Satisfied, yet Underwhelmed with My NSTG Due to Storage

[The_Most_Happy]

I wonder, though, if the OP might be able to resolve part of the problem fairly quickly:

"my NSTG could not hold all my 430 NookBooks and my sideloaded ebooks"

Are you downloading your nookbooks through the reader application on the device, or are you trying to sideload everything? 

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roustabout, thanks for responding. 

No, I haven't sideloaded all my books.  My nookbooks downloaded automatically.  I own 453 Nookbooks and the NSTG accommodated fewer than 400 of them on the BN content storage.  I own about another 400 ebooks from non-BN sources (epublishers and such.)  I sideloaded the non-BN books and the NSTG didn't fit all of those, either.  Altogether, the NSTG holds 736 books of my e-library.  Not a bad amount, sure, but I'd prefer a device that 1) accommodates my entire library and 2) allows me extra room for shopping.

I don't feel I should have to purchase a memory stick for a brand new device. 

We're not able to legally gift, sell, or trade ebooks.  The least BN could do is provide loyal customers with adequate storage for them.  

[The_Most_Happy]

"I think it's a tad unfair to be blaming B&N because quite frankly, they have included many features with the GlowLight that other e-readers do not have..."

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bakersdozen12, thanks so much for your comment.

I am not blaming BN for anything.  I am expressing dissatisfaction with BN's decision to cut back on storage for books. 

BN is a bookseller.  This company knows or should know that people tend to accumulate books over time.  BN also knows or should know that ebooks cannot be legally given away, traded, or sold.  This means most ebook lovers build caches of books the longer they read. 

BN deserves to know I (a loyal, paying customer) am dissatisfied, and why I am dissatisfied.  BN also deserves to know I stopped purchasing ebooks this week because I have no room for them on my device.   Ebook sales is one way BN and its employees feed their families. They should be aware why a frequent customer stops shopping.

This isn't about blame.  It's about sales. BN wants to sell me books.  I'd like to buy their books but they sold me a device that won't store my books unless I buy more storage for the device.  I'm not cool with that.  It's not personal. 

[roustabout]

Three command storage fix for glowworm / nst rooted - totally reversible:

# cd /data

# mv media media2

# ln -s /sdcard media

This  is done on a rooted NST or glowworm using the ADB interface to issue the commands., but if Dean looks into it, it may work with a boot disk that only makes the change, rather than persistently rooting your device.  I've seen some NST boot disk discussions on XDA.  it's possible I could script this as well, I just think Dean'd be faster at it. 

The problem is this:  the directory is on the sdcard;  I could easily see flakiness around the card mounting and unmounting. 

However, I did just try - with a magazine on /sdcard open - connecting my glowworm to my computer.  it works fine.  I can see both partitions, and the sdcard is not doing a fast unmount/remount cycle. 

I used the mv command in line2, because I actually prefer my library on internal storage so I wanted to do my test and then go back to what I had set up before. 

You could also do it as

# cd /data/media

# rm -rf *

# cd ..

# rmdir media

# ln -s /sdcard media

[DeanGibson Distinguished Bibliophile]

I haven't scripted any patches that run on a bootable SDcard.  I haven't even scripted any patches that run on CWR for a long while.  All my NT rooting stuff runs from ADB on a PC.

Notes:

1. I'm a little reluctant to use any procedure which depends on /sdcard being mounted.
2. There is a file /system/bin/clrbootcount.sh that invokes /data/boot_complete_hook.sh at the completion of booting, if the latter exists (which it doesn't by default).  /data/boot_complete_hook.sh (marked executable) would be a perfect place to check to see if /sdcard is mounted, and create links conditionally.

[roustabout]

I just threw together a quick hack for using your sdcard to store your library without rooting your glowworm or nook simple touch, there's a copy at

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?physd5t39dxfenx

In order to use it, you must make a "clockwork recovery" disk as described here.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1360994

Drop the file, zipped, on that disk.  Power off your nook touch.  Put the disk in and power on.  You will boot from the disk. 

Navigate up and down with the righthand buttons;  navigate back with the lefthand upper button;  choose an item or run a command using the raised n button. 

Navigate down to "install zip file from sdcard" and hit N

Hit N again to "Choose Zip File from SDcard"

Navigate down to sdcard-symlink.zip and hit the n button

navigate to "yes - install symlink-sdcard.zip"

Once the program has run, use the upper left button to navigate back to where "reboot system now" is

highlighted.

