Can I use Calibre to catalog ebooks, but not make copies of them?

alsosprach99 · 05-09-2010, 02:10 PM

Hi, everyone,

Today's Washington Post mentioned Calibre, so I decided to look it over.

I really like it a lot except that I have gigabytes of ebooks and do not understand why Calibre copies the ebooks into a folder on my C drive (I have an external 500GB drive for ebooks). Is there some way Calibre can catalog the ebooks from the existing files on my external hard drive and not makes copies of them? Can I delete the files from the C drive or would that destroy everything? Or should I install Calibre on the external hard drive and run it from there?

One feature I really like is the viewer which has such great capabilities. I also think fetching info from the server via ISBN is quite fast. It would be nice if one could do batches of ISBNs though. Have not yet tried the conversion process (which is why the Post recommended it) and look forward to getting rid of a lot of rtf and html books that way.

Great program, I think! So far have only cataloged/added 55 books, but that has taken up over 1GB on my C drive, so hope there is a solution to my question.

Sam

itimpi · 05-09-2010, 02:22 PM

When you add books to Calibre it adds them to its library. Whether you then keep the originals is up to you.

Note that the location of the Calibre library does not have to be the C: drive - it is set under Preferences. However it cannot be your existing library location or things will get really confusing between which files are udner Calibre control and which ones are not..

Starson17 · 05-09-2010, 02:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alsosprach99

I have an external 500GB drive for ebooks

Do you want to keep your ebooks? If yes, then you need a backup. Consider Calibre's library to be your backup. I paid less than $70 for a 1.5 Terabyte drive the other day. At that rate, your entire library (assuming you have the 500 GB full, which I doubt) is about $24. I have a library of 14,000 different books, most with multiple formats, and mine takes about 35 GB, or less than $2. Certainly your library is worth that.

Lady Fitzgerald · 05-09-2010, 03:07 PM

Although I have other back up schemes in place for my computer (local and in the cloud), I consider my original e-book files to be an additional backup just in case I do something stupid and mess up my Calibre files (which I have already managed to do once while learning how to use it). Even backups can fail so it's wise to have more than one backup in place. Consider your originals to be yet another back up.

Of course, you can always delete the originals if you feel you no longer need them.

lisa.m · 05-09-2010, 05:01 PM

If you want to keep all of your ebooks on your external drive then just create a folder on there for calibre and point the program to it in the preferences section. It will become the default location for your calibre library. It's good to have an original copy of your ebooks in case you want to make changes to the calibre versions.

DoctorOhh · 05-10-2010, 02:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alsosprach99

Great program, I think! So far have only cataloged/added 55 books, but that has taken up over 1GB on my C drive, so hope there is a solution to my question.

You must have some gigantic size ebooks or 200 different versions of each book for 55 ebooks to take up 1gig of space.

My books are for recreational reading, (fiction and non-fiction) no technical or heavy image laden books, so my books average about 700k in size. My Calibre library has 1265 ebooks and takes up only 913megs on my hard drive.

My personal experience makes it hard for me to envision a scenario where 55 ebooks take up 1 gig of hard drive space.

Lady Fitzgerald · 05-10-2010, 01:49 PM

My "e-books" (books cut apart and scanned to PDF; work is in progress) eat up more room than most e-books but even 500 such e-books will eat up only 10 GB (actually 20 GB since I'm keeping the originals) or less, which is cheap to store nowdays. Calibre adds only a few KB to each file for the book cover.

Bluebird · 06-12-2010, 03:01 PM

I had issues with calilbre auto library I was not sure if it would mess up my mobipocket library. I ended up with way too many duplicates. I did find HCC lite a free program to be invaluable it finds duplicates and you can choose which version to keep and it will delete the others.

alecE · 06-12-2010, 03:20 PM

I keep my ebooks on an external 1Tb drive (I do use that for other stuff as well!). For convenience I have a ebooks folder structure where I keep the works-in-progress plus the original and (shhh, un-drm'd versions), art-work etc and the final epub where I've created one in Sigil. Then I let Calibre make its own library elsewhere on the drive. This allows me to work on new titles, correct existing titles etc., without disturbing the Calibre library until I'm ready to replace a title. Calibre is of course the interface to my sony 505.

And then there's the dvd backup. Paranoid, moi? What could possibly go wrong??

Starson17 · 06-12-2010, 04:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bluebird

I had issues with calilbre auto library I was not sure if it would mess up my mobipocket library. I ended up with way too many duplicates. I did find HCC lite a free program to be invaluable it finds duplicates and you can choose which version to keep and it will delete the others.

It's a really bad idea to delete any duplicate ebooks from Calibre's library. HCC Lite may mark them as duplicates of your original ebook, but you shouldn't delete them if you want Calibre to work correctly.

itimpi · 06-12-2010, 04:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Starson17

It's a really bad idea to delete any duplicate ebooks from Calibre's library. HCC Lite may mark them as duplicates of your original ebook, but you shouldn't delete them if you want Calibre to work correctly.

It is OK to delete the duplicates ad long as you do it via Calibre and not by going directly to the underlying files.

Starson17 · 06-13-2010, 08:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by itimpi

It is OK to delete the duplicates ad long as you do it via Calibre and not by going directly to the underlying files.

Yes. HCC Lite is a direct access tool for identifying and deleting duplicate files, so I was commenting on the advisability of using that tool to manage Calibre's copy of the book.

