@theducks
Yup that is correct. I don't use virtual libraries (maybe not yet). Thanks for reminding me about making big changes- i forgot to mention: earlier in the day I used duplicate finder plugin to search for binary identical files. I enabled the option to automatically remove binary duplicates (refer to screenshot1).
Thereafter, I am left with lots of book records with no formats. I used "formats:false" to search for these records and deleted all of them. They are not in recycle bin (ie. deleted permanently)
@kovidgoyal
Thanks for your reply. I posted my metadata.db here:
https://app.box.com/s/wz031kzyp4wohkx3gonc00shautbblqi
because of the size limitation.
Please take note of what I mentioned above (using duplicate finder plugin).
I figured you are probably very busy being the founder of calibre, so I created a copy of metadata.db and browsed it with DBbrowser to try and figure things out and maybe contribute to solving my own problem.
I noticed 2 oddities:
1. The table "books" contain 88765 entries, while the table "data" contains 92715 entries. (screenshot2)
At first I believe the number next to the version number is the actual number of books, and the number in the pending metadata backup window is erroneous. Now I don't know which to believe..
2. There is a table named "books_plugin_data". (screenshot3)
Seems to be remnants left by plugin duplicate finder? Are they supposed to be there?
Can my metadata file be repaired? What advice do you have?
Btw @theducks and @kovidgoyal:
thank you for taking the time to help me. The support in this forum easily surpasses paid programs, but then again I don't know of any paid program that can rival Calibre.