Eject the disk, then reboot. 

Put in your own SD card as the boot process starts (do NOT use the card you made here for storing your library;  every time you restart your device, you will find yourself booting into clockwork!) 

Improvements by others  most welcome!  : ) 

I agree that requiring the sdcard to be around is hinky, but the advantage to it is that it expands the capacity for storage a HUGE amount and I don't know how to do the resize commands from CWR - and if I did, the most we'd have available when we were done would be around 1-1.2 gigabytes. 

The hack is nondestructive, and in fact could be set up to be reversed (as my noshopnobrowse hack is reversible.)

I just applied to the glowworm, and it does work. 

If the glowworm is booted without an SD card, it boots fine. 

the library launches fine and displays what the library thinks it should have in it.

However, the library doesn't have any of that stuff in it (unless you also have sideloads on your device) and cannot download any of that stuff, since it's /data/media directory is missing.

So, this is a fix for the onboard storage limit that redirects ALL downloads to your card. 

If you don't have a card or your card gets borked, you need to buy a new one. 

[AlexJouJou]

OP - so you are saying that the existing internal memory for Nook Books (direct BN purchase) is 400? 

I can deal with the sideload issue on a SD card. I got a NST Glow Light this week. I already have several Kindle's. Right now I own 1278 books from amazon directly that fit (all of them) on all my Kindles. I have the K3 and the Fire (obviously the cheaper basic Kindle wouldn't hold my books). I have access to all my books that I've downloaded to the device directly.

What exactly is the true capacity of the NST Glow Light in terms of internal storage? I expected it to be much more than 400 because 750MB is reserved for BN content. Maybe I just have my space requirements confused. I'd have to juggle if I were to start buying from BN vs. Amazon as I do now. I do expect to do that :-)

I got the impression that the Nook would hold more...though I guess 1000 books total is what it says.

[The_Most_Happy]

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AlexJouJou wrote:

OP - so you are saying that the existing internal memory for Nook Books (direct BN purchase) is 400? 

I can deal with the sideload issue on a SD card. I got a NST Glow Light this week. I already have several Kindle's. Right now I own 1278 books from amazon directly that fit (all of them) on all my Kindles. I have the K3 and the Fire (obviously the cheaper basic Kindle wouldn't hold my books). I have access to all my books that I've downloaded to the device directly.

What exactly is the true capacity of the NST Glow Light in terms of internal storage? I expected it to be much more than 400 because 750MB is reserved for BN content. Maybe I just have my space requirements confused. I'd have to juggle if I were to start buying from BN vs. Amazon as I do now. I do expect to do that :-)

I got the impression that the Nook would hold more...though I guess 1000 books total is what it says.

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It doesn't even store all my Nookbooks, and I own fewer than 500.

[geertm]

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AlexJouJou wrote:

OP - so you are saying that the existing internal memory for Nook Books (direct BN purchase) is 400? 

I can deal with the sideload issue on a SD card. I got a NST Glow Light this week. I already have several Kindle's. Right now I own 1278 books from amazon directly that fit (all of them) on all my Kindles. I have the K3 and the Fire (obviously the cheaper basic Kindle wouldn't hold my books). I have access to all my books that I've downloaded to the device directly.

What exactly is the true capacity of the NST Glow Light in terms of internal storage? I expected it to be much more than 400 because 750MB is reserved for BN content. Maybe I just have my space requirements confused. I'd have to juggle if I were to start buying from BN vs. Amazon as I do now. I do expect to do that :-)

I got the impression that the Nook would hold more...though I guess 1000 books total is what it says.

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If you have just regular ebooks (no classics with a lot of pictures) than 750MB should be enough for 750 to 1000 books. And remember that you can archive B&N books so they do not use up any space (just a link). I usually archive the books that I have read (you can always unarchive them to download them again to your Nook using Wifi). So I have usually just 100 to 200 books downloaded to my Nook.

The 250MB for sideloaded content should be enough for 250 to 300 books. And of course you can add an micro SD-card if you need more storage.

In my personal opinon I think that having 200 to 300 books ready available to read is more than enough.

[roustabout]

"In my personal opinon I think that having 200 to 300 books ready available to read is more than enough."

The problem, to me, is that if you prefer to have your whole library on your device, or if you have an NST and a different BN reader or their software installed on a different device that limit imposed by the NST or glowworm applies to your library on everything. 

