What slows down Kobo more - more series folders or fewer but larger folders

[MashaT]

I know that the more books you have in Kobo storage the slower ereader gets and my ereader (Glo HD) is pretty old and slow.

But I was wondering, what will slow down Kobo less - having more Series/Collections folders with fewer books in each one or instead having less Series/Collections folders but populating with a lot more books?

Or it doesn't really matter?

[rtiangha]

In my experience, the first one is faster (to keep the language clean, I'm assuming you mean Kobo defined Collections, not a bunch of related books all dumped into the same file system folder). I once had a Collection that had over 10,000 books in it (spread out over multiple file system folders because that's how Calibre uploads books; folders based by author) and each tap on anything was slow. Once I deleted that collection, the device was more responsive. Of course, the 2GB database meant things were still slow, but that's a different issue related to lack of RAM.

Another speed tweak you can do is to avoid dumping all your books into one file system folder or into the root directory. FAT32 is inefficient compared to other file systems, so if you have 10,000 books in one file system folder, the OS will have to poll all the items inside each time it has to access the folder (plus I think there's a limit to the number of files that can be in a folder too), made even worse because this is being done on an SD card which is much, much slower than a proper SSD found on a computer. If you're manually copying files over, it's best to separate things a bit into different folders, maybe by author or alphabetically or something.

Finally, if you can, switching to an SD card with fast read speed and fast random write speed can help too; the class of the card is not a guarantee; I've seen Class 6 cards outperform Class 10 cards in terms of random access speed, but you may not have a choice if storage capacity is a higher priority.

And if you're feeling adventurous, you could try switching the user partition from FAT32 to EXT, but you would lose the ability to mount the drive in Windows and Mac without a third-party driver; how to do that is somewhere on these forums.

[MashaT]

What do you mean by File System Folder?
I use Calibre to organize my books into series (folders) and to move new books to them.
Currently I either have them by Author name or by series name (whatever helps me remember better). But if I have a very prolific author or huge series I end up with a huge folder.

For example - I have Discworld series (40 books+) and Piers Anthony (50+ books) and so on. I can create new folders (series thru Calibre) and divide them even further. Will it help?

[rtiangha]

Originally Posted by MashaT

What do you mean by File System Folder?
I use Calibre to organize my books into series (folders) and to move new books to them.
Currently I either have them by Author name or by series name (whatever helps me remember better). But if I have a very prolific author or huge series I end up with a huge folder.

I meant what I said: A file folder like you would have under Windows. You're equating Series with folders and they are NOT the same thing at all when it comes to the Kobo device. When I'm talking about Collections, I mean a Collection that appears under the Collections tab in My Books. Don't have a Collection with 10,000 items in it. 40 should be fine, but I assume the smaller, the better. I'm not sure at what number things start to go nuts.

[MashaT]

You are right. I am calling it series because that's what Calibre calls it. On Kobo they show up under Collection tab. Series tab is whatever Kobo makes of them on its own. My biggest collections include several that are between 80 and 140 books.

When i connect Kobo to PC, it looks like Calibre created folders based on authors name and it becomes a whole lot of folders because apparently depending on book's source some authors are listed First, Last name as one folder and Last, First name as another folder.

Will it help divide my collections of 50 books+ into smaller ones?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by MashaT

You are right. I am calling it series because that's what Calibre calls it. On Kobo they show up under Collection tab. Series tab is whatever Kobo makes of them on its own. My biggest collections include several that are between 80 and 140 books.

When i connect Kobo to PC, it looks like Calibre created folders based on authors name and it becomes a whole lot of folders because apparently depending on book's source some authors are listed First, Last name as one folder and Last, First name as another folder.

Will it help divide my collections of 50 books+ into smaller ones?

A bit odd. When I send an ebook that has series information to my Kobo, on the next connection, the series information is added to the metdata and my Kobo displays the series and can search/sort on it.

If your metadata is consistent as to the author name, you will not get the mishmash of first/last or last/first. What is the save template in your Kobo Touch or Kobo Touch Extended configuration (at the bottom of the File Formats tab)?

I would suggest removing the series information from being used for collections since your Kobo ereader supports series without needing those collections.

[rtiangha]

Originally Posted by MashaT

You are right. I am calling it series because that's what Calibre calls it. On Kobo they show up under Collection tab. Series tab is whatever Kobo makes of them on its own. My biggest collections include several that are between 80 and 140 books.

I agree with DNSB. There's no need to create Collections based on Series name anymore because newer Kobo firmwares now automatically organizes them to its own tab (it was useful on older firmware because there was no easy way to view by series without using the search box). So deleting those redundant Collections and preventing Calibre from automatically creating new ones each time you upload a new book series may help with your speed issues.

When i connect Kobo to PC, it looks like Calibre created folders based on authors name and it becomes a whole lot of folders because apparently depending on book's source some authors are listed First, Last name as one folder and Last, First name as another folder.

