Now I am pissed.

[Dullahir]

Hey everyone, came across a problem, and can't seem to fix it.

So I have the Conqueror series by Conn Iggulden, and I was reading them with Calibre LAST NIGHT. So I decided that I wanted to save those books to my Save to Disk location.

Turns out, now I can't read them. 0kb? 'Not a valid Zip'?

What could cause an epub to become corrupted so damn fast?

Also, any tips on how to use the Epubfixer? Because I'm not able to use it with the 'Open With' plugin with Calibre. Guy must have been high or drunk when he said that we could. 'Not a valid .owip file'.

[Dullahir]

What's even worse?

I make a lot of 'Libraries' within the Calibre program, to sort my books in different ways and what have you.

Every single file in one of my libraries, 'Classics and Literature' that was an epub is now totally corrupt. I did a search for '0KB' files within Windows Explorer.

Half of my epub collection is now corrupt. I have about 30k epub files. 15k of them no longer work.


And when I try to use the EpubFixer? EVERY book has the warning 'Content file is empty"

Then I get a lovely little message from Microsoft .NET Framework.

Unhandld exception has occured in your application. If you click Continue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. If you click Quit, the application will close immediately.


Could not read block - no data! (position 0x0000000)



Nice. EpubFixer doesn't even fix corrupted files. All it does is fix epub layouts. Nice to have been mislead like that.

[jgaiser]

Hmm? Just a guess. You have a dying harddrive? Never heard of calibre destroying ebooks.

[EowynCarter]

Not a valid zip, mean the archive itself was corrupted.

jgaiser might be right, might be sign of harddrive faillure.

[Dullahir]

That's impossible. I just had this hard drive replaced a month ago. Also, the Hard Drive tests have come back clean.

[Dullahir]

And I don't mean to sound like an ass, but the whole point of this thread wasn't the issue, it was how to solve it.

Does anyone know of how to repair epub files?

[Ken Maltby]

If you have it in calibre, and you right click on its entry, doesn't it have an "Open containing folder" selection? Isn't that in your Calibre Library directory?

Luck;
Ken

I assume that you have rebooted your PC?

[EowynCarter]

Well, understanding what happened might help with finding a fix.
Sometimes even new hard drive can be defective.

What about the rest of the data on it? Is windows installed on that hard drive?
If that's indeed the hard drive, there should be other symptoms. What test did you ran?

I doubt calibre would break that many files at once. Did you do something particular? Do you use plug-ins?

Yup, what about the files in the calibre folder itself?

If zip archives got corrupted, I don't think it possible to get them back. Maybe some recovery program, or a company specialized in getting back lost hard drive data.

[Dullahir]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

If you have it in calibre, and you right click on its entry, doesn't it have an "Open containing folder" selection? Isn't that in your Calibre Library directory?

Luck;
Ken

I assume that you have rebooted your PC?

Yes, but I Saved to Disk, so it transported the books to the Ebook Folder. I then deleted the books from the Calibre Library to save space. (Yes, I know. Stupid move, but I needed the free space.)

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Sometimes even new hard drive can be defective.

What about the rest of the data on it? Is windows installed on that hard drive?
If that's indeed the hard drive, there should be other symptoms. What test did you ran?

I doubt calibre would break that many files at once. Did you do something particular? Do you use plug-ins?

Yup, what about the files in the calibre folder itself?

If zip archives got corrupted, I don't think it possible to get them back.

I really really hope this Hard Drive isn't defective, lol. The warranty on this laptop just expired. And yes, Windows is installed on this hard drive, it came pre-installed when I sent my laptop in for repairs. They inserted a new HDD and everything. And no other symptoms, no odd sounds, just the occassional boost of heat. I ran the Windows Diagnostic test, as well as several tests from specific softwares, such as Auslogic.

And I doubt this as well, and I do.

I currently have

EpubMerge
FantasticFiction
FantasticFictionAdults
Find Duplicates
Goodreads
Goodreads Sync
Modify Epub
Open With
Quallity Chec
Resize Cover
and Search the Internet.

And unfortunately, unless I can figure out how to restore a deleted recycle bin, I gotta go ahead and replace the files somehow. Oi!

[EowynCarter]

Try googling "recover deleted hard drive data". There are software for that. Not sure what any of them is worth though, never had this kind of issue.

Also, you should get whatever utility your hard-drive propose to run a SMART test and run the extended SMART test, just to be safe. It takes a long time, so start it before going to bed. (Or an other moment you won't need the computer much.)

Note for the future : for data that matter, always have at least two copies.

[Dullahir]

Thanks guys. Yes, this logic failed me at that moment.

I'm currently using Recuva, I've had luck with this program before.

Thanks again!

[Adoby]

Please also consider setting up a good backup system. Perhaps using external harddrives that connect using USB.

It would be impolite to tell you what I think about people who doesn't belive that their hard drive can fail at any moment. Like, for instance, at this very mome

[EowynCarter]

Yup. I once had my backup harddrive failling when I was doing a copy, with no sign before that it was about to fail.

So the next day, i ran to get a replacement disk, before the "real" drive chose that moment to fail as well.

[rkomar]

It sounds like when you did the Save to Disk operation, you didn't have enough free disk space for the new copies, so many ended up with 0 size. If so, there's no way to fix those copies, and you'll need to get the originals back. You'd better remount the disk as read only if you want to try some undelete software to recover them, because if you still have little free space on the disk, then each new file will be overwriting the blocks from those deleted originals.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by Dullahir

And I don't mean to sound like an ass, but the whole point of this thread wasn't the issue, it was how to solve it.

Well, not to sound like an ass... When you give such little information, the point is the issue. Blaming calibre straight off isn't a good start when there are plenty of other possibilities.