Deleting files on the Pocket Pro slow

[Acrimonious]

Hi, I'm new to the ereader thing and seem to be having a problem with my pocket pro. It taking over half an hour to delete 750 books (about 330MB) off of the internal memory. Is this normal?

Also, does it slow down the device to use books off of the SD card instead of internal memory? If not I might as well just use my card as I can just directly connect it to my system and delete and load books much faster than what it currently is at.

[polly]

When you connect your PP to your computer, it should show up as two USB drives, one for the reader and one for the card. You can connect the whole thing to your system with a USB cable. Since my computer can delete books much faster than the PP, I've not tried to delete very much using the reader.

The slowest part of any reader is the eink refresh. I don't notice any difference in speed between the card and the internal memory.

[Acrimonious]

I didn't even know you could actually delete things directly on the reader without the use of the PC for the pocket pro

I am connected by PC and I am selecting the books on the reader through the PC and deleting them. It took 30 minutes to delete all of these books, but that's okay I won't deal with that anymore, I'll just put things directly on the SD card from a card reader that operates much faster than the PP.

It still works great for reading books (except .lit)!

[Javed]

Originally Posted by Acrimonious

I didn't even know you could actually delete things directly on the reader without the use of the PC for the pocket pro

That is because this can't be done. It must be connected to PC.

I use an SD card for everything, don't have any issues regarding deletion of books etc. Books load up to read as fast as on the internal memory, and page turns seem as fast to me as well. I'd go with the card, either via cable or card reader.

Welcome to the forum, Acrimonious!

[polly]

Originally Posted by Javed

That is because this can't be done. It must be connected to PC.

I use an SD card for everything, don't have any issues regarding deletion of books etc. Books load up to read as fast as on the internal memory, and page turns seem as fast to me as well. I'd go with the card, either via cable or card reader.

Welcome to the forum, Acrimonious!

You can delete books without using a PC with the lBook firmware. A long key press brings up a menu with that option. It also allows you to move books from card to reader.

I put new books on the card. If I like them well enough to reread them, I move them to the reader. Otherwise I delete them. It's convenient to be able to do that when I finish the book versus when I'm connected to a computer again.

[Javed]

Thanks for clarifying that, Polly. Seems like a great feature.
Unfortunately the Astak firmware doesn't do that yet. Can you please tell me, does the lBook firmware have any problems remembering bookmarks when the title or folder names have special characters? (I see it handles spaces ok, which the Astak one has problems with.)

[polly]

Originally Posted by Javed

Thanks for clarifying that, Polly. Seems like a great feature.
Unfortunately the Astak firmware doesn't do that yet. Can you please tell me, does the lBook firmware have any problems remembering bookmarks when the title or folder names have special characters? (I see it handles spaces ok, which the Astak one has problems with.)

The lBook firmware does not remember bookmarks when there are special characters in the folder. Leave the folder, go elsewhere, and then returnand you come back to your place in the book, but the bookmarks are gone. All of mine have a comma for the author in the folder name. Without special characters, it has no problems.

Fortunately, it remembers my place in a book no matter what the folder or book are called. Unfortunately, its extensive FB2 menu is in Ukrainian, even when English is chosen as the system language.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by polly

You can delete books without using a PC with the lBook firmware. A long key press brings up a menu with that option. It also allows you to move books from card to reader.

I put new books on the card. If I like them well enough to reread them, I move them to the reader. Otherwise I delete them. It's convenient to be able to do that when I finish the book versus when I'm connected to a computer again.

Polly
Most Newbies (and some of us Oldies) only use the Astak Factory firmware.
It is important that you explain up front :1)Not in the Astak Version. 2)Using alternate manufacturers version: blah blah.

Sorry to sound harsh, but confusing the new person is not good.

[eGeezer]

theducks, thanks for the reminder to mention the device of which one speaks. I am one of those newbs who was ready to grab my PPro and try a "long key press" to bring up the mentioned menu. Of course, there was no mention of WHAT key to press, but I assumed the menu key.

This is, after all, an Astak forum, and we all know there are many in the Hanlin family which act almost the same. Its not the same as apples and oranges differences, but we do need to know which orange it is.

[eGeezer]

Okee Dokee.

Got back from some chores and did a little experimenting.

Hooked up my Astak PPro via the USB cable, dragged and dropped the Astak "500+ Free eBooks" folder, which is about 250m, from my computer to the internal memory, and then to the SD card, then deleted both, then stuck the SD card in a card reader and did the same thing.

USB cable 250m file folder to int mem = 6 minutes. Delete same, 2 minutes.

USB cable 250m file folder to SD card = 3 minutes. Delete same, 20 sec.

SD Card in card reader, to SD card = 1 min 20 sec. Delete same, 15 sec.

I will grant that waiting 6 minutes for the file to transfer seemed like a half hour, and deleting seemed about as long, but those are the figures I got. Obviously, it will vary with each person's equipment, but there you go.

Hope it helps some.

[Acrimonious]

This does not make any sense. I also am having massive issues with both the reader and with calibre. Obviously calibre doesn't always run this terribly or no one would use this software, because right now the performance is horrendous. I have a core i7 and it takes its sweet time to do anything. I don't run anti-virus (and I work in computer security! Rofl!) nor do I have the UAC for windows 7 on. I don't know what else could be causing these slowdowns for the PP and calibre.

Also things are getting constantly corrupted when I transfer them, I took 19 books, converted them all from .lit, .doc, .txt etc to .epub since epub doesn't suck on the PP apparently and the transfer corrupted on most of the files. And then half of the files that did manage to get transferred were corrupted as well and are not able to be deleted. Frustrating.

