Hangs during large import

[Ernisius]

I have never successfully imported a large library into Calibre.

After some hours it appears to import at an ever slower rate until it eventually hangs completely.

Is the only way around this to break the import into smaller sections.

Thanks

[Manichean]

How large is large? What version of Calibre are you running? What format are you (mainly) trying to import? How do you read metadata (from filenames or from file contents)? Is your computer reasonably powerful?

And, most importantly, what do you mean by "hangs completely"? Crashes? Are there error messages?

[Ernisius]

Originally Posted by Manichean

How large is large? What version of Calibre are you running? What format are you (mainly) trying to import? How do you read metadata (from filenames or from file contents)? Is your computer reasonably powerful?

And, most importantly, what do you mean by "hangs completely"? Crashes? Are there error messages?

Large is 30k books (sffebooks.com).
The formats are a complete mixture.
Metadata is from filenames only.
My computer is dual core and 8gb memory.
It appears to start normally, the progress box shows the current title being imported. After leaving it running for some time (hours), the current import will stay on one book. (not always the same one) then after some more time I get the windows message something like " program has stopped responding"

[Manichean]

You're running Windows, I assume? The "program has stopped responding"- bit doesn't necessarily mean the program has stopped working, it just means that it hasn't, well, responded. That said, 30.000 books should take quite a while to import- more than hours, if you're unlucky. It is possible that a certain book causes Calibre to choke, I'd recommend trying smaller batches and thus isolating the offending book.

[Bladess]

With large libraries, I had to bring it in, in 3-4K chunks or my machine consistantly locked up. (Good machine, windows, nothing else running). But by only loading about 3K books at a time, it worked.