What am I doing to make my Kobo Clara HD battery drain so fast?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Aardman

Because of the folder structure used in Calibre it is anything but simple to to remove the original epub as that requires opening literally hundreds of folders one at a time to find the file.

It may be that I will have to resort to removing everything and adding them back in batches, but that's vexing.

The one single consistent piece of advice you will get about calibre is: Don't mess around under the covers. Deleting files or doing anything else in the file structure will lead to bad things.

Calibre as function to do just about anything you you need to. To remove any format of a book, you select the book and right-click on the format in the details pane and select delete. Or select set of books, right-click on the delete button, or right-click on the books in the list and select Remove Books, then select the "Remove files of a specific format from selected books". In the dialog, select "ORIGINAL_EPUB" or whichever format you want to remove.

Have you tried my suggestion for how test with a book?

[JSWolf]

It's problems like this why it's never good to send eBooks in bulk. Even Kindles can have a problem with an eBook getting stuck indexing.

Go with @Ripplinger's suggestion and if it works, then you'll be able to find which eBook it is that's causing the problem.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by Aardman

Because of the folder structure used in Calibre it is anything but simple to to remove the original epub as that requires opening literally hundreds of folders one at a time to find the file.

It may be that I will have to resort to removing everything and adding them back in batches, but that's vexing.

You don't go into the file structures at all, it's all done through Calibre's interface.

If it's just an individual book, in the Book Details column usually at the right, you can right-click "ORIGINAL_EPUB" and select "Delete the ORIGINAL_EPUB format".

If you have many books with a format you want to clean out, use the left hand column under Formats, click on ORIGINAL_EPUB, and it will list all books that have that format. Select all the books, right-click, select "Remove books", "Remove files of a specific format from selected books", click on ORIGINAL_EPUB, then OK, and it's all done in a few seconds.

There is no reason to make an enormous amount of work out of it by opening every file folder in your library.

But I would still caution against removing them without checking that the layout is how you expected it to look. Again, just through Calibre's interface, no need to go opening every folder.

Edit: Now that I've read the rest of the posts, this is exactly what davidfor said above, just clarified a bit more since it sounds like you're not very familiar with Calibre's functions.

[Aardman]

This afternoon I removed everything from the Kobo except the four books I'm currently reading and fully charged it. After reading a few times and letting it sleep the battery has discharged to 64%, so that didn't work.

My next step is to completely reset the reader and, again, load the same four books, but only after doing an epub to epub conversion on all of them.

Just out of curiosity, I only notice this drain after it's been closed with the sleep cover. I can't imagine that having anything to do with it, but would it make any sense to remove the sleep cover? My wife's reader has the same cover and it's not doing this.

[Mikou]

Originally Posted by Aardman

Just out of curiosity, I only notice this drain after it's been closed with the sleep cover. I can't imagine that having anything to do with it, but would it make any sense to remove the sleep cover? My wife's reader has the same cover and it's not doing this.

Have you tried swapping sleep covers with your wife to test this out?

[Aardman]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The one single consistent piece of advice you will get about calibre is: Don't mess around under the covers. Deleting files or doing anything else in the file structure will lead to bad things.

Calibre as function to do just about anything you you need to. To remove any format of a book, you select the book and right-click on the format in the details pane and select delete. Or select set of books, right-click on the delete button, or right-click on the books in the list and select Remove Books, then select the "Remove files of a specific format from selected books". In the dialog, select "ORIGINAL_EPUB" or whichever format you want to remove.

Have you tried my suggestion for how test with a book?

Not sure I follow you here but as to various combinations of shutting it down and putting it to sleep, yes, I've tried that.

If there's a way to identify the rogue book(s) in the Calibre library itself, that would be useful.

[Aardman]

Originally Posted by Mikou

Have you tried swapping sleep covers with your wife to test this out?

No, it just occurred to me, but since both Kobo's are the same and both sleep covers are the same, seems like a long shot. I'll try that next anyway.

[Aardman]

It occurred to me simply to do a hard drive search for "ORIGINAL_EPUB" which brought every one of them up in my finder, and then delete. Of course, they remained in my Calibre library but I figured out how to "fix" that.

I've reloaded the three books I'm reading after a factory reset, and now I'm recharging - again - to 100%. If the drain normalizes then I'm looking at a situation where whatever book it is that's causing problems is corrupting the Kobo to the point where simply deleting it isn't sufficient.

Might be best to just to epub-epub convert the entire library before I start reloading if that's the case.

[Aardman]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

You don't go into the file structures at all, it's all done through Calibre's interface.

If it's just an individual book, in the Book Details column usually at the right, you can right-click "ORIGINAL_EPUB" and select "Delete the ORIGINAL_EPUB format".

If you have many books with a format you want to clean out, use the left hand column under Formats, click on ORIGINAL_EPUB, and it will list all books that have that format. Select all the books, right-click, select "Remove books", "Remove files of a specific format from selected books", click on ORIGINAL_EPUB, then OK, and it's all done in a few seconds.

There is no reason to make an enormous amount of work out of it by opening every file folder in your library.

But I would still caution against removing them without checking that the layout is how you expected it to look. Again, just through Calibre's interface, no need to go opening every folder.

Edit: Now that I've read the rest of the posts, this is exactly what davidfor said above, just clarified a bit more since it sounds like you're not very familiar with Calibre's functions.

I'm familiar with smatterings of different features of Calibre, but that's about it. Thanks for pointing this out - will save a LOT of trouble!

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Aardman

Not sure I follow you here but as to various combinations of shutting it down and putting it to sleep, yes, I've tried that.

The suggestion was to shutdown the device after reading and the start it again. And not open a book. Then see if it uses battery. If it does continue to run the battery down fast, then it eliminates the possibility that it is a book problem.

If there's a way to identify the rogue book(s) in the Calibre library itself, that would be useful.

Not that I know of. I can't remember anyone investigating and giving a reason. Most just fix it with a conversion or a cleanup in the editor and the problem goes away. And I haven't had a chance to look at books that cause the problem to see if I can see a pattern.

[Aardman]

I just went ahead and converted everything and one book refused to convert, so I tossed it. Whether or not that one was the problem remains to be seen.

[patrik]

If you can recover it, please consider sending it to davidfor for analyzing (in case that book was the problem).

[raygj]

Originally Posted by Aardman

I just went ahead and converted everything and one book refused to convert, so I tossed it. Whether or not that one was the problem remains to be seen.

try using calibre to convert it to .TXT file.
then convert .TXT to .Epub file.
this what I do to remove dodgy formating.
then download and use kepubify command to convert to .kepub.epub (kepubify -o "converted" *.epub)
To batch convert a directory of ebooks:
kepubify /path/to/the/books/
e.g. kepubify -o "converted" *.epub (to convert all books in current directory and place converted .kepub.epub files in directory named converted)

[Aardman]

After having removed everything, resetting the Kobo, and loading just one book on it, it STILL was losing power while sleeping.

So I removed it from the sleep cover, and the problem stopped.

WTF?

How can a sleep cover cause such problems? I know the Kobo was sleeping when the cover was closed - the light went off and it was obviously sleeping when I'd open it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Aardman

After having removed everything, resetting the Kobo, and loading just one book on it, it STILL was losing power while sleeping.

So I removed it from the sleep cover, and the problem stopped.

WTF?

How can a sleep cover cause such problems? I know the Kobo was sleeping when the cover was closed - the light went off and it was obviously sleeping when I'd open it.

Maybe it's a problem with the magnets of the sleep cover. If it keeps waking and sleeping, it can end up draining. I suggest trying the other sleep cover.