Back up calibre

[mjart]

I'm having trouble backing up my Calibre library. When I tried to back it up to an exsisting 2T hard drive i kept getting the error message "The directory you choose to export the data to must be empty" well the directory was empty but it was an external hard drive with other things on it, it had lots of room.

So I bought a protable seagate 2T external hard drive, the first time I tried to back it up using the "Export/Import all Calibre data" it worked fine but I deleted it, when I tried it again on the empty external drive I got the "The directory you choose to export the data to must be empty" error message. Just to make sure everything had been errased on the drive, I went and formatted it again. When I went to back-up calibre using the "Export/Import all Calibre data" tab I still got the same error message "The directory you choose to export the data to must be empty".

formated: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

What am I doing wrong? Please help, very anxious about not having months of work not backed up.

[theducks]

Not a MAC person, but you probably have hidden files (starts with a dot IIRC)
Also, you must not try for the root of a drive. make a new folder, then point Calibre to that.

FWIW I keep a few. I just date-name the current target: CBU20190807

[mjart]

Today's saying "a little bit of knowlege can be dangerous". Thank you "The Ducks" for some reason calibre doesn't like one of my external hard drives, but thankfully, with your guideness, I was able to back up my main library to another hard drive. Good thing because an hour later I somehow replaced my extensive library with my daughter's very small library when i was trying to merge the two.

When you back up your calibre library does the new back up overwrite the old? Or do I have to manually go in and delete the old back up?

New Problem: before when I went to do a search it listed the books falling within my search criteria, I downloaded Find Duplicates plugin which worked great but now when I do a search all it does is highlight the books meeting search criteria. I hate that! I deleted the plugin but it still just highlights instead of listing the books. Help, Please!!!!
I really liked the find duplicates plugin, was the highlighting a result of that or something else I did? Do i need to start a new thread with this new problem?

[higgs]

Originally Posted by mjart

...

New Problem: before when I went to do a search it listed the books falling within my search criteria, I downloaded Find Duplicates plugin which worked great but now when I do a search all it does is highlight the books meeting search criteria. I hate that! I deleted the plugin but it still just highlights instead of listing the books. Help, Please!!!!
I really liked the find duplicates plugin, was the highlighting a result of that or something else I did? Do i need to start a new thread with this new problem?

Solution to this is here;
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=237884

[mjart]

Thank You, If only all my messes could be cleaned up so easily!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by mjart

Today's saying "a little bit of knowlege can be dangerous". Thank you "The Ducks" for some reason calibre doesn't like one of my external hard drives, but thankfully, with your guideness, I was able to back up my main library to another hard drive. Good thing because an hour later I somehow replaced my extensive library with my daughter's very small library when i was trying to merge the two.

When you back up your calibre library does the new back up overwrite the old? Or do I have to manually go in and delete the old back up?

New Problem: before when I went to do a search it listed the books falling within my search criteria, I downloaded Find Duplicates plugin which worked great but now when I do a search all it does is highlight the books meeting search criteria. I hate that! I deleted the plugin but it still just highlights instead of listing the books. Help, Please!!!!
I really liked the find duplicates plugin, was the highlighting a result of that or something else I did? Do i need to start a new thread with this new problem?

NORMAL (OS file ) backup methods are NOT recommended. Calibre is a 'collection of folders+files' that are indexed in the DB. A simple 'copy' does not correct older entries in the backup. Use the Export/Import tool found on the Library icon. . It can make sure all the pieces are together for a 'major' restore.

Don't just overwrite your old backup. Keep a few generations (and on different media That can fail without warning)
GIGO does not always happen at once. It may creep in via many paths. Being able to go back 2 (backups) times ago may be needed.

[stumped]

i have never understood the advantage of "backup" over copy.
with a simple library folder copy you can go in and retrieve single items at will, and you can incrementally update it with a sync utility
but with a backup, its an all or nothing restore, which may have saved a few useless bytes by compressing everything into one big file.
or am i missing something
could someone with a fairsized library backup , made using the utility, post their backup size vs the original library size, please
I am also guessing, that you cannot incrementally backup - each backup starts from scratch and does the entire library?