If you started as a BN customer with an NC or an NT and added the glowworm later, couldn't you find yourself in a position where, by default, your device may try to grab too much stuff and you need to learn archiving's ins and outs only after running into the issue?

Doing bulk book management with the BN website or BN devices seems to me to be a pain. There are workarounds, like copying your library from a computer to an sdcard for the part of it that won't fit - but the workarounds defeat a lot of hte point of the device.  I don't think that the nooks can sync positions on sideloaded books, even if the sideloads are originally BN - sourced, can they?  I had the impression that the database for what's on the device and where you are in your titles only works for titles downloaded through the library interface. 

The small memory on the NST and glowworm seems to wind up making trouble for BN's most loyal customers, and would be hardest to sort out for their least computer savvy customers.  I think that's foolishness -- the biggest appeal of the Nook ecosystem for many folks, to me, is that it so often does just work. The setup on the new device is probably persuading lots of NT and NC users to buy this one, too and I think we'll see some of those people on the support forum just utterly confused about how to deal with this. 

Sure, I tweak my devices within an inch of their lives, and sometimes a few inches on the other side, but that's because for me this is a busman's holiday.  The stuff I set up for others tends to be a lot less pimped, unless I know it'll be within arm's length if I need to fix it.  

I like knowing I can recommend the devices for their stock features without a lot of footnotes like "but if you were to get a glowworm, you might need to start paying attention to how many books you'd bought at BN on which device, because there may be problems with getting the files you're reading available on both of them." 

[Nallia Distinguished Bibliophile]

Every one of my 100+ classics are archived and my NST is maxed out at just under 500 "regular" ebooks.

Just saying.

[Marty-TX]

Hey roustabout,

About your "quick hack".  I just want to make sure I'm reading you right:

- No rooting needed. GREAT for non-techie like me who doesn't want a $100 brick!

- Internal storage limitation is history ... capacity is based on size of SD card. SUPER room to grow!

- All downloads go to the SD card. EASY!

If I'm reading you right ... FANTASTIC!!   Great job!

Thanks,
Marty

[DeanGibson Distinguished Bibliophile]

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Marty-TX wrote: ... I just want to make sure I'm reading you right:

- No rooting needed. GREAT for non-techie like me who doesn't want a $100 brick!

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Partition remapping has the potential to create problems far more than simply rooting and then installing 3rd party applications.  It's not the rooting that creates the issues;  it's what you do after rooting (and remapping partitions requires root access to perform).

Not trying to rain on any parade (I've rooted all of my Android devices), but applying any changes to the underlying Nook filesystem (whether or not that leaves the Nook rooted) has the same warranty and reliability implications.

[roustabout]

In my very limited testing, since we're linking not all of /data but a subdir within /data, the device is bootable and runnable even if the sdcard is absent. The databases that library talks to, for instance, remain on internal storage. 

I agree that I need to provide the script that reverses this hack as well, and I will. 

My biggest concern is that this may impact battery life -- reading and writing to and from the sdcard may well mean that you have more storage but you have less battery life. 

I also expect that you would need to reapply the hack after a firmware update - and thus, keep a copy of the CWR boot disk around. 

The main advantage to this is that since you can install it with a gui, and you don't need to have ADB running, it's accessible to folks who have no other reasonable way of dealing with BN's storage. 

Until a few people try it and let us know how it works, we won't really be 100%.

I will say that my Nook Touch, which has a resized /media partition and which has that partition linked to /data/media, has not had any problems running in that configuration for about 9 months. 

[Sun_Cat]

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roustabout wrote:

The small memory on the NST and glowworm seems to wind up making trouble for BN's most loyal customers, and would be hardest to sort out for their least computer savvy customers.  I think that's foolishness -- the biggest appeal of the Nook ecosystem for many folks, to me, is that it so often does just work. The setup on the new device is probably persuading lots of NT and NC users to buy this one, too and I think we'll see some of those people on the support forum just utterly confused about how to deal with this. 

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Or not, since there are still no links anywhere on bn.com that lead here. AFAIK the only way of finding these boards is via search engine. (Of course some of the loyal customers are already members here.) Imagine how embittered these folks will be when they can only get the stock support answer, "Archive some of your books."

Great job on implementing the symlink strategy! Thanks for sharing all your work to make the NST more flexible.

[embeccamom]

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Sun_Cat wrote:

Or not, since there are still no links anywhere on bn.com that lead here. AFAIK the only way of finding these boards is via search engine.  

