New Calibre user with problems...

scylla2 · 04-13-2009, 10:28 AM

I downloaded and installed the newest version of Calibre last night, hoping it would give me the ability to manage and catalog my huge ebook collection.

My ebooks are located on an external hard drive and occupy about 40GB of space. When Calibre asked for the library location I pointed it to the ebook directory on the external drive. When it began to collect and catalog the ebook collection, however, I noticed it was copying all the ebooks into new directories as it was cataloging them. This made the process extremely slow (over an hour just to get through authors beginning with the letter A) and, of course made my ebooks occupy double the HD space that they should.

Is there a way to get Calibre to go through my ebook collection without making its own copies of everything? This seems similar to iTunes where there's an option to "copy music files to iTunes music folder". Unfortunately, unlike in iTunes, with Calibre there doesn't seem to be a way to turn this off.

sirbruce · 04-13-2009, 06:31 PM

No, Calibre makes copies of everything so if you make changes you still have your originals elsewhere. Or so if you delete your originals it won't mess up Calibre.

If you don't like the slowness you'll need to move your library to a faster drive.

scylla2 · 04-13-2009, 09:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sirbruce

No, Calibre makes copies of everything so if you make changes you still have your originals elsewhere. Or so if you delete your originals it won't mess up Calibre.

If you don't like the slowness you'll need to move your library to a faster drive.

It's not the slowness so much as the software's desire to copy and re-organize all of my ebooks into different folders/directories of its own choosing. Is there any way I can stop it from doing that and just have it READ the existing folders only? I don't need the same 40GB of files on the same drive twice.

sirbruce · 04-13-2009, 11:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scylla2

Is there any way I can stop it from doing that and just have it READ the existing folders only?

No, for the reasons mentioned before.

Quote:

Originally Posted by scylla2

I don't need the same 40GB of files on the same drive twice.

Then you'll have to put them on another drive. Or you can delete your originals after you drop them into Calibre, but I prefer having a backup.

PS - Calibre is less than optimal with large collections; it took me several days to import my 3000 or so titles.

04-13-2009, 10:28 AM	#1
scylla2 Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2009 Device: GEB1150	New Calibre user with problems... I downloaded and installed the newest version of Calibre last night, hoping it would give me the ability to manage and catalog my huge ebook collection. My ebooks are located on an external hard drive and occupy about 40GB of space. When Calibre asked for the library location I pointed it to the ebook directory on the external drive. When it began to collect and catalog the ebook collection, however, I noticed it was copying all the ebooks into new directories as it was cataloging them. This made the process extremely slow (over an hour just to get through authors beginning with the letter A) and, of course made my ebooks occupy double the HD space that they should. Is there a way to get Calibre to go through my ebook collection without making its own copies of everything? This seems similar to iTunes where there's an option to "copy music files to iTunes music folder". Unfortunately, unlike in iTunes, with Calibre there doesn't seem to be a way to turn this off.

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04-13-2009, 06:31 PM	#2
sirbruce Provocateur Posts: 1,859 Karma: 505847 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Columbus, OH Device: Kindle Touch, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, iPhone 3GS	No, Calibre makes copies of everything so if you make changes you still have your originals elsewhere. Or so if you delete your originals it won't mess up Calibre. If you don't like the slowness you'll need to move your library to a faster drive.