[davidfor]

Originally Posted by marp68

Ah, just backup the DE annotation files seems great. Putting it and the book back in the same place seems easy and seems like a nice backup solution for kobo readers anyway. Just backup the DE file after finishing the book. Would this mean that opening the book in the restored/new kobo reader, one would see the annotations/markups?

Yes, that's the way it works. The Kobo device looks for the annotations file and loads it in place of whatever is in the database.

As long as the book hasn't been chnaged in someway.

That's a limitation for all the bookmark methods I know of. They contain references to the structure of the book and the code. If that changes, the bookmark becomes invalid.

And I doubt it would work with another reader that doesn't use DE files, right?

Maybe. Or maybe with a little work. I have transferred the annotations file from a Kobo to ADE on my PC, but I had to fiddle with it a little bit. From memory, there was an identifier in the file that was different. It's possible that if I had used ADE to send the book to the device, that it would have worked. I don't have another ereader that uses RMSDK to test with.

Also putting back the Bookmarks table wouldn't be hard. But exactly how do you dump the Bookmark tabel from the database? And does it not only contains bookmarks?

No, it isn't hard. The simplest thing is to backup the full database. Then when needed use an SQLite manager to dump the table from the backup to a file and then load that into the database on the device.

The Bookmarks table contains the details for all bookmarks, annotations and highlights on the device.

Backing up the whole disk is tempting, but wouldn't using the backup maybe be problematic replacing also the functioning software etc in the restored/new Kobo device. Btw, do you mean just making a normal image copy of the disk, firmware, patches, books, settings, etc?

I meant backing you the user visible partition. There are two partitions that do not get presented to the PC when you connect the device. You cant touch these partitions without removing the internal SD card, or doing a bit of work. You can wipe the user partition and the device will just recreate it the next time you restart it.

Kind of strange that the manufactures of the ereaders haven't made it easy to backup the whole thing. I mean, if they advertise them with the possibility to store 2000 books with markups and annotations, they should understand that people want a secure and easy way to backup these things. Not only books bought from their own platform and not only to a cloud, but also to a computer or backup harddrive. The Tolino at least lets people synch all books, even those not bought at the the Tolino platform ebook sellers. That's a nice gesture.

A secure way to backup this stuff means a lot of money spent developing it. That isn't really in their interest as the number of people who care is a lot lower than you think. Whether to syncing non-shop books is a decision they had to make. Again, there are development costs, but there are also legal considerations. Someone has said there is something in the Canadian privacy laws that made it a problem. Plus there is the simple issue of copyright. Can they do this legally? Amazon has decided they can, and apparently Tolino has. Maybe they have better lawyers the Kobo.