View Single Post
Old 10-29-2025, 05:31 AM   #8
kacir
Wizard
kacir ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kacir ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kacir ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kacir ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kacir ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kacir ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kacir ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kacir ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kacir ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kacir ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kacir ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
kacir's Avatar
 
Posts: 3,465
Karma: 10684861
Join Date: May 2006
Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20
Install a Calibre into a "central library computer" and create a new empty Master Library there.

Copy all libraries from all the devices and backups you have to that computer. Each library will have its own separate directory. This is only temporary, as you will be copying all the books to the Master Library.

Open each library in Calibre, select all the books and select "Copy books to library". Select Master Library. Calibre program will prompt you when you have additional columns in the origin library and ask you what to do. You should be able to open even very old libraries, even from different operating systems. (it worked for me on numerous occasions) In the worst case import the books from a broken library, or use Library Maintenance menu and check / rebuild the database from the backup Metadata.opf files.

When you finish copying all the books from all libraries you open Master Library and start consolidating duplicate books. When the book has the same title and author it is automatically merged with existing books when copying from a library, depending on your Preferences. You can view individual authors one-by-one and sort books by title and see duplicates, you can use several plugins for identifying duplicates, there is plugin for searching the Internet for metadata or for opening the page with info for a book or an author on various sites (goodreads, fantastic fiction and others) so you can have consistent naming for series.

Generally it is not a good idea to have *active* library files on network drives, but you should make a backup and that can be on network. Several backup copies will be even better. Some of them off-site is excellent.

You can run on a copy of Master Library on other devices / computers or you can use a server functionality of Calibre and have other devices access your Library using a simple browser.

I am on Linux and I use rsync to make a backup. There is grsync graphical user interface even for Windows. On Windows some people like to use command robocopy and it also has a third-party "graphical" user interface so you can set options better. There are other tools for synchronizing backups, depending on whether you want to have history (in case you delete something from master library and want to recover it later from a backup) or whether you want to keep a plain copy. With bigger libraries a good tool for making a backup, especially over a network, can speed things up significantly. You can also consult AI to help you with rsync or robocopy commands.
kacir is offline   Reply With Quote