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Old 09-08-2010, 06:10 PM   #1
jibanes
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Largest memory card supported

Hello,

I'm using a PRS-505 with a PRS+ firmware (the latest, most likely) and have a considerable amount of books (mostly documentation) to carry around.

With this in mind what would be the largest (SDHC+MemoryStickDuo) combination that would work? I'm hoping for 32+16GB or something similar (bigger?), could somebody chime on this, and, of course report the brand and models used; I've tried different sticks with little to no success.

Thank you,
Jerome

Last edited by jibanes; 09-08-2010 at 08:54 PM.
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Old 09-09-2010, 12:37 PM   #2
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I don't know the answer, but I do know that the 505 will really struggle to index a memory card that has a lot of books on it. We're talking hours at least. For practical purposes, the limit is not the size of the card, but the 505's inability to index/process them when they have a lot of books.
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Old 09-09-2010, 12:46 PM   #3
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I don't know the answer, but I do know that the 505 will really struggle to index a memory card that has a lot of books on it. We're talking hours at least. For practical purposes, the limit is not the size of the card, but the 505's inability to index/process them when they have a lot of books.
That's absolutely right. Once you get beyond a few hundred files it really struggles. Of course, if they are all multi-MB PDFs then perhaps you will have a need for a large memory card, but if you're hoping to be able to store 5000 files on the card then I'm afraid it's really a forlorn hope.
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Old 09-09-2010, 02:01 PM   #4
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I do not intend on having a lot of books on this card, but some of them are very large files, hence the need for such a large memory footprint, could you advise me on the working 16 or 32gb sdhc perhaps?
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Old 09-09-2010, 05:11 PM   #5
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Since jibanes has said that the 505 is using PRS+ then the Sony indexing time lag doesn't really apply... I'm using a 16GB card with nearly 25K of books on it and no problems...
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Old 09-09-2010, 05:26 PM   #6
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Since jibanes has said that the 505 is using PRS+ then the Sony indexing time lag doesn't really apply... I'm using a 16GB card with nearly 25K of books on it and no problems...
Which brand/model of card are you using, my 32GB doesn't seem to work in the PRS-505 with PRS+.
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Old 09-09-2010, 07:06 PM   #7
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Nothing special, it's a 16GB SDHC made by integral memory, medium speed (4) that I've had for a year or two and was pretty inexpensive when I got it... formatted FAT32


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Which brand/model of card are you using, my 32GB doesn't seem to work in the PRS-505 with PRS+.

Last edited by elcreative; 09-09-2010 at 07:08 PM.
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Old 09-10-2010, 03:06 PM   #8
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My Patriot 32GB SDHC doesn't work in the prs-505 using PRS+, nor does my "genuine" 8GB Sony MagicGate, an old 4GB MagicGate does work, but I was hoping for something bigger, all are using fat32, what could be causing these issues, and is there a rather fast (8GB Sandisk Extreme? or so) supported on the PRS-505?
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Old 09-10-2010, 04:15 PM   #9
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jibanes
How are you formatting the cards? Cluster size could matter.
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Old 09-10-2010, 05:34 PM   #10
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jibanes
How are you formatting the cards? Cluster size could matter.
I'm simply formatting them using mkfs.vfat, after creating a partition of type 'b' (FAT95).

Often, the reader doesn't see the card, often it scans it and find only a few books (I have 513 books), with the 4GB ProDuo it always work, with the 32GB, never. I'm currently trying yet another 8GB. I'm not sure why, but when I then look at the 32GB under linux, the Sony Reader's contents are all garbage, and I often have to 'recover' the vfat filesystem. Could it be a mount concurrency issue (the card being mounted on the PRS and through the USB) that trashes the metadata?

who knows for sure.


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Old 09-10-2010, 06:01 PM   #11
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Lots of reports on the net about problems with mkfs.vfat formatted FAT32 being unreadable under Windows etc... recommendations say use partition 0C type

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Old 09-10-2010, 06:09 PM   #12
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Lots of reports on the net about problems with mkfs.vfat formatted FAT32 being unreadable under Windows etc... recommendations say use partition 0C type
In PRS+ what does the option "mount (experimental)" do?

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Old 09-10-2010, 08:37 PM   #13
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Mounts cards as it says but allows more than 4GB of files to be accessed... without this option, some cards (well, all in my experience) would only allow you to access the first 4GB of files on the card.


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In PRS+ what does the option "mount (experimental)" do?
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Old 09-11-2010, 04:09 AM   #14
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In PRS+ what does the option "mount (experimental)" do?
Sony firmware is accessing SD cards using it's own function calls, without mounting it. The code is buggy. "mount" option uses linux mount (no bugs reported afaik) but since Reader cannot go into power saving mode with mounted SD card, mount/umount is done every time you change folder. (you also obviously lose ability to open books directly from SD)

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Old 09-11-2010, 10:12 AM   #15
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Sony firmware is accessing SD cards using it's own function calls, without mounting it. The code is buggy. "mount" option uses linux mount (no bugs reported afaik) but since Reader cannot go into power saving mode with mounted SD card, mount/umount is done every time you change folder. (you also obviously lose ability to open books directly from SD)
We should have an option then to "rescan (now) SD/MC using mount", that is, to (linux) mount the filesystem, then create the index (stored in a BDB file for instance, or just flat xml file) and then we would be able to rescan the card, bypassing this limitation, which is precisely what is probably causing me trouble right now. I think sony is using proprietary calls rather than the (linux) mount do avoid concurrency, that is, mounting the filesystem in two different threads. Because the filesystem isn't meant to be mounted twice at the same time (it would trash/corrupt its metadata, and likely the VFS cache), that's why they're using syscalls, where they can, in the kernel or kernel module, use mutex(es) or semaphores to prevent, per say, concurrency in writting the same file from two different threads or similar actions.

Would this option require a lot of work: "rescan (now) SD/MC using mount"?
This would be of tremendous help.


Jerome
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