Restore Library - Need Help

[sse11791]

I have a new hard drive. I had made a copy of my old Calibre Library by copying the entire Calbre directory to a dvd before I got rid of the old hard drive. I am not able to get my Calibre library back. How do I restore my Calibre library to my computer?

1. I copied the entire dvd to a new Calibre directory on the hard drive, and I established d:Caliber as the library location using the Welcome Wizard. Calibre was blank, completely empty. So I tried adding all of the book in the directory. As a result, my d:Calibre directory on the hard drive had duplicates of everything.

2. I then deleted the entire D:Calibre directory and restarted Calibre. I added all of the books from the DVD. The books got added, but none of the covers, and other metadata.

What I am trying for is to have my old Calibre back, with all of my old books showing, all of their covers and all of the metadata. It's an exact copy of the old Calibre directory. You would "THINK" it should come back as it was originally.

What am I doing wrong? What should I do instead.

Thank you for your help.

[itimpi]

When you copIed the saved Calibre library back to the hard disk did you then remember to remove the Read Only attribute (property) from all files and folders in the restored Calibre library? Writing files to DVD normally sets this attribute, and having that attribute set interferes with normal Calibre operation.

It is also worth checking that the root of the restored library folder contains the Calibre metadata.db file (it should if it is a full copy of the Calibre library).

[sse11791]

Originally Posted by itimpi

When you copIed the saved Calibre library back to the hard disk did you then remember to remove the Read Only attribute (property) from all files and folders in the restored Calibre library? Writing files to DVD normally sets this attribute, and having that attribute set interferes with normal Calibre operation.

It is also worth checking that the root of the restored library folder contains the Calibre metadata.db file (it should if it is a full copy of the Calibre library).

Thank you. I am realizing that I made those errors you pointed out. Everything was "Read Only" and I failed to copy the extra files, I only copied my eBooks.

I took this as an opportunity to re-add each book from the dvd one directory at a time rather than copy the entire disk to d:Calibre. I did have my metadata. I kept my book covers, but it was a tad tedious. My new dvd has EVERY file in the d:Calibre directory.

This was a good opportunity to fix things like variations in authors names, misspellings, etc.

Thank you for your help. I am sure that my next restore of Calibre should go more smoothly.

[itimpi]

In fact if you had all the author/book folders intact, then it should have been possible to use the Calibre restore database facility to rebuild the database with its old metadata.