Solution to Lost K1 Memory

[Meemo]

I posted this on another, unrelated thread - but thought I'd start a new thread for anyone who might be having the same issue. 

Background:  A couple of months ago (or more, probably!) I noticed that I had very little memory left on my K1.  I'd ordered a book from Amazon and got a notice that I had insufficient memory left for it to be delivered via Whispernet.  I started moving books I'd read back to Amazon.  Didn't make much difference.  I put my SD card back in, kept moving things to the card.  Still not a lot of difference.  Eventually I moved virtually everything but about 6 items over to the SD card.  Still had only 9 MB of memory left.  Emptied the cache.  Even removed my customer screensavers and one dinky music file.  Still just that 9 MB.

I mentioned this on another forum and someone said they'd had the same issue, and Kindle CS said to go into the search files on the Kindle and delete everything.  I couldn't tell what all the files were for, deleted the ones I felt safe with.  Still nothing.  Many of the files were long strings of letters & numbers, I hesitated to delete them since I didn't know what they were. 

So I asked for more help: The response was that the long gibberish names in the Search Indexes folders are individual book indexes. The files that are actually named index, such as index.db are files that the Kindle uses to find the right gibberish named file and search it. She'd been told to erase all of the files in the Search Indexes folder. I also got an e-mail from someone telling me to also empty the trash before I disconnected the Kindle from the computer (at least you need to do that on a Mac - not sure about a PC). 

So I did both in the same sitting.  The bad news, I don't know which of those last two things did the trick since I did them both in the same session.  The good news, I went from having 9 MB of memory to having 172 MB of memory!  Pages are turning a little faster too.  Also it doesn't seem to eat up the battery when it indexes now (it had to re-index I'm sure after I deleted all those files, previously indexing would really eat up the battery) and indexing seems to be happening faster. 

Someone on the forum said that this issue came up "when Amazon pushed the update to 2.x.  Apparently it corrupted some index files, bloating them to fill all your memory. Even deleting books, etc., didn't release the
memory. The only way to fix it was to delete the index files."  Said if the kindle memory is showing full even after you delete everything from it, it's definitely a corrupt index file.

Honestly I'd recommend doing as I say, not as I did - call CS if your K1 is showing virtually no memory even after you delete everything from Kindle memory.  I was lucky - could've been ugly if I'd done something horribly wrong & I don't know why I didn't just call CS myself.  But I'm stubborn that way, even though the time or two I have contacted CS they've been very helpful (well, except for the multiple answers on the K1 refurb warranty).  Anyway, it's something to ask about if your K1 memory is gone - and if the CS rep you get doesn't suggest this, it's something to ask about.

[jmiked]

Emptying the trash before disconnecting your Kindle can help if you delete files by dragging them to the Trash when the Kindle is connected to your Mac. If you delete files directly from your Kindle, you will not have this problem.

[Meemo]

Emptying the trash before disconnecting your Kindle can help if you delete files by dragging them to the Trash when the Kindle is connected to your Mac. If you delete files directly from your Kindle, you will not have this problem.

I just right-clicked & deleted from the systems file, didn't drag them.  So maybe it was deleting those last 2 files that I'd hesitated to delete initially that did the trick.  Emptying the trash might not have had anything to do with it (but there were a lot of Kindle files in that trash bin!).  I'm just glad to have the memory back & my Kindle working back up to speed.

[jmiked]

I just right-clicked & deleted from the systems file, didn't drag them.  

Same thing.

Mike

[Meemo]

Same thing.

Mike

Ah. Could you delete something from the systems file directly from the Kindle?  I don't see a way.  I'm not the sharpest tool in the geek shed...

[pidgeon92]

Ah. Could you delete something from the systems file directly from the Kindle?

No, it has to be done when it is tethered to a computer.

[Meemo]

No, it has to be done when it is tethered to a computer.

