and clearly it suits you, but its not for newbies who don't understand the side effects. Folks need to know about backup and restore BEFORE they zap that folder
As for device lifespan, and never-ending indexing, there's at least one regular here who has ( if I recall correctly) a 32Gb kindle filled with a lot more books than you have , all indexed, all working well, and who has posted instructions for others who need a similar setup.
A search should locate the thread.

indexing does end, if you take the trouble to isolate any troublesome books that it sticks on ( which are usually side loaded conversions, not amazon purchases ).

and once indexing is complete, keeping that index on the device should have no effect on battery life

if you have a book bought from amazon that will not index you should be reporting that back to amazon and insisting they fix it.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by alexter

You can still back up the folder and restore if needed. In my case it didn't destroy anything as I still had 13.000 books unindexed (I have 13.255) and the indexing would never end. IMO its the right thing to do if you have more than, lets say, a thousand books. And what's the point of having a 32GB kindle if not to stuff it with a huge library? The thing is all that indexing and battery drainage I had would eventually shorten the lifespan of my device. As soon as I disconnected it would drop to 97% and to 80% in a couple of hours. Now with no "Search Indexes" folder it lasts for weeks.

Yeah, it will take absolutely ages if you always unplug it after loading books on. The CPU is throttled when you do that, to save power... leave it plugged in for a few hours (or, given how many books are there, a day or so) and I bet the whole lot would get sucked in.

[alexter]

All my books are converted from ePub to MOBI with calibre. I don't buy books from amazon. I bought this kindle after I had a big library already sitting on my computer and would never buy this device otherwise. Actually, took me some time to find this solution (here on this forum) and its a problem amazon is not (yet) willing to solve. I hear somewhere the KOBO doesn't have this problem, not sure. All I know is that any search on my computer takes half a second with calibre and there is nothing indexed on my PC library, the search is made on the fly on the open ebook so it's possible to implement a search on kindle on the file that is open without having to index the whole library. It looks like something made intentionally to break a device that is sideloading many converted ebooks. Anyway, glad I've found this solution.

[alexter]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Yeah, it will take absolutely ages if you always unplug it after loading books on. The CPU is throttled when you do that, to save power... leave it plugged in for a few hours (or, given how many books are there, a day or so) and I bet the whole lot would get sucked in.

My indexing was stuck. It was like that for a couple of months, I was almost returning my kindle. So customer support told me to reset the device and have only a few books loaded and that solved the battery issues. So I figured it was something with the software. Loaded all my 13.255 ebooks again and found the tip to delete the "Search Indexes" folder replacing it with a blank TXT file with the same name. That did it, and my device was behaving like it should again. The only drawback is I can't search for text inside a book, but thats fine with me.

[Quoth]

10 to 70 years worth of reading, or a portable library!
Maybe put it on charger and let it index for a few days?
I'd want full search if I had all that on my ereader.

[BookCat]

13,000 books on your kindle? Just how long are you intending to live?

If you read 100 books a year, you'd need to live a further 130 years in order to read those books. Surely you're not so lazy that you can't put, for example, ten books on your reader per week and allow them to index properly?

If you're always close to a computer in order to look up indexed items (I often check names of characters in a book, but I do this on the kindle) then it won't be a hardship to sideload a few books approximately weekly.

When I had a pc with only a 40gb hard drive, I had to put all my ebooks onto the reader. Now I keep them on the computer until I fancy reading them. Also, loading a few books gives me the chance to charge the kindle.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by BookCat

13,000 books on your kindle? Just how long are you intending to live?

If you read 100 books a year, you'd need to live a further 130 years in order to read those books.

Last I heard (many years ago, so long ago it predates e-readers), Chip Delany had about 90,000 books in his library. I'm sure he's read the vast majority of them, and of course he's done other things too.

Some people can read awfully fast. (And have time to do other things, too, like help fill up other people's libraries!)

Whether you can read 13,000 books before the *Kindle* dies of sheer old age is another matter. They don't live as long as us

[alexter]

I intend to read 5% of my library before I die. The point here is having all these books at hand and just read what I want wherever I want. I like to collect stuff too... I can't help it.

[BookCat]

If they were physical books, someone could get the benefit of your unread library when you shuffle off this mortal coil, but as they are ebooks . . . but you never know what the future holds, reading wise.

I notice that's a screenshot of Calibre, not your ereader. Fine, keep as many books in Calibre - on your computer - as you like. In fact do what you like. The point I'm making is that you don't need to carry around 13K books all at the same time. Just put around 200, loaded slowly, onto your reader. Add more when you've read some of those. I'm sure your kindle will thank you for it. Your poor kindle won't be endlessly indexing.

[alexter]

Originally Posted by BookCat

you don't need to carry around 13K books all at the same time. Just put around 200, loaded slowly, onto your reader. Add more when you've read some of those

I had a 4GB kindle paperwhite 7th gen before this 32GB and one of the most annoying things is selecting good books out of thousands. It's a pain. I bought this 32GB kindle so I didn't have to worry about wich ones to carry around. It has been working so far and the indexing was the only problem I had but the workaround solved my issues. Hopefully when I die someone will get ahold of my calibre entire data backup and the legend will live on