[bookport] Re: FILESYSTEM MUSINGS
- From: "Lou Kolb" <loukolb@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 18:28:09 -0400
All I can say is that I've had my BP for over 2 years now; I have several
dozen books on it in several folders and can't recall the last time I had to
reformat my card. I have different folders for bookshare and web braille
books and have recently created new ones since the originals are getting
quite full but navigation is quick and reliable on the new folders as I
would expect. I'm using win 2K at home and, before I knew to wait 30
seconds before disconnecting the BP after transferring something to it, I
used to have occasional errors but no more. Lou
----- Original Message -----
From: "LARRY SKUTCHAN" <lskutchan@xxxxxxx>
To: <bookport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 12:11 PM
Subject: [bookport] Re: FILESYSTEM MUSINGS
> I'm not sure of this at all, or we would be looking into it much more
> agressively. I use the device daily and I honestly don't remember the
> last time I ever had to format a card.
>
> There are some things that can corrupt the file system. Removing the
> card before the double-beep is probably the number one place for
> possible trouble in this area.
>
> Of course, a firmware crash could possibly cause corruction, too, but I
> think we've got the crashes down to a non-event now, as well.
>
> Removing the card or the Book Port from the PC before all the caches
> are flushed can cause problems, too, but if one suspects this to be a
> problem, we recommend using the safely remove hardware icon in the
> system tray. Under XP, this does not seem to be an issue.
>
> >>> buhrow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Tuesday, October 25, 2005 11:49:50 AM
> >>>
> Hello. I've been reading this list for a couple of months, and
> have
> noticed what seems to be a somewhat common thread which appears to
> match my
> experience, and which, if it's true, raises issues which I think should
> be
> addressed in order to make the user experience for the bookport an
> even
> happier one.
> From what I can tell, there are a number of users who purchase
> their
> bookports from APH, get them home, load them up with data, read from
> them,
> and are completely happy with them. Then, after a month or two of
> use,
> when books have been cycled through the unit, and the user is feeling
> more
> comfortable putting more and more on the Bookport, he begins
> experiencing
> difficulties when transfering data to the Bookport. Flash cards fill
> unexpectedly during transfers, users encounter file coruption during
> the
> reading process, or weird errors just happen, seemingly from no
> where.
> the advice on this list, generally, seems to be that flash cards
> get
> corrupted, and they either have gone bad, or need to be reformatted
> before
> they work again for another month or two.
> My experience coincides with this description. I have had my
> Bookport
> for about four months, and have had to reformat the flash card I use
> most
> often at least once. It's now been about six weeks since I last
> reformatted my flash card, and I'm now beginning to see anomolous
> behavior,
> which I suspect will go away if I reformat my card yet again.
> All of this is to say that I think there is a subttle filesystem
> bug
> in the Bookport which no one yet quite understands. On clean, i.e.
> newly
> formatted flash cards, things work well. Then, as material comes and
> goes
> from the filesystem on the flash card, some of it written by the host
> computer, some by the Bookport itself, the filesystem becomes "dirty"
> in
> the way that most filesystems become "dirty" over time. Directories
> become
> fragmented as items are deleted and inserted, disk block allocations
> become
> fragmented as well, and the efficiency of the filesystem on the flash
> card
> becomes less over time. All of this is normal, and should be
> expected.
> The rub is that the Bookport appears to not deal well with this loss
> of
> efficiency, and as a consequence, becomes very fickle in its operation
> as
> the filesystems on its flash cards age.
> While, as someone suggested, running defragmentation programs
> against
> the filesystems on one's flash cards for Bookport might aleviate the
> problem, I'm not convinced this will totally help because I don't
> think
> defragmentation programs zero out blocks they free up on the
> filesystems
> they fix. The behavior I observe with my bookport leads me to believe
> that
> the firmware makes certain assumptions about what is in its various
> file
> buffers, and reuses them without necessarily properly cleaning them.
> For
> example, I have an MP3 file on my bookport right now which reads fine,
> except if I query the percentage status while the file is playing, and
> I've
> read more than 50% of it. If I hit the 8 key when the latter half of
> the
> file is playing, I get an FS buffer panic, followed by a bunch of
> audio
> file read error messages, accompanied by choppy sound until I either
> stop
> the bookport, or it comes to the end of the file in question.
> Let me stress, though, that I'm not trying to suggest that I
> know what
> the problem is, or how to fix it. However, I believe there is a
> problem,
> and that it should be looked into. The bookport should be able to
> deal
> with filesystems which pass chkdsk or scandisk, but which aren't
> necessarily pristine in terms of not having been used, and users
> shouldn't
> have to regularly reformat their flash cards in order to preserve
> usability.
> I love my bookport, but this issue, what ever it is, certainly
> adds to
> my level of frustration using it, and makes it downright inconvenient
> at
> times, while I cajole it into working.
> -Brian
>
>
>
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