PRS-600 SD and MS Pro Problems

[kazbates]

Besides all the problems I'm having with EBL 3.0 (yes, I use Calibre to some extent, but I include bookmarks with notes in all my ebooks which is not supported by Calibre), I am having the devil of a time with my old SD and MS Pro cards that I loaded with my 700. I figured they would work okay on the 600, but when I put in the card and turn on the reader, it hangs on the Loading page. Granted I have probably over 250 books on the SD card, but I waited over 20 minutes and the Home screen still hadn't come up. I have noticed that there is some formatting differences between the 700 and the 600. The same book on the 600 has more lines per page with the space between lines decreased compared to the 700. So, I'm assuming that the problems I'm having with the SD card has to do with the 600 trying to read a 700 formatted book. I have deleted everything off of my MS Pro card and am in the process of reloading it to see if that fixes the problem, but wanted to know if anyone else has experienced problems.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by kazbates

So, I'm assuming that the problems I'm having with the SD card has to do with the 600 trying to read a 700 formatted book. I have deleted everything off of my MS Pro card and am in the process of reloading it to see if that fixes the problem, but wanted to know if anyone else has experienced problems.

If you have one, put the card(s) in a USB reader and run a filesystem utility like Windows CHKDSK on them.

Things like SD cards are seen as disk drives formatted with the MS-DOS FAT file system, and can have the same problems as real disks with file system corruption. In particular, you can get "lost clusters". The cluster is the smallest unit of space on the drive readable/writable in one operation. It's possible for clusters to be marked as in use, but not actually owned by any files. This will mightily confuse the OS and programs that use the files, and can lead to the sort of behavior you are seeing.

CHKDSK can analyze the drive and find and allocate lost clusters to files, which can then be examined and (usually) deleted, restoring the file system to sanity.
______
Dennis

[kazbates]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

If you have one, put the card(s) in a USB reader and run a filesystem utility like Windows CHKDSK on them.

Things like SD cards are seen as disk drives formatted with the MS-DOS FAT file system, and can have the same problems as real disks with file system corruption. In particular, you can get "lost clusters". The cluster is the smallest unit of space on the drive readable/writable in one operation. It's possible for clusters to be marked as in use, but not actually owned by any files. This will mightily confuse the OS and programs that use the files, and can lead to the sort of behavior you are seeing.

CHKDSK can analyze the drive and find and allocate lost clusters to files, which can then be examined and (usually) deleted, restoring the file system to sanity.
______
Dennis

Thanks, Dennis. I'll give a try. As of right now, I'm still trying to download books to the MS Pro card via the reader and it is an excruciatingly slow process.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Besides all the problems I'm having with EBL 3.0 (yes, I use Calibre to some extent, but I include bookmarks with notes in all my ebooks which is not supported by Calibre), I am having the devil of a time with my old SD and MS Pro cards that I loaded with my 700. I figured they would work okay on the 600, but when I put in the card and turn on the reader, it hangs on the Loading page. Granted I have probably over 250 books on the SD card, but I waited over 20 minutes and the Home screen still hadn't come up. I have noticed that there is some formatting differences between the 700 and the 600. The same book on the 600 has more lines per page with the space between lines decreased compared to the 700. So, I'm assuming that the problems I'm having with the SD card has to do with the 600 trying to read a 700 formatted book. I have deleted everything off of my MS Pro card and am in the process of reloading it to see if that fixes the problem, but wanted to know if anyone else has experienced problems.

Just a suggestion: Delete all the XML index files manually from the SD card, only leaving the eBooks themselves on your card. (Easiest: Delete everything except your ePUB, PDF, BBeB or whatever book format files you've got.)
Indexing starts from scratch, but should be less than 2 minutes for 250 eBooks (I've got >> 1000 on each card).
Maybe the existing index file is damaged.
I've had a similar effect, manually had to delete the XML sync file.

[kazbates]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Just a suggestion: Delete all the XML index files manually from the SD card, only leaving the eBooks themselves on your card. (Easiest: Delete everything except your ePUB, PDF, BBeB or whatever book format files you've got.)
Indexing starts from scratch, but should be less than 2 minutes for 250 eBooks (I've got >> 1000 on each card).
Maybe the existing index file is damaged.
I've had a similar effect, manually had to delete the XML sync file.

Have you taken a SD card that used for your 700 and tried to use it on the 600?

[mumoo]

@#$@#$^%%$*&RDTY

[kazbates]

Update: We ran CHKDSK on the SD card and everything checked out okay. The next step is to try to delete the XML files.

[kazbates]

Sony told me to delete everything off of both types of cards and reload them.

The tech told me the cards that were loaded through the 700 should work on the 600 but that I would have to wait an 1 hr to load them into the 600 because it is building an index. An hour seems a little long to me, though.

[babyd]

I have put 921 books on my ms 2GB with none on the reader and it took less than 5 mins to load them........I have also tried 500 on the reader and 421 on the MS and again it took less than 5 mins to load. No issues either way.....didn't try my sd cards yet

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by babyd

I have put 921 books on my ms 2GB with none on the reader and it took less than 5 mins to load them........I have also tried 500 on the reader and 421 on the MS and again it took less than 5 mins to load. No issues either way.....didn't try my sd cards yet

Didn't stop it, but certainly was less than 5 minutes for me as well with >> 1000 eBooks of various formats.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Have you taken a SD card that used for your 700 and tried to use it on the 600?

Yes. But I ran into other problems with EBL 3.0. When copying to internal memory (both memory cards working fine though), EBL 3.0 all the time was crashing.
I've posted a poll which clearly shows, that way more users have problems with syncing than with copying within EBL 3.0.
So I've deleted the XMS sync file. Because of that XMS file, it permanently was trying to finish the synchronisation it once had started. After deleting the XMS file, at least EBL 3.0 wasn't crashing when starting. I was able to modify collections for example. But it still was crashing when copying to internal memory. By changing DEP in Windows Vista, this could be solved as well.
Now it's working perfectly for me.