Several questions regarding Calibre Backup

[inkyichi]

First of all is there a program that will sync with your Calibre Library and back it up as you add books? Will keep your meta data file current as well?

If you copy your entire Calibre folder to a thumb drive, will it save all your meta data and series information? If so, how do you restore it all from a usb drive?

If your hard drive fails and your last back up was 4 months ago, can you use your e-book reader to download all your current books to the library and then use a old meta data file to restore whatever information it has? Will it corrupt your current Calibre Library?

Thank you in advance for your help

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by inkyichi

If you copy your entire Calibre folder to a thumb drive, will it save all your meta data and series information? If so, how do you restore it all from a usb drive?

There seem to be two main backup strategies around: The first one would be using Calibre's save to disk- feature to save all books in all available formats to disk. If done correctly, you can then reimport the books into an empty library using the one book per subdir, files are different formats book adding option.
The other strategy is just grabbing the Calibre library folder and backing that up somewhere, including the metadata.db file that's in the folders' root.

Both strategies preserve what metadata is available at the time you do the backup.

If your hard drive fails and your last back up was 4 months ago, can you use your e-book reader to download all your current books to the library and then use a old meta data file to restore whatever information it has? Will it corrupt your current Calibre Library?

Depends on how you do it. Once you've restored an older library from a backup, you could use the copy to library- option in a books' context menu (while in the device view) to get the book copied to the library. You shouldn't, however, try to manually mix two different backups into one. That will most likely mess up your database (not irrecoverably, but still).

[inkyichi]

From what you stated above if i backup from my older copy, then use the option in the books content menu, to copy the rest of the books, then I will have to manually go in and add the series info and the ISBN information for the rest? Is there a way to then take the series information and make collections in your kindle?

Is there a program that will auto back up your library to a different location as you add books?

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by inkyichi

From what you stated above if i backup from my older copy, then use the option in the books content menu, to copy the rest of the books, then I will have to manually go in and add the series info and the ISBN information for the rest? Is there a way to then take the series information and make collections in your kindle?

When you add a book to the library from your device, Calibre will read whatever metadata is stored within the book. I don't know which fields can be stored in a MOBI, but you should get most, if not all, of your metadata that way.

As for creating collections on the Kindle, I believe there's a plugin out there called something like the Kindle collection manager.

Is there a program that will auto back up your library to a different location as you add books?

I don't know, I backup manually. Other members may be able to help you more, I remember reading discussions about backing up a few times.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Manichean

I backup manually. Other members may be able to help you more, I remember reading discussions about backing up a few times.

There are many sync programs. I use one that runs each night. It syncs my library on my server to a backup on a backup drive. Microsoft Synctoy can do this job. There are dozens of others. Some searching here for "sync" will probably find the threads on this method.