Worldwalker · 06-13-2010, 09:31 AM

Read my long rant about calibre and its private files here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85232 and read my .sig (the second line).

Starson17 · 06-13-2010, 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Read my long rant about calibre and its private files

It's legitimate to use a duplicate file finder to directly find dupes inside Calibre's library. I originally kept duplicate books stored under all the author names, then when I switched to Calibre, I ended up with a fair number of dupes in the library - one copy under each author name. There was no good way to find them other than a dupe finder.

Genesis · 01-26-2012, 08:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by itimpi

When you add books to Calibre it adds them to its library. Whether you then keep the originals is up to you.

Note that the location of the Calibre library does not have to be the C: drive - it is set under Preferences. However it cannot be your existing library location or things will get really confusing between which files are udner Calibre control and which ones are not..

WHERE?
I've searched the Preferences and have yet to find a setting for Calibre Library location, nor a reference to it's default path in C:/Users anywhere...
I also searched the manual for setting library location/path with no results.

It is possible the path setting was dropped from preferences in most recent updates?
I notice a few of the prefs screens have large blank areas.

05-09-2010, 02:10 PM	#1
alsosprach99 Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2010 Device: sony	Can I use Calibre to catalog ebooks, but not make copies of them? Hi, everyone, Today's Washington Post mentioned Calibre, so I decided to look it over. I really like it a lot except that I have gigabytes of ebooks and do not understand why Calibre copies the ebooks into a folder on my C drive (I have an external 500GB drive for ebooks). Is there some way Calibre can catalog the ebooks from the existing files on my external hard drive and not makes copies of them? Can I delete the files from the C drive or would that destroy everything? Or should I install Calibre on the external hard drive and run it from there? One feature I really like is the viewer which has such great capabilities. I also think fetching info from the server via ISBN is quite fast. It would be nice if one could do batches of ISBNs though. Have not yet tried the conversion process (which is why the Post recommended it) and look forward to getting rid of a lot of rtf and html books that way. Great program, I think! So far have only cataloged/added 55 books, but that has taken up over 1GB on my C drive, so hope there is a solution to my question. Sam

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05-09-2010, 02:22 PM	#2
itimpi Wizard Posts: 4,552 Karma: 950151 Join Date: Nov 2008 Device: Sony PRS-950, iphone/ipad (Marvin/iBooks/QuickReader)	When you add books to Calibre it adds them to its library. Whether you then keep the originals is up to you. Note that the location of the Calibre library does not have to be the C: drive - it is set under Preferences. However it cannot be your existing library location or things will get really confusing between which files are udner Calibre control and which ones are not..

05-09-2010, 03:07 PM	#4
Lady Fitzgerald Wizard Posts: 2,013 Karma: 251649 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Tempe, AZ, USA, Earth Device: JetBook Lite (away from home) + 1 spare, 32" TV (at home)	Although I have other back up schemes in place for my computer (local and in the cloud), I consider my original e-book files to be an additional backup just in case I do something stupid and mess up my Calibre files (which I have already managed to do once while learning how to use it). Even backups can fail so it's wise to have more than one backup in place. Consider your originals to be yet another back up. Of course, you can always delete the originals if you feel you no longer need them.

05-09-2010, 05:01 PM	#5
lisa.m Enthusiast Posts: 27 Karma: 2248 Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: New Jersey Device: Kindle	If you want to keep all of your ebooks on your external drive then just create a folder on there for calibre and point the program to it in the preferences section. It will become the default location for your calibre library. It's good to have an original copy of your ebooks in case you want to make changes to the calibre versions.

05-10-2010, 01:49 PM	#7
Lady Fitzgerald Wizard Posts: 2,013 Karma: 251649 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Tempe, AZ, USA, Earth Device: JetBook Lite (away from home) + 1 spare, 32" TV (at home)	My "e-books" (books cut apart and scanned to PDF; work is in progress) eat up more room than most e-books but even 500 such e-books will eat up only 10 GB (actually 20 GB since I'm keeping the originals) or less, which is cheap to store nowdays. Calibre adds only a few KB to each file for the book cover.

06-12-2010, 03:01 PM	#8
Bluebird Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: netbook	I had issues with calilbre auto library I was not sure if it would mess up my mobipocket library. I ended up with way too many duplicates. I did find HCC lite a free program to be invaluable it finds duplicates and you can choose which version to keep and it will delete the others.

06-12-2010, 03:20 PM	#9
alecE Evangelist Posts: 412 Karma: 546196 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: UK canal boat Device: sony prs505, prs650, kobo Glo HD liseuses	I keep my ebooks on an external 1Tb drive (I do use that for other stuff as well!). For convenience I have a ebooks folder structure where I keep the works-in-progress plus the original and (shhh, un-drm'd versions), art-work etc and the final epub where I've created one in Sigil. Then I let Calibre make its own library elsewhere on the drive. This allows me to work on new titles, correct existing titles etc., without disturbing the Calibre library until I'm ready to replace a title. Calibre is of course the interface to my sony 505. And then there's the dvd backup. Paranoid, moi? What could possibly go wrong??

06-13-2010, 09:31 AM	#13
Worldwalker Curmudgeon Posts: 3,085 Karma: 722357 Join Date: Feb 2010 Device: PRS-505	Read my long rant about calibre and its private files here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85232 and read my .sig (the second line).

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