calibre very very slow writing to sony prs600

[anv]

I just discovered Calibre and I am using it with my Sony PRS600.

It works ok but very slow. If I change the name or labels of a book stored in the ebook, it lastes about 2 minutes to do each change.

¿Is it normal?

Using Calibre under Linux. The reader works ok and very fast reading and writing with a file browser.

[kiklop74]

Most likely you have an aggressive antivirus. They heavily check any USB mounted storage as it is known source of infection.

[anv]

Originally Posted by kiklop74

Most likely you have an aggressive antivirus. They heavily check any USB mounted storage as it is known source of infection.

Checking for my problem, I've found many cases where the answer was this. But in my case, I use linux, then I do not use antivirus of any kind and it is slow anyway. This makes me think the problema under windows is the same that under linux and it is not due to an antivirus.

Is there anything that can I do to help diagnose the problem? I am programmer then I think I could help if somebody tells me what can I do.

[kovidgoyal]

On the sony reader, every metadata change means that the on device XML database has to be rebuilt and resent to the device. You'll get much better performance if you make the metadata changes in your library and then resend the books to your device.

[anv]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

On the sony reader, every metadata change means that the on device XML database has to be rebuilt and resent to the device. You'll get much better performance if you make the metadata changes in your library and then resend the books to your device.

Ok, I will try this. By the way, I've observed that the library manager provided by Sony is also slow, but no so slow as calibre: 2 or 3 minutes to change the tags of a book. May be it could be optimized finding why it is slow.

[kiklop74]

You could checkout few things:

1. How many books do you have? if the number is large than xml file will take a while to be rebuilt.

2. Make sure that file system on flash memory is not corrupted. sometimes Linux tends to corrupt fat system and first sign of that is slow access. You could try formatting the reader and than manually transferring the books.

[anv]

Originally Posted by kiklop74

You could checkout few things:

1. How many books do you have? if the number is large than xml file will take a while to be rebuilt.

The reader says it has 152 books. But not all of them has a tags.

Originally Posted by kiklop74

2. Make sure that file system on flash memory is not corrupted. sometimes Linux tends to corrupt fat system and first sign of that is slow access. You could try formatting the reader and than manually transferring the books.

I just checked it. There where some problems:

Root contains directory ".". Dropping it.
Root contains directory "..". Dropping it.
Free cluster summary wrong (1838615 vs. really 1838616)

I fixed it but the access stills slow. Really, slower than the last time. I am not sure but I think it took about 10 minutes or more.

By the way: renaming books (without tags) is also slow.

[kiklop74]

Don't fix the file system - format it using device internal option and than go to some windows machine and try transferring few books to see if it makes any difference.

[anv]

Originally Posted by kiklop74

Don't fix the file system - format it using device internal option and than go to some windows machine and try transferring few books to see if it makes any difference.

The card was factory-formatted... I suppose it should work... The access to files in the sd card is fast enough (reading and writing files)

The device uses a Linux kernel and I use a Linux workstation, ¿why do I need to use windows for writing data?

By the way, the filesystem had not important problems. At lease none of then sould get it slow.

[kiklop74]

Originally Posted by anv

The card was factory-formatted... I suppose it should work... The access to files in the sd card is fast enough (reading and writing files)

Once the file system corrupts the only thing that really fixes it is a new format. Try it. It does not hurt at all. For flash memories formatting is a common thing. I formatted my reader at least dozen times. No problems whatsoever.

Originally Posted by anv

The device uses a Linux kernel and I use a Linux workstation, ¿why do I need to use windows for writing data?

Because FAT (16/32) is (was) windows native file system format and it is better supported on that OS. That way you will be sure that data is written correctly.

[anv]

Originally Posted by kiklop74

Once the file system corrupts the only thing that really fixes it is a new format. Try it. It does not hurt at all. For flash memories formatting is a common thing. I formatted my reader at least dozen times. No problems whatsoever.

Because FAT (16/32) is (was) windows native file system format and it is better supported on that OS. That way you will be sure that data is written correctly.

Thank you. I just saved the contents, formatted the card with the ereader and copied back the data. It now works good. I had not to use winddows for it.

By the way: fat filesystem is so simple that it is difficult not to support it correctly. I think the windows support can't be better than Linux's one... excepto for the patent problems but it was solved in an acceptable way.