firmware 3.12.0 wiped out half my library!
 

i did a sync of the lastest software updates and it wiped out all my side-loaded books, all my custom fonts, half my reading stats, all my annotations of kobo ebooks, and various other things.

i tried side-loading the back-up epub books and fonts to my kobo glo from my computer, but with no success.

what's happening here? it almost is a factory reset. how do i get everything back again?

It's probable that you now have a corrupt database. Unless you have a backup, you are either going to have to a signout (settings => accounts => Kobo => signout) or do a factory reset (settings => Device information => Factory reset) to reset your database to a known good condition. After that, your reader will sync your Kobo purchased ebooks and their information but you will have to reload your sideloaded books and any annotations, etc. for them will be lost.

The other rare but nasty possibility is that the internal uSD card is having issues. If that is the case, there are several threads on replacing the card and restoring a firmware image.

@tinkabelle,
I would feel especially uneasy about the fact that the custom fonts got deleted.

I've never had an update, either installed through sync or manually, delete any books, fonts, or any files. As a precaution though in case of a reset, I keep a full copy of the reader's contents on my hard drive, and that includes all fonts, books, everything. Then it's a simple matter to just copy everything back to the reader if needed.

My Calibre library is also marked with the 400-500 books that I want to keep on the reader as well. So after a factory reset, or fixing a corrupt database by logging out and back in, or some other hiccup that messes with my content, I can get it all back pretty quickly and painlessly.

I had 3.11.0 and I did a sync to install 3.12.0 and I had no problem with anything being deleted. I have an H2O.

I've seen a corrupt database make custom fonts inaccessible until the database was repaired and the Kobo power cycled. If you looked at the fonts directory, the fonts were still there but the ereader's fonts menu didn't show them. Pulling the database over to my computer and checking it out resulted in multiple pages of error messages.

thanks. the glo is up and running as normal again, except a touch slower when it goes to sleep.

to prevent this sort of thing happening again, i thought i will only side-load books on an SD card. that way, i can always pull out the card if the thing does a factory reset by itself, to protect my side-loaded content.

i put a 2GB microSD card in the slot with some epubs, but the glo does not recognise the existence of the card. i formatted the SD to FAT32, with no success.

What to try next?

If you side load using Calibre, use the new improved Kobo Utilities plugin and you can easily reload your books if you encounter a similar problem with the next firmware update. No need to just use an SD card.