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--- oldtech:calibre:decrapifyandsend [2025/05/07 16:55] – ifixcoinops
+++ oldtech:calibre:decrapifyandsend [2025/05/15 19:04] (current) – ifixcoinops
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-====== Decrapify and Send ======
+.====== Decrapify and Send ======
 It's finally time to plug the ereader into the computer!
@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 Now that we're done with the initial setup, the process for getting and reading ebooks goes like this:
   - Download a book to your computer's hard drive;
-  - Bring the book into Calibre;
+  - Bring the book into Calibre;e
   - Use Calibre to decrapify the book;
   - Send the decrapified book to your ereader and find a comfy chair.
@@ Line 145: / Line 145: @@
 ===== Notes on SD card corruption =====
-I've had a couple of SD cards get wonky and quit accepting or reading new books.  I'm still narrowing down what, exactly, causes this to happen, but I can quite reliably make it happen by copying either **too much data** or **too many books** to the ereader in a single operation.
+I've had a couple of SD cards get wonky and quit accepting or reading new books.  I'm still narrowing down what, exactly, causes this to happen, but I can quite reliably make it happen by copying either **too much data** or **too many books** to the ereader in a single operation.  **Update 2025-05-15:** <del>New information has been brought to light</del> old information has been dug up from a swamp of fifteen-year-old forum posts and also I've spent //far// too much time experimenting and being frustrated, see "SD card too big" below.
 === How do you know when it's happened? ===
@@ Line 160: / Line 160: @@
   SD card/Sony Reader/database/cache.xml
   SD card/Sony Reader/database/cacheExt.xml
-If this process goes wrong while the ereader is writing to the cache.xml or cacheExt.xml files (or maybe if the process goes wrong while those files are open for writing) then the ereader will never send the "Okay I'm done writing here" bits to the filesystem, and one or both of these files will end up with a chunk missing off the end, which makes the whole file no good and can often cause further problems elsewhere on the SD card.  Tragically, our reading positions are also stored in these files, so the ereader will forget which page we were on!  We can reliably cause this SD card corruption by sending too many books in one go, or sending a few enormous books in one go.
+If this process goes wrong while the ereader is writing to the cache.xml or cacheExt.xml files (or maybe if the process goes wrong while those files are open for writing) then the ereader will never send the "Okay I'm done writing here" bits to the filesystem, and one or both of these files will end up with a chunk missing off the end, which makes the whole file no good and can often cause further problems elsewhere on the SD card.  Tragically, our reading positions are also stored in these files, so the ereader will forget which page we were on!  We can reliably cause this SD card corruption by sending too many books in one go, sending a few enormous books in one go, or (added 2025-05-15) trying to use an SD card bigger than 4 gigabytes, sigh.
 == Too many books in one go ==
@@ Line 167: / Line 167: @@
 == Smaller number of books, but each book is too big ==
 I've also corrupted an SD card by combining twelve volumes of manga into one whopping half-a-gigabyte file, because I thought I was being clever.  Oops.  The ereader has to open each file you send it, in order to figure out from its metadata what sort of file it is, and who's the author and what's the title; it probably ran out of memory and crashed while it had its cache.xml file open.  The poor thing's only got 64mb of RAM after all.
+== SD card too big ==
+Although the PRS-505 can "see" SD cards of up to 16 gigabytes, in practice once you go over 4gb of Stuff on the card, things get really screwy.  This is because the reader doesn't mount SD cards the way you'd expect any standard Linux system to mount them (aye these are linux-powered!), but uses some weird thing that Sony came up with that takes all kinda shortcuts to save battery life.  Since I figured this out (by repeated frustrated experimentation plus trawling long-dead forum threads) I've repartitioned my memory card to 3.9 gigs (leaving half of its space unpartitioned) to make sure that there's no way to go over 4 gigs.
+(how would you even go over 4 gigs of books, Dan?  Well, you can fit like a thousand books in one volume of manga and Attack on Titan is really good sooo...)
 === How to avoid it ===
-If you're sending dozens and dozens of books, or a few enormous books (comics and manga are especially bad for this), break up the Big Send into several Little Sends.  Send a few books, then eject, unplug, allow the ereader to spin its circle and do its sniffing etc, then once it's done, plug back in and send more.  How many?  I've found thirty or so regular book-sized-books (under a meg each) or five manga volumes (like 20 or 30ish megs) in one go doesn't cause any problems.  I've sent ten mangas at a time and had it be fine but, eeeehhhhhh, I don't like to.  Makes me nervous.
+If you're sending dozens and dozens of books, or a few enormous books (comics and manga are especially bad for this), break up the Big Send into several Little Sends.  Send a few books, then eject, unplug, allow the ereader to spin its circle and do its sniffing etc, then once it's done, plug back in and send more.  How many?  I've found thirty or so regular book-sized-books (under a meg each) or four-five manga volumes (like 20 or 30ish megs) in one go doesn't cause any problems.  I've sent ten mangas at a time and had it be fine but, eeeehhhhhh, I don't like to.  Makes me nervous.
 === How to fix it if it does happen ===
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 === How to recover more gracefully than that ===
-Take a backup of your whole entire SD card every now and then, including the Sony Reader folder with its cache files!  If your SD card gets corrupted, format it and then restore the backup.  Then you'll only have to start from Some Time Ago, rather than All Over Again.
+Take a backup of your whole entire SD card every now and then, including the Sony Reader folder with its cache files!  If your SD card gets corrupted, format it and then restore the backup.  Then you'll only have to start from Some Time Ago, rather than All Over Again - and it's WAY faster to restore a SD card image than it is to send all those books again through that retro USB wire.
+=== Update 2025-05-15: it's the SD card ===
+Quick update on this issue: since repartitioning my 16 gig SD card down to 3.9 gigs, I've been able to send a thousand books or a hundred volumes of manga at once with no problems at all.  Granted, if I do that then the ereader will spin its circle for like an hour lol.
+Interestingly, I was able to send the same 3.8ish gigs of books that previously caused problems - it seems that on big SD cards, issues start to crop up as you //approach// four gigs, whereas an SD card with a single 3.9 gig partition can fairly reliably get filled until Calibre tells you there's no more room (leaving maybe half a meg for the cache file to expand).
+The most books I've had on at once was around 1,100.  [[https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30849|Here's a guy]] who put over 4,000 on, followed by two forum pages of useful technical information (after six forum pages of people bitching at him about it).
 ====== What else? ======
 Part 4 of this guide is [[oldtech:calibre:manga|a special note on comics and manga]], and part 5 is a [[oldtech:calibre:bonus|bonus bit on how to get stories from web pages and turn them into .epub files]].