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Old 06-11-2010, 12:48 PM   #1
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How do I eject the reader?

Kobo's support told me that you have to eject the reader, and not just unplug the USB, otherwise you could damage the reader.

How do you eject it? I know how to eject a disk -- by going into "My Computer," highlighting the disk, and clicking eject ... But everytime I try this with my Kobo I get an error message. I've had the same error message on two different computers.

There doesn't seem to be an eject option on the desktop application, unless I'm missing something.
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Old 06-11-2010, 01:05 PM   #2
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In Windows, there should be an icon that looks like a USB plug with a Green check mark in the System Tray (near the clock). If you do not see this, it may be hidden so expand the tray by clicking the arrow.

Click on this and it should show your connected Devices, you can the select and eject it.

*note there is a bug in Windows where this can disappear, if this is the case open a run dialog and enter "rundll32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll" and hit OK to manually bring up the eject dialog.
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Old 06-11-2010, 04:01 PM   #3
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Quote:
Kobo's support told me that you have to eject the reader, and not just unplug the USB, otherwise you could damage the reader.
They're saying this just to cover their ass. By default write-caching is disabled on USB devices in Windows unless you explicitly change it. You can verify this by opening up Device Manager, going to the properties of the plugged-in Kobo and looking at the 'Policies' tab.

I can see unplugging the Kobo in the middle of copying causing problems (maybe), but if you wait for the windows explorer copy dialogue to finish, or wait for the Calibre job icon to finish spinning, you'll be fine.
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Old 06-11-2010, 07:39 PM   #4
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Yeah, I'm guessing this Windows 95 era view of connected devices is the only reason we have to put up with the 'Plugged in' screen instead of being able to use our devices while they're charging.
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Old 06-11-2010, 08:24 PM   #5
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Yeah, I'm guessing this Windows 95 era view of connected devices is the only reason we have to put up with the 'Plugged in' screen instead of being able to use our devices while they're charging.
I think it's just a matter of implementation. The 'Plugged In' screen has very little to do with the USB ejection scheme in windows. In fact, that screen pops up even when you're using a wall changer with only power line being active and absolutely no data handshaking/connection. You'll also notice the screen does not go away even if you 'eject' the Kobo.

It's just a matter of implementation, me thinks. If we want to me able to read on the Kobo while it's plugged in and has an active data connection (accessible through windows explorer), then that would mean there would need to be some form of multi-tasking mechanisms in place. At this point, this would involve an overhaul of the firmware, but it is very doable. I just wouldn't expect it in the first firmware update.

HOWEVER, it would be relatively easy to allow the Kobo to be used while charging if the data aspect was absent. Eg, when using a wall charger, or after 'ejecting' the device on the computer but not removing the cable. Alas, I don't think Kobo considers this particliar issue a big priority, so I wouldn't even expect this dirty solution in the first firmware update.
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Old 06-11-2010, 09:51 PM   #6
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I just right click on the drive from MY Computer and click safely remove...
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Old 06-11-2010, 10:25 PM   #7
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I just right click on the drive from MY Computer and click safely remove...
That's what I do too.
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Old 06-12-2010, 01:07 AM   #8
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Originally Posted by Stinger View Post
It's just a matter of implementation, me thinks. If we want to me able to read on the Kobo while it's plugged in and has an active data connection (accessible through windows explorer), then that would mean there would need to be some form of multi-tasking mechanisms in place. At this point, this would involve an overhaul of the firmware, but it is very doable. I just wouldn't expect it in the first firmware update.
It's harder than you'd think. You would end up with two computers (the kobo and the one you've plugged it into) accessing the same filesystem at the same time. There is no way (well, in general) that this would end well. Most likely it would lead to serious data corruption.

Quote:
HOWEVER, it would be relatively easy to allow the Kobo to be used while charging if the data aspect was absent. Eg, when using a wall charger, or after 'ejecting' the device on the computer but not removing the cable.
This is quite true though.
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Old 06-12-2010, 02:32 AM   #9
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Originally Posted by eythian View Post
It's harder than you'd think. You would end up with two computers (the kobo and the one you've plugged it into) accessing the same filesystem at the same time. There is no way (well, in general) that this would end well. Most likely it would lead to serious data corruption.
Note I never said it would be easy. I said it's very doable, and I stand by that.

I graduated as a Electrical/Computer Engineer last year, so I fully understand the challenges of memory coherence in todays parallel computing world. But come on, with the wide proliferation of multi-core processors, the techniques in this massive field have been refined quite a bit. I actually worked with with some high-performance distributing computing clusters (Sharcnet) while I was at university, which was very cool and interesting.

