Collections Vanishing - Start Again!

[reech]

H'lo,

Having odd troubles with my Sony PRS-600 and Collections.

It works most of the time, but every so often, I'll add a few more books to the device, and ZAP - all the collections *every single one* is removed, and I'm just left with the books. No series\collections, tags, etc.

Driving me insane, and I can't quite figure out what it is I'm doing to deserve this.

I have a mix of PDF \ ePub and LRF books, and I'm trying to save them to a 1GB SD , formatted to FAT32.

I even took copies of my database folder to keep an eye on things like this happening, but restoring that doesn't restore my collection tags

[reech]

Ah, sadly it seems: http://bugs.calibre-ebook.com/ticket/3099 - crashing Sony destroy Collections. Time to look for a new ereader device, I think

[speakingtohe]

I had a similiar problem with Calibre in that it was making a lot of weird collections.
I had to uninstall calibre and remove the configuration directory and reinstall.
Then everything worked fine.
It was definitely something that Calibre was doing and not a reader problem.
Helen

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by reech

Having odd troubles with my Sony PRS-600 and Collections.

It works most of the time, but every so often, I'll add a few more books to the device, and ZAP - all the collections *every single one* is removed, and I'm just left with the books. No series\collections, tags, etc.

Is your prs-600 crashing before every loss of collections?

Are you transferring books to the reader using Sony reader library too?

[reech]

Hello - no, it isn't actually crashing; it's just during a calibre data transfer that it randomly loses the entire collection data.

Also, I've not been using the Sony Reader Library programme; I've made sure it's not started.

It also jumbles up some of my book names as well; turning the Authors in 'Unkown' and calling the books something like: title_author_number .

I will try the calibre uninstall\reinstall - might as well

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by reech

Also, I've not been using the Sony Reader Library programme; I've made sure it's not started.

It also jumbles up some of my book names as well; turning the Authors in 'Unkown' and calling the books something like: title_author_number .

I will try the calibre uninstall\reinstall - might as well

Interesting, I would do the following before Uninstalling and reinstalling Calibre.

1. Check to make sure your metadata writer plugins are enabled.
2. Reboot your computer.
3. Shutdown your PRS-600 via menu then turn it back on.
4. Format your 1 gig SD card. ###This will wipe everything off of your SD card.
5. Format internal memory via menu. ###This will wipe out all books on your device.
6. Try using a different SD card.
7. Try just using internal memory for a while with the SD card removed.

I placed all of these things in the do before uninstalling and reinstalling Calibre because Calibre most likely isn't responsible for what your experiencing.

Using Calibre it only takes a 5-30 minutes to have your collections back in place, just remove everything from you device and then send the books back to your device from Calibre.

Good Luck!

[reech]

Thank you - will go through those over the next few hours. Will report back how it goes

[reech]

Okay then - so far, I've done the following non-destructive things

-Check to make sure your metadata writer plugins are enabled
-Reboot your computer.
-Shutdown your PRS-600 via menu then turn it back on.
-Try using a different SD card.
-Try just using internal memory for a while with the SD card removed.

All good, but transferring things back onto my SD card, still means no collections carry across Internal memory, it still comes up with some of the weird naming things.

Tried two SD cards, and the problems the same. I do note that sometimes Calibre takes a long time to do things - I wonder if something in the reader 'times out' after a while, and loses the collection info?

I'm going to factory reset the reader, and also do the following:

Format your 1 gig SD card. ###This will wipe everything off of your SD card.
Format internal memory via menu. ###This will wipe out all books on your device.

[reech]

Putting things back on - will see how it goes over the next few days of use

[reech]

Well, so far - after an hour so of me doing a connect, wait, reconnect, none of the old problems have turned up; where collection names vanished, and occasional 'strange characters' would turn up at the end of Author \ Titles, when viewing through calibre, and clicking on the SD card \ Internal memory.

I think the calibre reinstall has done the trick. Could have been old plugins, I guess...

[reech]

Pah, the error's back - some files on my SD Card or Internal memory have weird (almost chinese looking) characters replacing the last letter of the title or author.

When editing to replace them, I get the error message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\library\models.py", line 1089, in setData
AttributeError: can't set attribute

....and once it's finished doing its 'Jobs' and I disconnect, wait, and reconnect... And oddly enough, this time it hasn't obliterated the Collections list on the reader, and it hasn't saved the changes.

I give up!

[kovidgoyal]

See http://bugs.calibre-ebook.com/ticket/4115

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by reech

Pah, the error's back - some files on my SD Card or Internal memory have weird (almost chinese looking) characters replacing the last letter of the title or author.

This is a totally different and well know problem. It Happens on some pdf files and for now you just have to live with it. See Kovids post above. This is not known to cause collections to vanish.

My solution is to never use pdf files, but thats just me.

Do you send all your books to your device using the Send to device button?

[Ter3]

Ok I had the same problem I think, I have a Sony 505 and when I was using Calibre 6.something. I had Collections/Tags on laptop and they were sent to reader just fine. Yes I also had the letter change, I click on card and was able to change all symbols back to letters and it did update correct to reader....Then I upgraded to new version 7.1 (which I like the look of) but when it connected to my reader (first time under update) it erased ALL the tags/collections on the reader and put back in the symbols.
the collections are on the laptop but none are in the reader.
Reader never crashed or program.
So is there a way to get back my tags, or do I have to delete everything on card and re-send everything back to reader.? Usually the updates don't change what has been done already till this last one.
Oh also in the older version I was able to edit the collections on the card/reader and now it won't let me.
Any help
thanks,

[za9]

Originally Posted by reech

Hello - no, it isn't actually crashing; it's just during a calibre data transfer that it randomly loses the entire collection data.

Also, I've not been using the Sony Reader Library programme; I've made sure it's not started.

It also jumbles up some of my book names as well; turning the Authors in 'Unkown' and calling the books something like: title_author_number .

I will try the calibre uninstall\reinstall - might as well

Sadly I can't offer any assistance, but I can jump in with a 'me too'.

In my case, every now and then I notice that some of the books on my PRS-600 have lost their tag while others have 'unknown' as the author and the book title has reverted to the original file name (which in many cases is the author name-book title). These have mostly been txt files, but some rtf and one or two pdfs too. A few have lost the last character of the title and author, or had them set to what looks like a chinese character.

I've found that if I edit the title/author/tag in the reader using calibre, they mostly stay correct after that, but some revert again at a later date.

I use Calibre 0.6.55, though it's happened with earlier versions too. I updated to 7.0.1 this morning, which caused delays of 5 minutes 'updating metadata' with each action, and then messed up a number of book titles, authors and tags. Due to the 5 minute lag updating metadata per edit, I reverted to .6.55!