help recovering my library
 

Hello I recently had a virus on my computer but was able to go through safe mode and find an antivirus program that would delete the virus. Once I got my computer working I got onto calibre and found that all of my books are gone. Does anyone know how I could find my books and get them back? I have about 400 books on there. I am not a computer savy person so please help in lamen terms. thnx and love the site.

Now that's a new one. I've never heard of an ebook-eating virus. *is scared* Excuse me while I update my virus definitions.

Anyway, the first thing you should do is look with your file manager (I'd guess that would be Windows Explorer since you've had virus problems) and see if your ebook files are where you thought you left them. Checking the recycle bin would also be good. If you know the filenames of some of your ebooks, do a file search for them. If the files are physically there, you can just re-import them, though you'll probably have lost your metadata.

Well, actually thevery first thing you should do is have this moved over to the calibre support forum (it's down the board a ways). That's where the calibre gurus hang out. I'll ask the mods to move it, so it's in front of the experts as quickly as possible. I'm not a calibre guru, just a user, so someone may have an answer to this along the lines of "frob the thingamagummy and the whatchamacallit" that will recover the metadata too (and they're good at translating from techie to layman).

If your problem can be fixed, someone here will probably know how to fix it.

I can't help much with recovery, but if you do get them back, I suggest backing up your hard drive. Use one of the online services or buy an external drive. Heck, just get a small flash drive and back up your books to that!

Good luck!:2thumbsup

thanks and I will do exactly that.

My first question is whether or not the book files have actually been deleted - or has Calibre somehow been corrupted to where it just can't find the book files.

We're talking a PC, right? Open up your Windows Explorer and look to see if the books are actually there. Mine are stored under My Media then a folder for each author then a file for each book, but I can't remember if that was the default.

My library is on Dropbox, so I don't have to worry about any or all of my computers going blue screen on me.

Look for a folder called "Calibre library", that's where your ebooks should be. At least that's how it is on my Mac, but I think it should be the same on Windows.

Hope this helps
Florence

In XP, you could also try

1) Start->Documents
2) right click on an ebook and click on properties

This will give you the path to the book.

I'm curious as to why you would start an identical thread 2 days in a row. I already answered you in your post yesterday.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85430

While there is probably no virus that eats ebooks only, there are some that modify all files by appending something to them. .jpg and .pdf are susceptable and many others.

She created this thread 28 minutes before the thread you answered. Must have had either a computer or brain hiccup. :)

Wait, are all the books still on your reader? Couldn't you just copy them back to your pc?

try restore
 

If you are on windows you can also try to restore using previous version.

Goto to the directory where the books were stored and right click, select properties and goto previous versions. I was able to restore my library when I lost everything.

Good Luck!