[theducks]

Backup can be incremental. Just the changed files are updated. A lot faster (and a lot less bandwidth or media) start to finish.
The program I used to use (MSDOS days), You (the app) opened the index and you could choose just what to recover (and sometimes: where to put it).
This is not the same as pulling 'an image' (I usually do this just after configuring a new system or before doing an OS upgrade)

At work (9-track tape era ), we did daily 'incrementals',
and Weekly, Monthly, Yearly 'Fulls' which were also stored off site

[stumped]

yse, but I am talking about the "backup" ( which may be called " export library" function built into calibre, not a Windows backup.
I remember how windows backup worked, and that it can be incremental, but I assumed that the folks starting these threads were using a calibre function ?
e.g. this from post #1
I tried to back it up using the "Export/Import all Calibre data"

so a better phased question from me would be what advantage(s) of
export/import all Calibre Data
vs just making a copy of the library folder
e.g. does the export also bundle in the config data ?

[crane3]

I've found that the dos "backup" is much slower than the export of my small library (750 books, but double that as epub & aw3).

The copying of the Calibre library also means all the library directories are duplicated which takes time & linkages to various places on the hdd. However, an incremental copy can be done with "robocopy" that is in win7-win10; someone did a gui interface so that one does not have to enter the command line options.

The export process seem to compress/zip the library before writing onto the destination so that the process of recreating directories does not need to be done. I don't know of any way to extract a book from the exported file but can be easily done if the files/directories were just "copied".

[stumped]

i am guessing that the original intent of export/ import was to provide a simple way to transfer calibre installations between devices
those who simply want a backup copy of some/all of their books would be better served with "send to disk" or with making/updating a copy of the library folder ?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by stumped

yse, but I am talking about the "backup" ( which may be called " export library" function built into calibre, not a Windows backup.
I remember how windows backup worked, and that it can be incremental, but I assumed that the folks starting these threads were using a calibre function ?
e.g. this from post #1
I tried to back it up using the "Export/Import all Calibre data"

so a better phased question from me would be what advantage(s) of
export/import all Calibre Data
vs just making a copy of the library folder
e.g. does the export also bundle in the config data ?

Yes. And you get to choose what (Library and/or config) to Import (restore) or Export .

To be honest, I would only use this for major changes. It can be slow, doing an entire Calibre (multi-Gig) collection.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by theducks

To be honest, I would only use this for major changes. It can be slow, doing an entire Calibre (multi-Gig) collection.

Which is precisely why I would only use calibre's export/import tool for its intended purpose ==>> How do I move my calibre data from one computer to another?

For backups I follow this advice ==>> How do I backup calibre?.

I use the same folder/file sync tool (GoodSync) to maintain mirror copies of the calibre configuration and library folders as I use for everything else. I've been using GoodSync and its forerunner (the name of which I forget) since 2003.

Today there some excellent freeware tools that didn't exist 15 years ago ==>> Comparison of file synchronization software.

BR

[crane3]

I just did a copy of the Calibre library to my nas using robocopy & the "easy robocopy" gui for option settings; it got done in slightly less than 1 minute! Much faster than the export.

I set easy robocopy to run in 3 threads; could have been more but did read long ago that people have tested for 'optimal' treads usage & 3 threads were good. Also the default for easy robocopy (just robocopy)(?) allows for greater than the 256 character file path & file name.

I thought that I did read that for installing Calibre on a new hdd, the 'export' is better but only because the metadata is incorporated(?). But if I copied the entire library directory, the effect is the same as it also included the metadata file(s). The log says 2.659 g was copied at 4462.312 MegaBytes/min. ( 77984566 Bytes/sec) to my nas. Think that it was a bit faster to my usb3 hdd.

Glad for this thread as did not think of using robocopy but do it the old fashioned way.

I have used robocopy for "backup" & restore my audio & video data, several times as I had problems with bad WD nas drives (WD did replace the nas). Now using Synology nas because the Twonky software had problems when more than 3000 audio albums (did not index or catalogue). Robocopy is very nice for mass copying for me.

[mjart]

Will look into robocopy and GoodSync. Even though I hadn't backed up my entire library was able to restore library folders into program. And I will be making periodic back-ups of entire program and will keep several versions, (like suggested) my track record with electronics isn't good. I'm not allowed to even use the microwave.