Sure there would be some hurdles to consider, but it would not be a relatively difficult thing to accomplish. (From an engineering perspective anyway, I'm not saying HTML Joe could slap the code together).
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Old 06-13-2010, 12:32 AM   #10
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I graduated as a Electrical/Computer Engineer last year, so I fully understand the challenges of memory coherence in todays parallel computing world. But come on, with the wide proliferation of multi-core processors, the techniques in this massive field have been refined quite a bit. I actually worked with with some high-performance distributing computing clusters (Sharcnet) while I was at university, which was very cool and interesting.
At the risk of getting wildly off-topic and technical, this isn't the problem. The problem is that you would have two devices accessing one filesystem. Common operating systems use read/write caches on those filesystems, so what's on the disk doesn't necessarily match what's in memory.

Imagine two scenarios: device A has made changes to the FS in memory, but hasn't written them to the device when device B makes an update, then device A writes those cached versions that are now stale; and device A has a cached read of the FS that it's referring to to base changes on when device B writes to that area of disk behind its back. These would happen all the time, and would cause things to break in spectacular and interesting ways.

These aren't insoluble problems (NFS does this kind of thing in a very distant way, after all), but they're also not easy, and things like performance would suffer as a result (at the simplest level because you'd need to introduce locking, and methods to keep cache coherence.) That besides, Windows and MacOS aren't going to support this in a hurry, and fat32 never will, so that'd be another problem. You'd have to write your own drivers for them, and it'll no longer be anything close to 'plug'n'play'. (Not to mention that people like me would probably start to complain, as I bet you wouldn't release the specs so I could make it run in Linux
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Old 06-13-2010, 02:20 AM   #11
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Originally Posted by eythian View Post
At the risk of getting wildly off-topic and technical, this isn't the problem. The problem is that you would have two devices accessing one filesystem. Common operating systems use read/write caches on those filesystems, so what's on the disk doesn't necessarily match what's in memory.

Imagine two scenarios: device A has made changes to the FS in memory, but hasn't written them to the device when device B makes an update, then device A writes those cached versions that are now stale; and device A has a cached read of the FS that it's referring to to base changes on when device B writes to that area of disk behind its back. These would happen all the time, and would cause things to break in spectacular and interesting ways.
I don't want to argue about semantics, but you are talking about memory coherence here... as in 2 "devices" using some shared memory space. Your example is Cache Coherence 101, which is a special case of memory coherence.

I do understand what you're talking about, eythian. But my main point was, as you also mentioned, that it's nothing new and, is doable.

With regard to the Kobo though, our problem isn't as complex as your example. The USB connection only really needs access to the "user space" per say, which the device isn't going to be writing to at all. It could be done without changing filesystems or breaking the plug'n'play thumb-drive goodness.
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Old 06-13-2010, 03:18 AM   #12
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Meanwhile, back on earth...

...the answer to your question is that you don't bother. Just wait for the Calibre (or whatever application is being used) has finished, then unplug the Kobo...
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Old 06-13-2010, 06:56 AM   #13
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Originally Posted by Stinger View Post
With regard to the Kobo though, our problem isn't as complex as your example. The USB connection only really needs access to the "user space" per say, which the device isn't going to be writing to at all. It could be done without changing filesystems or breaking the plug'n'play thumb-drive goodness.
It would if you read to the end of the book and it made a note in the database that you'd done so.

However, best leave it there, this isn't really relevant to the thread any more (although if you feel so inclined, feel free to PM - I find this kind of thing pretty interesting, but I suspect we're the only ones here that do

Last edited by eythian; 06-13-2010 at 07:10 AM.
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Old 07-04-2010, 05:44 AM   #14
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Originally Posted by ComingOfShadows View Post
In Windows, there should be an icon that looks like a USB plug with a Green check mark in the System Tray (near the clock). If you do not see this, it may be hidden so expand the tray by clicking the arrow.

Click on this and it should show your connected Devices, you can the select and eject it.

*note there is a bug in Windows where this can disappear, if this is the case open a run dialog and enter "rundll32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll" and hit OK to manually bring up the eject dialog.
Thanks for this advice. It worked for me.
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Old 07-04-2010, 06:16 AM   #15
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In terms of the charging, though, it would be very useful if the Kobo could be charged while reading it, either with a charger or after an eject. That way you could still read in bed even if you'd let the device run out of batteries.

Although let's not pretend that properly handling data moving while you're reading it is *too* hard -- every other computer-based device on the planet does it, phones, ipods, etc...

Charles
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