library size limit? big pdf files

[mkeINjp]

Before installing Calibre, I would like to ask two questions please.

Does Calibre slow down when having a big library - I mean thousands of books?
How about the handling of big pdf files? I have scanned all of my physical books. Some of the files are BIG - 100-200MB.

Thank you.
MKE

[theducks]

Originally Posted by mkeINjp

Before installing Calibre, I would like to ask two questions please.

Does Calibre slow down when having a big library - I mean thousands of books?
How about the handling of big pdf files? I have scanned all of my physical books. Some of the files are BIG - 100-200MB.

Thank you.
MKE

Every book record in Calibre uses nearly the same space (comments type metadata is the size variable). Any format. Calibre (the DB) cares less. You just need disc space ( on a single, Logical drive) for the format.
I used 'Logical', because you could have a Spanned or striped disk Array (That would be one huge collection )

[BetterRed]

@mkeINjp - here's a recent unsolicited post from a user regarding the number of books calibre supports ==>> https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...65&postcount=9

In a library of ~80,000 books I have individual files up to 1.5GB (they're video's). The size of the files only makes a difference when you do something with a file - e.g. it will take longer to transfer a 400MB book to an e-reader that a 4KB book.

Regarding large PDF's, if you only want to organise, find, read and transfer them (to a e-reader) etc then the only limitation is disk space and bandwidth. The fun and games start if you want to convert them, see this ==>> Read this before Posting PDF Conversion Questions

BR

[eschwartz]

Although at a certain point the database will grow to so many records that calibre slows down (it is held entirely in memory IIRC), the size of the actual ebook files is irrelevant.

And calibre can easily handle tens of thousands of book records, so I wouldn't worry too much about that either.

[mkeINjp]

Thank you ! Your information helped me deciding.
So, the fun starts NOW - the adding of 40000 epub, moby, pdf files.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by mkeINjp

Thank you ! Your information helped me deciding.
So, the fun starts NOW - the adding of 40000 epub, moby, pdf files.

Suggest you do it batches - I did it in batches of 100-200 books

You might want to consider having an Intake library and a Final library. Get the metadata up to scratch in Intake, use the Find Duplicates Optional Plugin->Library Duplicates feature to check the books you have in Intake are not already in the Final library.

Use Copy to Library option in te Book List context menu to move the 'good' books from Intake to Final.

BR

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Suggest you do it batches - I did it in batches of 100-200 books

You might want to consider having an Intake library and a Final library. Get the metadata up to scratch in Intake, use the Find Duplicates Optional Plugin->Library Duplicates feature to check the books you have in Intake are not already in the Final library.

Use Copy to Library option in te Book List context menu to move the 'good' books from Intake to Final.

BR

And Fix the metadata as you go. Don't wait till the end. The task will seem impossible.
Nibble away, Don't Chomp...You will choke

Note: When I documented (created an empty book) my paper library using Add from ISBN and a Barcode scanner, I did them in batches of 20. There were almost always problems (not found, no barcode, so old that there was no ISBN inside the book . If a cover was not found (or it was different), I slapped the book on the Scanner and took care of that.