Touch Reading books on Micro SD card

[Airlane1979]

I've had my Kobo Touch for years and I recently wanted for the first time to read books on a Micro SD card. I copied a set of non-DRM books from my laptop and checked the card was okay with them. Then I turned off my Touch, inserted the card and turned it on. But there seemed to be no way to access the card.

I chatted with Kobo Help and they told me "ok, but ashamedly the eReader can only read books added with the kobo store or ADE, not books directly added to the SD card" and "ok, then I do sorry for this but the policies have changed and this is how kobo works now, I recommend you to try to change your device, we've actualized a lot of procedures since the kobo touch was released, sorry".

Can anyone confirm that Kobo Touch readers used to read non-DRM books from a card but no longer can do this? It's the kind of mean trick that Apple would pull, and it seems Kobo as well.

[davidfor]

I don't do it very often, but, I have definitely read books from the SD card in both my Touch and Aura H2O using one of the last two or three firmware versions. With the Aura H2O, it was probably using 4.26.16704 as I was testing something related to swapping cards. And couldn't find another card. Because it was in the Touch.

These devices are designed to have the external SD card inserted and ejected while running. And, for the Touch, there is a problem when the card is in the device when it is booted. It probably won't be recognised. Try ejecting it, wait a minute for the device to settle down and insert it again. The screen should flash after a few seconds and then go to the importing screen.

I'll try and test my N905 Touch when I get home. But, that means I have to remember to. Which I always do, but, usually as my head hits the pillow.

[Airlane1979]

That's not how the manual describes the procedure:

ADDING BOOKS USING A MICRO SD CARD
You can increase the number of books your eReader can hold by adding a microSD card
with books already stored on it. Books must be in EPUB or PDF format. It does not matter
how they are organized on the card — your eReader will scan the entire card for books and
list any that it finds in your library. The eReader will ignore any files that it cannot read.

To add books on a microSD card:
1. Put your EPUB or PDF files on a microSD card.
2. Turn off your eReader.
3. Insert the card into the card slot at the side of the eReader and push gently until it
slides in.
4. Turn on your eReader.
Your eReader will scan the card for books and documents, and update your library. This
may take a few moments.

But either way, nothing happens when I put a 32GB MicroSD card in the slot. The card reads and writes fine in my Windows 10 laptop.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Airlane1979

That's not how the manual describes the procedure:


But either way, nothing happens when I put a 32GB MicroSD card in the slot. The card reads and writes fine in my Windows 10 laptop.

Just a guess / possible work around: try plugging your Touch into your computer and unplug it (doing a windows clean eject) after you've inserted the sd card?

[salamanderjuice]

Is it a new card? Do you have a smaller capacity to test with? I'm guessing the Kobo Touch only likes FAT32 formatted cards and not exFAT formatted cards that new cards come with out the box. So you could try reformatting. Try a smaller capacity card if you have it lying around and see if still does nothing.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Airlane1979

That's not how the manual describes the procedure:

It's been ages since I read the manual, but, these device definitely support inserting and removing the card while they are running.

But either way, nothing happens when I put a 32GB MicroSD card in the slot. The card reads and writes fine in my Windows 10 laptop.

That might be to big. There were issues with what was larger cards at the time these devices were made. 16GB should work. But, I'm sure there were issues with some 32GB cards.

[raygj]

Originally Posted by davidfor

It's been ages since I read the manual, but, these device definitely support inserting and removing the card while they are running.