That's what I thought.  Maybe jmiked is saying that this won't happen (or won't be necessary) from just deleting books from the Kindle.  It was the index files that were causing the problem (at least for me). 

[pidgeon92]

I think what jmiked was saying was that - while having the Kindle tethered to the computer

1) using the computer delete key to delete the files from the Kindle system folder

will yield the same result as

2) dragging the files from the Kindle system folder to the trash, and then emptying the trash.

[BookishMom]

Meemo, thanks for posting this. Can this be added to a FAQ file somewhere for future reference? We have enough "stickies", but this would be handy to have around.

[Meemo]

I think what jmiked was saying was that - while having the Kindle tethered to the computer

1) using the computer delete key to delete the files from the Kindle system folder

will yield the same result as

2) dragging the files from the Kindle system folder to the trash, and then emptying the trash.

Gotcha.  Like I said, I'm not the sharpest tool - and since I did two "new" things at the same time I wasn't sure which did it - maybe both.  I was just glad it worked!

[Ann in Arlington]

Meemo, thanks for posting this. Can this be added to a FAQ file somewhere for future reference? We have enough "stickies", but this would be handy to have around.

I just linked this thread to a new post in the K1 FAQ above. . . . . .

[Meemo]

Meemo, thanks for posting this. Can this be added to a FAQ file somewhere for future reference? We have enough "stickies", but this would be handy to have around.

Looks like a mod took care of that - it's posted to the Kindle FAQ thread - thanks Ann!

(I'm actually gonna walk my daughter through this for her K1 this afternoon.)

[Neekeebee]

I know this is a really old thread, but thanks for posting your experience, Meemo. 

I am having exactly this problem.  There is practically nothing on my K1 internal memory anymore (I keep moving files to my SD card as fast as they download) and yet my free memory keeps dwindling.  I am down to less than 6 MB.  I called CS last week and all they said was that all the books on my SD card are using the Kindle memory too.  This sounded strange, as I only have a 1 GB memory card which is less than half full and I know there are people here with way more books than that.  CS said the minimal amount of free Kindle memory should not affect how my Kindle runs, but now it is taking forever to download anything, and sometimes has other problems (slow page turns, short battery life, freezing) too.  I was planning on doing a factory reset on my K1 after getting my K3, but now I will give this tip a try first.  Thanks!

N

[Meemo]

I know this is a really old thread, but thanks for posting your experience, Meemo. 

I am having exactly this problem.  There is practically nothing on my K1 internal memory anymore (I keep moving files to my SD card as fast as they download) and yet my free memory keeps dwindling.  I am down to less than 6 MB.  I called CS last week and all they said was that all the books on my SD card are using the Kindle memory too.  This sounded strange, as I only have a 1 GB memory card which is less than half full and I know there are people here with way more books than that.  CS said the minimal amount of free Kindle memory should not affect how my Kindle runs, but now it is taking forever to download anything, and sometimes has other problems (slow page turns, short battery life, freezing) too.  I was planning on doing a factory reset on my K1 after getting my K3, but now I will give this tip a try first.  Thanks!

N

Hope it works for you!

[jmiked]

I think what jmiked was saying was that - while having the Kindle tethered to the computer

1) using the computer delete key to delete the files from the Kindle system folder

will yield the same result as

2) dragging the files from the Kindle system folder to the trash, and then emptying the trash.

It won't— in both cases you have to do an Empty Trash to get rid of the files. All the Delete key (CMD+DEL on the Mac) does is change a flag in the directory, it doesn't actually delete anything. If the file is really large, you'll get a message saying it's too big to fit in get Trash, it will be deleted immediately.

Mike

[NiLuJe]

Unless you use SHIFT+Del (or Apple/CMD+Del on a Mac I guess).

[jmiked]

Unless you use SHIFT+Del (or Apple/CMD+Del on a Mac I guess).

CMD+Del will send the file to the Trash on the Mac. Just pressing the Del key gets you an accusatory beep.  

