PNY 4gb sdhc card causes Kindle to crash

[snookums]

I'm just posting this as a warning to others. After receiving my Kindle Feb 1st, I installed a 4gb PNY sdhc card in it. I placed all 10,000 mobipocket books from the blackmask dvd in the documents folder. I wanted to see if the Kindle could handle that many eBooks or whether it would choke. It began updating the content list and got up to over 600 pages in the home screen at one point, but it always ended up crashing eventually and had to be reset.

I changed the documents folder on the memory card to something different and decided that I would move books I was interested in to the documents folder as I wished. I first noticed the problem when I plugged the usb cable into the Kindle. It showed up on the computer fine. I was able to move files between the card and the Kindle's memory, but after ejecting the disk, the Home screen didn't show books in the right order and clicking on them brought up an error message. The device would crash every time it came out of usb mode. I would remove the sd card, reset the Kindle, reboot without the card, and then add the card back. Then the files would show up fine.

I tried several things such as plugging the Kindle up to the power cord before using the cable. None of that worked. I was starting to think that the Kindle must be a shoddy device to crash every time you used the usb cable, but I considered that it also might be the sd card. I was right. I went back to the store and bought a sandisk ultra II 4gb. The device stopped crashing. Now I'm wondering if the Kindle might have been choking on the memory card and not the 10,000 ebooks. I'm going to try again when I have the time. I've also ordered an Ultra III because I realized that I could get it on Amazon for half of what staples was asking for the Ultra II.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by snookums

After receiving my Kindle Feb 1st, I installed a 4gb PNY sdhc card in it. I placed all 10,000 mobipocket books from the blackmask dvd in the documents folder.

First of all, that was crazy.

Second, did you charge the Kindle before using it? If you did, then there are three possible causes to your problem. The Kindle software might not be able to handle 10k file pointers. Another possible cause is a file was corrupted when you transferred it from the DVD. A bad SD card could be the problem aswell.

[snookums]

First of all, that was crazy.

Thanks.

It was fully charged, and I popped it onto the charger while it was running just in case. I don't believe the issue is with the Kindle being unable to handle large file lists. It got up to around 658 pages of books on one try. At 12 books per page, that is 7,896 books. I wouldn't swear by my memory, but I seem to recall that it got as high as 800 pages on one attempt.

Even if the Kindle does have an issue with that many books, I feel that I can definitely say that this particular memory card was causing the Kindle to crash. The crashes happened when exiting usb mode, even when I backed off and only transfered one file into the documents folder, but only when the PNY card was inserted. The crashes stopped when I took the PNY out and used the Sandisk Ultra II. I haven't tested the Ultra with the 10,000 books yet, but the random crashing that was happening no matter how many books were present has stopped.

Notes:

I did eject the disk and wait for the usb activity indicator to stop flashing before I disconnected.

It is possible that I just got a bad card from PNY, and no one else will have this problem with PNY cards. It was a new card though.

[cfw123]

I have some 300 highly selected books on my Kindle right now, all of which I moved from the Kindle Memory to the 8 GB High Speed SanDisk SDHC memory card periodically as I took a break from adding more books.

All my books (for the most part anyway) come from the free ebooks from Mobipicket, and Feedbooks. These are all out-of-copyright, but include a huge number of classics in English. I had read many of these during my college days as an English Lit major, but many which I had wanted to read couldn't be fitted into my tight time schedule then -- but now they can as I am now retired with time to read.

I really love my Kindle, and take it with me everywhere I go -- to the john, to the restaurant when I am alone, in my car where I read while I wait for my wife who is shopping, to next to my bed where I recharge my Kindle every night per recomendations of Kindle if you leave wireless on all the time like I do, and where I can read my Kindle in bed unlike every other book I have tried to do that. This is possible on my Kindle since I can hold it in one hand, using my thumb to tjurn pages. Try that on a dead tree book.

Charles Wilkes, San Jose, Calif.

[exreader]

i have the pny 4 gb sdhc card, < $30, and it works just fine.

i did discover a problem if files have non ascii a-zA-z0-9-_ filenames. in particular was a file from mobipocket.com -> gebruder grimm 3mb that has a u: character in the filename. caused flaky behavior. i renamed it to just "grimm.mobi" and it's just fine now. very weird.

putting in that many files is probably asking for it. the device has limited memory, and if it's trying to index things, and store the indices internally, it might run out of room. yikes. ideally, it would store indices for internal and external files appropriately internally and externally. if you filled the card, and it ran out of room, it might (would) behave spastically (and require a reset). possible corruption too. reformatting the card might have to be done. just a thought.

[TallMomof2]

I had an Adata 2GB card go bad in my Kindle within the first couple of days. I know Adata isn't the highest quality but I'd never had problems with their cards before the Kindle. I've been using a Toshiba 1GB card with around 700 books without a problem.