That might be to big. There were issues with what was larger cards at the time these devices were made. 16GB should work. But, I'm sure there were issues with some 32GB cards.

plug in your usb cable to your computer
plug in usb cable to kobo
wait to get charging or computer transfer option screen
select computer data transfer option
wait till screen goes black
wait several minutes
unplug usb cable
wait till kobo auto reboots
(if it does not auto reboot then the auto power off time is too short.it has powered down.just press and hold power button to power up as you normally do to start kobo)
after it has powered up continue reading your last book that you were reading.
after several minutes(or more) has elapsed the screen will change from ebook viewer to black screen saying adding new books and a white progress bar will get longer.
on completion this black screen will close and you will now have access to your new ebook titles.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by raygj

plug in your usb cable to your computer
plug in usb cable to kobo
wait to get charging or computer transfer option screen
select computer data transfer option
wait till screen goes black
wait several minutes
unplug usb cable
wait till kobo auto reboots
(if it does not auto reboot then the auto power off time is too short.it has powered down.just press and hold power button to power up as you normally do to start kobo)
after it has powered up continue reading your last book that you were reading.
after several minutes(or more) has elapsed the screen will change from ebook viewer to black screen saying adding new books and a white progress bar will get longer.
on completion this black screen will close and you will now have access to your new ebook titles.

Sorry, I'm not sure what the point of this is. You seem to be stating what to do to transfer books to a Kobo device. But, you don't actually transfer any books. Plus, the device should not reboot when disconnected. It should only do this if a firmware update has been put on the device. And, the device does not scan for new books after being booted. It should scan the external SD card, but, that is @Airlane1979's problem, the Touch does not recognise the card after booting. And that is a known and long standing problem.

[raygj]

[QUOTE=davidfor;4128804]Sorry, I'm not sure what the point of this is. You seem to be stating what to do to transfer books to a Kobo device. But, you don't actually transfer any books. Plus, the device should not reboot when disconnected. It should only do this if a firmware update has been put on the device. And, the device does not scan for new books after being booted. It should scan the external SD card, but, that is @Airlane1979's problem, the Touch does not recognise the card after booting. And that is a known and long standing problem.[/QUOTE

In Fact Actually transferring any ebook titles by usb transfer cable is not necessary or needed to force the kobo to do a full scan of all memory(internal and external) and then update the kobo ereader ebook catalog file listing.

Just by doing the above USB cable transfer procedure( no USB actual eBook transfers) will always force the Kobo to do a full scan of all memory(internal and external) and then update the Kobo ereader eBook catalog listing file .

you have to manually boot up the Kobo only if whilst the Kobo is doing scan/updating is if the power option for auto power off is set to a timeout value which is shorter in time than the time needed to fully complete the update procedure(this can happen ,if like me, you have a very very large number of eBooks on your Kobo or are using a slow read access time SD card) leading to the Kobo powering off but still displaying the black USB transfer screen(no displayed indication that the Kobo has actually powered off/down) .

I have a Kobo Clara and I regularly remove the internal SD card and insert the internal SD card(A2 version 128 gigabyte) in my PC and transfer a batch of my newly purchased books to the SD cards fat32 partition inside a directory named 'Books'.
then reinsert SD card back in Kobo and cold boot up Kobo Clara.
then I follow the above USB cable transfer procedure( no USB actual eBook transfers) to update the Kobo ereader eBook catalog listing file.this is much much faster than actual transferring all the books by USB serial cable.

if the external SD card has any Fat32 File system errors or if it was removed from windows pc without first selecting the file-managers eject/unmount menu option then it will not be detected as a ExtSD card on boot up.
eject ExtSD card and insert in PC.
inside windows pc file manager do a properties/disk error scan to correct any fat32 file system errors.
make sure to use the file-managers eject/unmount menu option before removing ExtSD card from Windows PC .
reinsert SD into Kobo and do cold boot-up.
the SD card should now be recognised after booting.
the old Touch has a slow processor/internal sdcard(in comparison to recent Kobo models) so be very very patient waiting for the extSD card to complete the scan after cold boot-up.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by raygj

In Fact Actually transferring any ebook titles by usb transfer cable is not necessary or needed to force the kobo to do a full scan of all memory(internal and external) and then update the kobo ereader ebook catalog file listing.

Just by doing the above USB cable transfer procedure( no USB actual eBook transfers) will always force the Kobo to do a full scan of all memory(internal and external) and then update the Kobo ereader eBook catalog listing file .