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I read this comment all the time...there most certainly is a link to these forums on bn.com.

On the top bar, where it says, "Books", "NOOK Books", etc, hover on "Books". The drop down menu shows "Blogs & Forums". Click on that, and here you are.

They don't make it easy or obvious, but there is a link. That 's how I found these boards.

[The_Most_Happy]

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geertm wrote:

If you have just regular ebooks (no classics with a lot of pictures) than 750MB should be enough for 750 to 1000 books. And remember that you can archive B&N books so they do not use up any space (just a link). I usually archive the books that I have read (you can always unarchive them to download them again to your Nook using Wifi). So I have usually just 100 to 200 books downloaded to my Nook.

The 250MB for sideloaded content should be enough for 250 to 300 books. And of course you can add an micro SD-card if you need more storage.

In my personal opinon I think that having 200 to 300 books ready available to read is more than enough.

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I own 453 ebooks.  Probably about 20 or so are ebook samples I haven't decided to purchase/read yet.  I read primarily novels, but I also read historical biographies which contain some pics. 

In my personal opinion, storage for my entire book collection plus extra so I can continue buying books when I like to do so is sufficient.  It is a reasonable expectation.  I should not have to buy additional storage, hack into my device, archive or remove books, cope with duplicates via sideloading, or do anything else like that.  I should simply be able to buy, download, and have all my books available at all times.  This is completely reasonable, and BN is capable of fulfilling these expectations.     

[MacMcK1957]

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embeccamom wrote:

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Sun_Cat wrote:

Or not, since there are still no links anywhere on bn.com that lead here. AFAIK the only way of finding these boards is via search engine.  

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I read this comment all the time...there most certainly is a link to these forums on bn.com.

On the top bar, where it says, "Books", "NOOK Books", etc, hover on "Books". The drop down menu shows "Blogs & Forums". Click on that, and here you are.

They don't make it easy or obvious, but there is a link. That 's how I found these boards.

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I found it from a totally different direction, from the My Account - Account Settings page, to the Visit MyN&N link, then My B&N Book Clubs is on the lower left.

[bobstro]

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The_Most_Happy wrote:

[...] In my personal opinion, storage for my entire book collection plus extra so I can continue buying books when I like to do so is sufficient.  It is a reasonable expectation.  I should not have to buy additional storage, hack into my device, archive or remove books, cope with duplicates via sideloading, or do anything else like that.  I should simply be able to buy, download, and have all my books available at all times.  This is completely reasonable, and BN is capable of fulfilling these expectations.     

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And exactly what is the upper limit on what B&N should reasonably be expected to support? What of an even more avid collector with 1,000, 5,000 or more? 

I'm sure B&N has a good set of statistics on what the "average" customer purchases and has stored on their device. I suspect "400-ish" covers most. The ability to archive probably satisfies most of the rest. A $4-15 uSD card covers even more cases. I think cases such as yours get into the realm of diminishing returns. To accommodate every extreme raises the base unit cost for all. I can understand the business side of their reasoning. 

I'm hardly a B&N apologist. They get plenty wrong, IMO. I do think that providing external storage capability was a reasonable compromise, however. Now readers are deeply personal things, and you're certainly entitled to hold and share you opinions. 

[Ya_Ya]

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bobstro wrote:

 I do think that providing external storage capability was a reasonable compromise, however.  

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It would be if there were some B&N officially supported ability to store all content, including B&N downloaded NOOKBooks, or at least overflow content on that expandable storage.

(This said by one who has her N2E registered to an account with no purchases and who has sideloaded all of her content to SD card, including B&N books.)

[tmr4]

It is clear that B&N's goal with the NST line is a bare bones, low cost ereader. While I'm sure most folks would like to have more internal storage, most, myself included, don't want to pay more for it. I got my NST for $69 and really don't want anything added to increase the price. In fact I think B&N needs to get the NST price down to $50 as a base price to really drive ebook sales. That would mean trimming, not expanding things even more. Such a stripped down model will not work for everyone and if there is enough demand I'm sure they'll create a more premium version. The glowlight obviously wasn't that. Bottom line, if it doesn't meet your needs, return it. I wouldn't hold your breath for a version that will hold your entire collection on internal storage though. It is clear that B&N isn't marketing these with that as a feature. It is also clear why they treat sideloaded content differently so I'm not expecting much change in the treatment of the external storage. In fact they've been so successful with it that I don't even bother to sideload any books now. I'm sure many others are the same.