[ayoshak]

Hi BetterRed, to unconfuse things:
All my eBooks are stored on external USB hard disk. Recently I downloaded Calibre to be able to transfer books onto my new KOBO (RIP BeBook). That forced me into starting the creation of Calibre library, on the same disk. Only after I processed a number of books I realised that it would be better to have a portable version, which I can than access from different computers, without the need of installing the Calibre first every time.

My first attempt failed miserably as can be seen from the above. The standard Calibre was installed on XP desktop, the portable Calibre was installed onto the same external disk but from my laptop running Win7. The ownership is the same for those two PCs. But I want actually to be able to use it from any PC regardless of the ownership, otherwise, what is a point of having a portable Calibre.

My second attempt is better, I went back to the desktop and powered up standard version first to confirm all is OK with library. I than powered up the portable Calibre and it opened the same library, no problems, working within XP.

I am still to go back to laptop and see if it will work from Win7 there as well. I will try to copy the library into the Calibre Portable folder structure as well, to see if that might make a difference.

I will let you guys know whether there was a success or more problems.

Hi Doctor Ohh, None of the files within the library are read only, including metadata.db. No copying was done from CD or DVD backups, all data is being kept within the same external hard disk.

Obviously the error reporting part of Calibre needs more work to be useful. The same library opened OK from the same portable working under desktop XP, proving none of the files are read only.

True portable software should be able to operate from any computer if the system is compatible, and XP and Win 7 should be in this case.

Ayosha