Mike

[NiLuJe]

What about SHIFT+CMD+Del? (How I love the mac keymap.... >_<" I'm fairly puzzled as to how developpers manage to use this stuff... Mutated squid hands? Last time I tried to get a bracket on the mac fr/azerty keymap, I needed to hold like 3 or 4 keys...)

[Neekeebee]

Hope it works for you!

It did!  I got 170+ MB back and now my Kindle is running faster and actually able to download stuff by WhisperNet again.  (Wish CS had known this was the solution!)

N

[Meemo]

It did!  I got 170+ MB back and now my Kindle is running faster and actually able to download stuff by WhisperNet again.  (Wish CS had known this was the solution!)

N

Yay!  I think they did tell some people this, not sure why they still don't (or maybe the CS you got just didn't find it).  Glad it worked for you, it's amazing what a difference it makes, isn't it? 

[Neekeebee]

Yay!  I think they did tell some people this, not sure why they still don't (or maybe the CS you got just didn't find it).  Glad it worked for you, it's amazing what a difference it makes, isn't it? 

It's such an improvement that I've stopped checking to see if they've updated my K3's shipping status.  For now, anyway....

N

[jgirvine]

UGGG??

Sorry, trying to help my 86 year old Mother with her K1 that says it is full and can not down load anymore books.  I read this thread, but, don't understand what I am to do?

I don't have a K1.  Can someone help me?
1.  How do I see how much memory is left?
2.  How do I delete whatever it is that is being deleted in this thread?

Thanks

[Neekeebee]

UGGG??

Sorry, trying to help my 86 year old Mother with her K1 that says it is full and can not down load anymore books.  I read this thread, but, don't understand what I am to do?

I don't have a K1.  Can someone help me?
1.  How do I see how much memory is left?
2.  How do I delete whatever it is that is being deleted in this thread?

Thanks

Connect your K1 to a computer and check the amount of free memory on the Kindle.  If there is very little free memory but also very few books there, then you probably have the same issue I had.  (Otherwise, your mom might just have a lot of books taking up memory, in which case you can either delete some from the Kindle or move them to an SD card memory.) 

I can't recall exactly what we did, but Hubby found some other folder on my Kindle memory (using the PC) with a file called "Index.db", which was 180Mb in size.  He deleted that from the Kindle (actually saved it to my PC in case there was a problem) and that solved my problem.  I would probably call Amazon CS before doing this, just in case I'm not describing it right.

Hope this helps!  Good luck!

N

[Meemo]

UGGG??

Sorry, trying to help my 86 year old Mother with her K1 that says it is full and can not down load anymore books.  I read this thread, but, don't understand what I am to do?

I don't have a K1.  Can someone help me?
1.  How do I see how much memory is left?
2.  How do I delete whatever it is that is being deleted in this thread?

Thanks

Hi, I'm the one who made the original post.  Unfortunately I don't have my K1 any more, but I think it's essentially the same set up as the K2 as far as folders go.  Here's what you'll need to do (I'm on a Mac - if you're using a PC you might need some additional steps):

1.  Connect the Kindle to the computer via the USB cord.

2.  Open the Kindle on the computer and you'll see several folders.  Click on the "Systems" folder.

3.  Within the Systems folder, you'll find the "Search Indexes" folder.

4.  Open the Search Indexes folder, and delete everything in it.  I think I was able to select them all at once and then select "delete all".  You don't want to delete the folder itself, just everything in the folder.

I know with Windows you sometimes have to enable seeing "hidden" folders - if that's one of the hidden folders I'm not sure how to do that since I haven't used Windows in a while. 

Bottom line, if you aren't comfortable going through these steps on your own, I'd give Kindle Customer Service a call at 866-321-8851.  Tell them you have a K1 that has some corrupt and/or bloated index files that are eating up all your memory, and they should be able to walk you through finding the search folder and getting them deleted.  If I was able to talk my daughter through it over the phone I'm sure they can walk you through it!