[JSWolf]

Can the Kindle handle SDHC past 2gig? Has anyone tried putting more then 2gig worth of data on one and trying it out to make sure? I know on the Sony readers 500/505 you can use an SDHC card only up to the 2gig limit. So what's the real deal with the Kindle and SDHC?

[snookums]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can the Kindle handle SDHC past 2gig? Has anyone tried putting more then 2gig worth of data on one and trying it out to make sure? I know on the Sony readers 500/505 you can use an SDHC card only up to the 2gig limit. So what's the real deal with the Kindle and SDHC?

The 10,699 eBooks I placed on the sdhc were 2.03 gig. When you put a 4gb sdhc card in the Kindle it shows the free space as being 3.7gb. (accurate since manufacturers consider a gb to refer to 1,000,000,000 bytes - technically accurate, but tricky advertising anyways) According to Amazon sources, in an article I just read, the Kindle does support some sdhc cards. They just didn't offer official support.

If I could find 500 or so eBooks that were hefty and came to over 2gb, I could test this.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can the Kindle handle SDHC past 2gig? Has anyone tried putting more then 2gig worth of data on one and trying it out to make sure? I know on the Sony readers 500/505 you can use an SDHC card only up to the 2gig limit. So what's the real deal with the Kindle and SDHC?

Are you sure the Sony supports SDHC at all? There are 4 Gig cards that are not SDHC and I think these are the ones that work partially in the Sony. Having SDHC implies a different controller and the smallest SDHC card is currently 4Gig. Amazon Kindle definitely supports SDHC.

Dale

[snookums]

Originally Posted by exreader

i have the pny 4 gb sdhc card, < $30, and it works just fine.

I had two separate problems.

1. The Kindle crashed when I tried to feed it a memory card with 10,699 ebooks on it. This appears to be related to the Kindle's internal limitations regarding large file lists. I retested last night with the Sandisk and found the results were about the same.

2. The Kindle would crash when I used the usb cable to transfer files to either its internal memory or the memory card. The crashing only occurred when I had the memory card inserted. It didn't happen when I later switched to the Sandisk.

Have you transferred files over to your Kindle by usb or did you use an external card reader to load them? I ask because I had no problems from the Kindle when I loaded files externally. For that matter, after a reset the Kindle would have no problem with the card. The problem was solely related to using the usb transfer mode while the PNY was inserted.

If you aren't seeing any problems with usb transfer, I'll have to assume that I just got a wonky card and all PNY are not dangerous. Either way, I'm very happy with the Sandisk Ultra II. My only concern was that I bought it at Staples. I haven't bought media cards in years so I assumed that Staples would only charge a mild premium. I paid $97 for the card and was shocked when I saw that the Ultra III was about $55 on Amazon. I took it back for a refund and told them it was crashing my pda. I was furious. There's a difference between charging a premium for convenience and highway robbery.

[exreader]

Originally Posted by snookums

I had two separate problems.

1. The Kindle crashed when I tried to feed it a memory card with 10,699 ebooks on it. This appears to be related to the Kindle's internal limitations regarding large file lists. I retested last night with the Sandisk and found the results were about the same.

that's a lot of files... i figure the 4 GB card i have is insane. 1 GB would be fine, even 2... i might even swap it around later

i might also try "documents", "documents1", "documents2", "documents3", where the numbered directories would be content, but "off" (the kindle won't see them), but the data would be there for renaming use a phone/computer/pda. until the kindle can manage better.

2. The Kindle would crash when I used the usb cable to transfer files to either its internal memory or the memory card. The crashing only occurred when I had the memory card inserted. It didn't happen when I later switched to the Sandisk.

Have you transferred files over to your Kindle by usb or did you use an external card reader to load them? I ask because I had no problems from the Kindle when I loaded files externally. For that matter, after a reset the Kindle would have no problem with the card. The problem was solely related to using the usb transfer mode while the PNY was inserted.

If you aren't seeing any problems with usb transfer, I'll have to assume that I just got a wonky card and all PNY are not dangerous. Either way, I'm very happy with the Sandisk Ultra II. My only concern was that I bought it at Staples. I haven't bought media cards in years so I assumed that Staples would only charge a mild premium. I paid $97 for the card and was shocked when I saw that the Ultra III was about $55 on Amazon. I took it back for a refund and told them it was crashing my pda. I was furious. There's a difference between charging a premium for convenience and highway robbery.

i only use the USB cable.

i've found that you have to be very careful dismounting some things (esp with card readers) ... eject/stop, and *wait* - that little flashy thing on the kindle has to be not flashing, at all. even then, i've learned to slow count to 15 or 30 waiting. some system processes might be slow to let go. i've crashed the computer a couple times by pulling early. i've also damaged a few cards in various ways - SD cards seem to be delicate. they'll work in some devices (like a card reader), but not on a PDA, or ... i prefer CF - more robust for my uses thus far.

perhaps your computer's usb drivers are wonky? old? dunno. the PNY card is 100% over here, all 4 GB of its SDHC goodness.