Number of Libraries Limited to 24?

[travger]

@AliRut - Why DVDs? I see only trouble with them.
1. people say that DVDs may lose readability
2. file on DVD is unchangeable - if you lose your reader or buy a better one you're stuck with a bunch of old formats. What will you do if you change metadata or obtain a better copy of the book or find that the file you have is bad?
3. what if you decide to start using some advanced features or find that having metadata is convenient and good thing?
etc.

I keep backup copy on external HD. When it feels like right time I turn it on and sync the libraries, so it's more or less up to date. Hds are not so very expensive nowadays.
You could keep your whole library on external HD. If you use it only for books, it gets lot of rest while you're working with other stuff. And you can make backup to another external HD to be on the safe side.

[Pinecone]

If you want to back up to DVD, that is 4.7 GB per DVD. That is a pretty big library. My Sony has 2GB memory and currently has about 2400 books on it.

Any decent backup software has the ability to back up over multiple DVDs or other media.

And finally, I agree, I use two external hard drives. And have my internal hard drives set up for mirroring (same data on two separate drives).

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Peekamoo

I like dividing my books by genre. That is the way I shelve books on my Nook.

That's the way I sort books in my collections on my Sony too.

Originally Posted by Peekamoo

I usually don't decide to read a book based soley on the author. If I am in the mood for a horror story, I go right to my horror section. If I want a book by, say, James Herriot, I know that he is in my "Animals Pets" section. I can't think of a single time that I ever thought, "I want to read *anything* by a [specific author] where I didn't know what genre the author was in.

Being able to pick by genre is one of calibre's strengths. Trying to manage genre and series in calibre by using different libraries would be insane.

Originally Posted by Peekamoo

Reading the posts on here, I have seen where people say that 10,000 books is nothing. If that was all in one library, my gosh, it would take 5 minutes to scroll from top to bottom.

Fretting about scrolling through the entire library only points out that you still have a lot of calibre exploring and learning to do. 100, 1,000 or 10,000 books in the library makes little difference, a click of a tag will show you the genre you want. Or you can click on two tags to narrow the search further.

Originally Posted by Peekamoo

I will try using it the way you mentioned for certain books. For instance, instead of having a whole "biography" section, I can put it under non-fiction and then tag it "biography". That will work.

Or you can have one library and tag the book non-fiction and biography.

Good Luck.

[travger]

Or you can use hierarchical genres/tags - biography.human, biography.animal, history.alternate... Possibilities are endless.

[AliRut]

Originally Posted by travger

@AliRut

- Why DVDs? I see only trouble with them.

1. people say that DVDs may lose readability
2. file on DVD is unchangeable - if you lose your reader or buy a better one you're stuck with a bunch of old formats. What will you do if you change metadata or obtain a better copy of the book or find that the file you have is bad?
3. what if you decide to start using some advanced features or find that having metadata is convenient and good thing?
etc.

I keep backup copy on external HD. When it feels like right time I turn it on and sync the libraries, so it's more or less up to date. Hds are not so very expensive nowadays.
You could keep your whole library on external HD. If you use it only for books, it gets lot of rest while you're working with other stuff. And you can make backup to another external HD to be on the safe side.

----------------------------------------------------

Hi Travger Thanks for your input.

1) I have been making DVD Videos or many years and learned early that if I use only good quality DVD blanks from good manufacturers then failures are rare even after several years storage. (Note that the brand name on a DVD is seldom the actual manufacturer and often the brandee will change its manufacturer)
I'm 75 by the way so I don't have to be too concerned about the my media lasting more than say 25 years!!

2) I am not worried about retaining Metadata and if I change my Kindle to something else then Calibre will convert to the new format !!

3) I tend to read a fiction book once and very seldom return to it.

I do have a second internal hard drive which contains a back up of books etc but I lack the faith to rely on that alone.

Thanks & Regards

AliRut

[Peekamoo]

I don't trust storing my stuff on an external hd. I already did that and my little boy accidently knocked it onto the floor. Poof! Everything I had in there was no longer accessible. The charge for a professional to start extracting stuff from my now dead hd was ludicrous.

I backup everything to a disk.