This part is fine.

Will it help divide my collections of 50 books+ into smaller ones?

I don't think so; deleting those redundant Collections will probably do it; things probably slow down past a certain total number of Collections.

Honestly, this feels like a bug or optimization problem to me. I would understand things getting slow whenever you access the Collections tab, but for everything to be slow whenever you tap on something if you have a large number of Collections or a Collection with a ridiculously large number of items has always seemed weird to me.

Just curious: How many Collections do you have on your device?

[DNSB]

One other quick question. What firmware are you running on your Glo HD?

[MashaT]

Originally Posted by DNSB

One other quick question. What firmware are you running on your Glo HD?

Software version is 4.30.18838 (updated end of October this year)

I'd rather remove series tab from my Kobo. I am kind of obsessive in having my collections organized just so for my own preference, and the way Kobo distributes books into series doesn't agree with me, it seems unrelated to Metadata I can update in Calibre.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by MashaT

Software version is 4.30.18838 (updated end of October this year)

I'd rather remove series tab from my Kobo. I am kind of obsessive in having my collections organized just so for my own preference, and the way Kobo distributes books into series doesn't agree with me, it seems unrelated to Metadata I can update in Calibre.

Hmm all my Kobos show the series exactly the way I have it in Calibre. Must be something wrong with your settings then.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by MashaT

Software version is 4.30.18838 (updated end of October this year)

I'd rather remove series tab from my Kobo. I am kind of obsessive in having my collections organized just so for my own preference, and the way Kobo distributes books into series doesn't agree with me, it seems unrelated to Metadata I can update in Calibre.

Interesting. I set the series name and index in calibre (Series and Number in the metadata editor) and that same information shows up as the series information on my Kobo ereaders.

Personally, I only use 1 collection since my original use was for series which the newer firmware has made unnecessary. When I reached over 200 collections, they were pretty much useless. The collection I do use is "Finished". Otherwise, sorting by author/series/title and searching takes care of my book search needs.

[JSWolf]

Kobo does not support directories. So organizing by directory doesn't work. It would only work if you were using KOReader and/or (maybe) Plato.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by MashaT

Software version is 4.30.18838 (updated end of October this year)

I'd rather remove series tab from my Kobo. I am kind of obsessive in having my collections organized just so for my own preference, and the way Kobo distributes books into series doesn't agree with me, it seems unrelated to Metadata I can update in Calibre.

That is very strange. The KoboTouch driver uses the series info from the calibre library to populate the fields in the database on the device that are used for the series tab. If you are also using series for collections, they should be identical.

The only thing I can think of is the timing. The collections are built when you send the books. The series info is added the next time the device is connected. That means if you add new books to the device, the collections based on series will have the new books. But, the series in the Series tab will not. When you connect the device again, this will be fixed (assuming you haven't turned off the options to do this).

I suppose there could be a difference if you have a metadata plugboard that fiddles with the series name. That will be used when populating the series info for the series tab, but not for the collections made from the series column.

Do you have examples that are different? If it isn't one of the above cases, then I'd need to see it to see what the problem is.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by MashaT

But I was wondering, what will slow down Kobo less - having more Series/Collections folders with fewer books in each one or instead having less Series/Collections folders but populating with a lot more books?

To answer this directly...

I do not think it matters. Recent firmware does not appear to have problems with building the collections list. If it slows, then it is probably to do with the total number of books in collections. It won't matter if you have 1000 books in 10 collections, or 1000 collections with 10 books. This affects opening the collections list or sorting it. Opening a large collection will probably be slower than a small collection, but, checking on my Clara HD, it isn't noticeable.

[MashaT]

Originally Posted by davidfor

That is very strange. The KoboTouch driver uses the series info from the calibre library to populate the fields in the database on the device that are used for the series tab. If you are also using series for collections, they should be identical.

The only thing I can think of is the timing. The collections are built when you send the books. The series info is added the next time the device is connected. That means if you add new books to the device, the collections based on series will have the new books. But, the series in the Series tab will not. When you connect the device again, this will be fixed (assuming you haven't turned off the options to do this).

I suppose there could be a difference if you have a metadata plugboard that fiddles with the series name. That will be used when populating the series info for the series tab, but not for the collections made from the series column.

Do you have examples that are different? If it isn't one of the above cases, then I'd need to see it to see what the problem is.

I don't know why it happens. I do have 2 kobo plugins (utilities and touch) but I don't use them, keep them installed and updated just in case.

I can provide couple of examples, but I noticed that some books that are in collections are not added to series tab at all. If I have to guess, its older books I exported from Calibre a long long time back (3-4 years ago) and since I messed around with them using older versions of both Calibre and Kobo, they didn't get updated and sorted to Series Tabs automatically when Kobo added Series feature.