Quote:
Originally Posted by theducks
You appear to have not read the FAQ and dug yourself into a whole lot of work .
1)Synch OFF (at least the Library folder) while using Calibre
2)Files (books) may not be added to/removed from a Library folder EXCEPT by using Calibre (GUI or CLI). Applies to Calibre Known Items
One way to recover:
Create a New Empty Library (Local Drives only) withe the same structure (Create/Switch has options)
Select All books in existing Library: RIGHT CLICK: Copy to Library:<new> Delete after copy.
What is LEFT OVER in your old Library FOLDER, is what Calibre could/did not know about. Those are now your job to deal with and possibly add (using a normal Calibre Add Books method)
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So reading your suggestions, this will not help the problem. The original library was corrupted. I got error messages opening it. So copying from it to a new library is not an option. I know how to do that because that is how I send books to my back up library. (highlight/right click/copy to library - no delete because it is the back up)
The copy library was only a back up and never the main library. Additionally, the Copy sync is only on when I turn it on. I do not need it running constantly. The Google fiasco was a couple years ago. And it was more of an attempt to see if Google Drive would work as a back up. But I did learn how to rebuild a library from it.
So the library was on a drive in the computer. This was not the issue. The original library crashed due to a corrupted metadata file. I do not know what caused the corruption. As I said, it was working fine the day before. It is not on an NAS or online drive. A drive check did not show any problems with the drive. However, right before I did the last rebuild, I got a drive check error. So, who knows?
My rebuild attempts following the manual and various posts here were not successful. The new metadata files would give error messages. Calibre couldn't find the new libraries.
I then sorted the main Calibre folder by date and copied the ones dated since my last backup to a temp folder and added that folder to my back up library, which now has a major amount of duplicates. I tried adding directly but got file is corrupt errors. But copying to a new location seemed to work
I then got the bright idea to move the whole library to another empty library folder on the same drive - the library was dead at that point. Multiple efforts to rebuild and restore following the directions had resulted in corruption errors. I tried adding from in place and got error messages. In the new library, I ran restore. It was mostly successful. I have a list of stories I will have to manually add that I obtained from running a library check.
This is a fanfiction library. A lot of the stories are no longer available or I would just rebuild it from the URLs. Though that won't help with tracking what I've read and want to read. Authors also add chapters, delete chapters and add new ones, and generally mess stuff up. So just "deleting" duplicates is not an option. And it is large.
So adding....
Adding only seems to add some of the metadata I've found. Either that or the OPF files are damaged in the ones I have to add. Or I may have to associate the data to a column? I will continue working on it. As I said, at least I haven't lost any books, just my ease of finding things.
But I really appreciate all your help! This has been much easier than using FFDL standalone and an Excel spreadsheet.