Yes, you are correct, connecting and disconnecting from USB will trigger scanning for changes in the books. And if you do what you said, shut down, take the internal card out, put books on it, put the card back in and restart the device, you will need to do this have the books imported.

But, that is not what @Airlane1979 is doing. They have a card in the external slot. In the Touch, these are not loaded when the device is powered on. It is a bug that has been around for a long time. And, it doesn't help to connect to the PC and eject. That doesn't force recognition of the SD card. Ejecting and inserting the card does.

you have to manually boot up the Kobo only if whilst the Kobo is doing scan/updating is if the power option for auto power off is set to a timeout value which is shorter in time than the time needed to fully complete the update procedure(this can happen ,if like me, you have a very very large number of eBooks on your Kobo or are using a slow read access time SD card) leading to the Kobo powering off but still displaying the black USB transfer screen(no displayed indication that the Kobo has actually powered off/down) .

Sorry, you have the automatic power time lower than the amount of time it will take to processes the books? Why? If you know it is going to happen, why don't you extend that time? Or turn it off and leave the device connected while the books are imported. Even just using sleep is better as you can wake it and it will continue doing the import.

I have a Kobo Clara and I regularly remove the internal SD card and insert the internal SD card(A2 version 128 gigabyte) in my PC and transfer a batch of my newly purchased books to the SD cards fat32 partition inside a directory named 'Books'.
then reinsert SD card back in Kobo and cold boot up Kobo Clara.
then I follow the above USB cable transfer procedure( no USB actual eBook transfers) to update the Kobo ereader eBook catalog listing file.this is much much faster than actual transferring all the books by USB serial cable.

Exactly how many books are you copying over each time? I can see doing this once to populate the device the first time. But, after that, you would have to be adding 10's of thousand books each time to be worth the hassle.

if the external SD card has any Fat32 File system errors or if it was removed from windows pc without first selecting the file-managers eject/unmount menu option then it will not be detected as a ExtSD card on boot up.
eject ExtSD card and insert in PC.
inside windows pc file manager do a properties/disk error scan to correct any fat32 file system errors.
make sure to use the file-managers eject/unmount menu option before removing ExtSD card from Windows PC .
reinsert SD into Kobo and do cold boot-up.
the SD card should now be recognised after booting.
the old Touch has a slow processor/internal sdcard(in comparison to recent Kobo models) so be very very patient waiting for the extSD card to complete the scan after cold boot-up.

As I stated, there are multiple issues with the external SD card in the Touch. Ensuring that the card is not dirty is easy to check and fix if necessary. At this point, it is more likely that the 32GB card being used by @Airlane1979 is one that the Touch cannot use for some reason. This was discussed when the Touch was the main Kobo device and the SD cards were starting to get larger. There are no issues with 2GB or 4GB cards. But, larger cards could cause problems. Some could be fixed by reformatting them, but, other cards just didn't work. My memory suggests not going past a 16GB card in the Touch. And even then, I don't think they all worked.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by davidfor

As I stated, there are multiple issues with the external SD card in the Touch. Ensuring that the card is not dirty is easy to check and fix if necessary. At this point, it is more likely that the 32GB card being used by @Airlane1979 is one that the Touch cannot use for some reason. This was discussed when the Touch was the main Kobo device and the SD cards were starting to get larger. There are no issues with 2GB or 4GB cards. But, larger cards could cause problems. Some could be fixed by reformatting them, but, other cards just didn't work. My memory suggests not going past a 16GB card in the Touch. And even then, I don't think they all worked.

From experimentation years back, the Touch supports SDSC v1.01 which allows cards up to 4GB though many if not all 4GB cards are SDHC. Above that size, we switch to the SDHC standard which allows up to 32GB cards. The Touch worked with about 50% of the SDHC cards between 8G and 16GB I tested. I did not test any 32GB cards.