Edit: The rest of my computer is lightning fast, I don't have malware as I know what not to do. When I need to go to less savory corners of the internet I use my ubuntu laptop. So it isn't that either

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by Acrimonious

This does not make any sense. I also am having massive issues with both the reader and with calibre. Obviously calibre doesn't always run this terribly or no one would use this software, because right now the performance is horrendous. I have a core i7 and it takes its sweet time to do anything. I don't run anti-virus (and I work in computer security! Rofl!) nor do I have the UAC for windows 7 on. I don't know what else could be causing these slowdowns for the PP and calibre.

Also things are getting constantly corrupted when I transfer them, I took 19 books, converted them all from .lit, .doc, .txt etc to .epub since epub doesn't suck on the PP apparently and the transfer corrupted on most of the files. And then half of the files that did manage to get transferred were corrupted as well and are not able to be deleted. Frustrating.

On my PocketPRO, I found that USB2.0 transfers were very slow and also produced file corruption, due to a very high error rate with USB2.0 file transfers. When I configured the PC to only use USB1.1 with the PocketPRO, the high USB error rate vanished completely. Now I just use USB1.1 for my PocketPRO USB connection and everything is fine.

[polly]

Originally Posted by eGeezer

theducks, thanks for the reminder to mention the device of which one speaks. I am one of those newbs who was ready to grab my PPro and try a "long key press" to bring up the mentioned menu. Of course, there was no mention of WHAT key to press, but I assumed the menu key.

This is, after all, an Astak forum, and we all know there are many in the Hanlin family which act almost the same. Its not the same as apples and oranges differences, but we do need to know which orange it is.

I didn't mean to cause confusion. It's easy to forget what other firmwares do or don't do and, in the first post, it sounded to me like Acrimonious was deleting books without using his system. Since my answer wasn't firmware dependent, I didn't mention it. I did mention it in my second post, when I talked specifically about long key presses to delete and copy directly on my reader. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough there.

As far as I know, all of the various v5 firmwares will run on all of the Hanlin 5" readers. I run lBook on my Astak PP, but also used BeBook for awhile to solve my battery problem before the Astak update came out in November.

To delete or copy books in the lBook firmare, use a long key press at any menu that lists books or folders. A short key press opens the book or folder. A long key press brings up the menu. When it copies from reader to card or card to reader, it remembers the folder structure. If that structure doesn't exist, it creates it. In the end, the copied book is in the same folder or subfolder it was in on the card.

It is, in fact, in this Astak forum that I learned that other versions of the firmware exist and would work in my PP. Since Hanlin makes it really easy to update firmware, I was able to try them all to find the one that works best for me.

[polly]

Originally Posted by Acrimonious

This does not make any sense. I also am having massive issues with both the reader and with calibre. Obviously calibre doesn't always run this terribly or no one would use this software, because right now the performance is horrendous. I have a core i7 and it takes its sweet time to do anything. I don't run anti-virus (and I work in computer security! Rofl!) nor do I have the UAC for windows 7 on. I don't know what else could be causing these slowdowns for the PP and calibre.

Also things are getting constantly corrupted when I transfer them, I took 19 books, converted them all from .lit, .doc, .txt etc to .epub since epub doesn't suck on the PP apparently and the transfer corrupted on most of the files. And then half of the files that did manage to get transferred were corrupted as well and are not able to be deleted. Frustrating.

Edit: The rest of my computer is lightning fast, I don't have malware as I know what not to do. When I need to go to less savory corners of the internet I use my ubuntu laptop. So it isn't that either

In Calibre, are you using Save to Disk or Send to Device to put books on your PP? I wasn't very impressed with how it sent to my device, but it works great when I use save to disk. As an added bonus, Calibre lets you specify the directory structure when you save to disk, so the books show up with the correct directory structure.

Calibre can take a lot of time to convert files for me too. I'm the impatient type, so I tend to start it working when I'll be away from it. Do your ePubs open correctly within Calibre? If you use Save to Disk to save them elsewhere on your computer, do they open correctly? ePubs have always worked well on my PP. If yours are getting corrupted along the way, you might want to post the question in the Calibre section. The Calibre developers are very responsive.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Acrimonious

This does not make any sense. I also am having massive issues with both the reader and with calibre. Obviously calibre doesn't always run this terribly or no one would use this software, because right now the performance is horrendous. I have a core i7 and it takes its sweet time to do anything. I don't run anti-virus (and I work in computer security! Rofl!) nor do I have the UAC for windows 7 on. I don't know what else could be causing these slowdowns for the PP and calibre.

Also things are getting constantly corrupted when I transfer them, I took 19 books, converted them all from .lit, .doc, .txt etc to .epub since epub doesn't suck on the PP apparently and the transfer corrupted on most of the files. And then half of the files that did manage to get transferred were corrupted as well and are not able to be deleted. Frustrating.

Edit: The rest of my computer is lightning fast, I don't have malware as I know what not to do. When I need to go to less savory corners of the internet I use my ubuntu laptop. So it isn't that either

You never said anything about Calibre in your original post

Calibre does a lot of internal housekeeping and is (snail) slow on a P4-3.2 800MHz FSB about deleting files from the PEz or Fetching the list (with Meta Data) from the PEz.
The only advantage, that I can see, of using Calibre to Delete files on the PEz, is it has found the location(s) where they were for you.
Use the normal file manager (Win or Linux) for bulk sized deletes, the PEz shows up as (mounted)Drives in Windows or Linux.