Aura and SD Card Management

[Skydog]

Currently I am helping a colleague with his new Aura and setting up Calibre. What is the best method to transfer books from the currently installed SD to new SD and be able to then simply insert the new card with no change detected by the Aura?

I performed a copy from the installed SD to the new SD (which included the Calibre data files), inserted it, but the Aura does not recognize any of the books on the SD. When connected to Calibre they show as installed on Card A. In theory, the new card with a duplicate image of the original card should work but it does not. What is required to resolve this (other than a factory reset)?

Which begs a question for the future -- is this a problem whenever one wishes to upgrade to another card?

Edit: Forgot to mention I did try resending one book with the new card (and contents) installed with but it still did not appear on the device.

Thank you.

[Skydog]

No one has experienced this? Really?

[RZetlin]

I don't have the same issue that you have but here is my story:

I transferred my SD Card from the my Glo to my Aura.

The Aura was able to process the books and list them in the library.

The only download side is while the shelves were created, none of the books were added to the shelves.

I ended up using calibre to delete all the books and readd the books back on the device.

It would been better off if I just reformatted the SD Card and have calibre add the books back on the Aura from scratch.

[PeterT]

The shelves would have been created from being synced from the Kobo cloud. The names go there even if all they contain are side-loaded books.

If you had originally created the shelves via calibre, when you attached the device it should have handled the re-adding of the books (already on the SD card) to the shelves during the metadata processing stage.

[davidfor]

@Skydog: What you describe should work, and I have done it with my Glo.

Does the new card show in the device information page of the settings? I expect it will as the card is seen by the PC when the Mini is connected.

When you insert the card, does the black processing screen get displayed? When an SD card is inserted, it is checked for changes against what the device thinks is there. The first step seems to check for missing or changed books. Then the black processing screen is displayed as it adds new books to the internal database. Both of these steps can take a while if there are a lot of books on the card.

With the copying of books from one card to another, I am not completely sure how the books will be seen. As long as you kept the names and paths the same, it should treat them as the same book. But, it is possible timestamps or something else change that would cause them to be treated as change books. And if the names or paths changed, then they will all be treated as new books.

[Ken Maltby]

Have you tried using the USB Duplicator Image Creator and USB Duplicator Writer

http://www.vconsole.com/client/?page=page&id=28

http://www.vconsole.com/client/?page=page&id=29

Even if you are only trying to make one Duplicate, instead of many,
these tools are designed to make exact copies.

Luck;
Ken

PS; If you are duplicating the contents of a smaller drive/card onto a larger one
you will need to extend the partition, to get full use of the larger card. That is
easily done with a partition manager like the "MiniTool Partition Wizard" the
home edition is free.
http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-...n-manager.html

[Skydog]

Thank you all for your replies. I made another attempt at inserting the alternate card which mirrors the original and unfortunately the Aura froze, book covers turned to blanks and no processing was evident, i.e., black processing screen. Perhaps the number of books is the reason (about 90). @davidfor - I suspect you are right that there is a timestamp or some other file created that differentiates the two cards even though the content is identical.

I am perplexed as to why something so straightforward is not functioning as expected. I think I will have to resort to RZetlin's method and start with a blank card and add the books back via Calibre

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Have you tried using the USB Duplicator Image Creator and USB Duplicator Writer

http://www.vconsole.com/client/?page=page&id=28

http://www.vconsole.com/client/?page=page&id=29

Even if you are only trying to make one Duplicate, instead of many,
these tools are designed to make exact copies.

Luck;
Ken

Thank you, Ken, I was not familiar with those tools. I may give that a try before doing it the hard way.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Thank you all for your replies. I made another attempt at inserting the alternate card which mirrors the original and unfortunately the Aura froze, book covers turned to blanks and no processing was evident, i.e., black processing screen. Perhaps the number of books is the reason (about 90). @davidfor - I suspect you are right that there is a timestamp or some other file created that differentiates the two cards even though the content is identical.

90 books is nothing I have a card that usually has about 500 that I use for testing. Some people report 5000 books work OK but take some time.

I am perplexed as to why something so straightforward is not functioning as expected. I think I will have to resort to RZetlin's method and start with a blank card and add the books back via Calibre

I had a card that my Touch didn't see. The two others worked perfectly, and they were all OK in the PC or a phone. But, this one card didn't work. I reformatted with a different tool, and it has worked perfectly since then. I can't think of what the tool was, but it has been mentioned here a few times.

But, there have been just enough comments about the Aura and the SD card, that maybe there is something wrong at the hardware or firmware level. The Touch had problems with recognising some cards. The formatting fixed some, but others have been fixed with the different firmware.

[Ken Maltby]

Probably:

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

Luck;
Ken

[taming]

There have been stretches of time when users have done all sorts of things to try to get a specific SD card, or WiFi, or USB connection to work. Anytime that kind of thing has been common in the past, it has been a bug on the Kobo side, not a problem with what the user is doing.

[Skydog]

In my previous posts I neglected to mention that I always start with a freshly formatted card, for every device, in FAT32 using SD Formatter. On my last attempt, when powering on (with duplicate card installed) the processing cycle completed but the books did not appear -- yet were accounted for in Calibre. The card is an exact duplicate of the one installed, just a different capacity.

I've been dragging my feet but today I plan to start from scratch and resend each book. I am still scratching my head, however.

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by taming

There have been stretches of time when users have done all sorts of things to try to get a specific SD card, or WiFi, or USB connection to work. Anytime that kind of thing has been common in the past, it has been a bug on the Kobo side, not a problem with what the user is doing.

Thanks, taming. Perhaps that is the answer here -- there is no answer. Still, I've never run into this in all my many years of dealing with storage and devices.

[taming]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Thanks, taming. Perhaps that is the answer here -- there is no answer. Still, I've never run into this in all my many years of dealing with storage and devices.

I know that they know (weird sentence) that there are SD card issues with the latest build (s). We were passed a beta to look at over the weekend, and my SD card does not work with it at all--after working fine with the current build. I expect the work on the SD card issues to continue and for things to be improved/solved before the next FW release. Not that I am always right about these things...