No books, no collections

[ghira]

Sideloaded some books. Disconnected properly.

Kobo says says I have no books and no collections. Says there is loads of disk space occupied. Remount and can see all the files.

Upgraded to 4.37 recently. Have never seen this before, though I fairly regularly (a few times a year?) get the "needs to be approved by Adobe" nonsense that needs a reboot to fix.

Has anyone else ever seen this?

Dismounting after checking files still there...

and now it looks ok. Still, very very odd.

[Cootey]

Have you tried repairing your Kobo account (More>Settings>Device Information>Repair)? I realize that it is intended to repair your Kobo account, and you sideloaded, but I’ve found that sometimes a repair fixes corrupt databases.

Also, did you verify that the books are residing on your Kobo just in case something went wrong during the first transfer? And did you sideload to the mounted root directory and not some other directory?

[ghira]

Yes I put the sideloaded books in the root directory. Repairing account seems worth a try, thanks.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ghira

Yes I put the sideloaded books in the root directory. Repairing account seems worth a try, thanks.

Hopefully, in a directory off the root directory and not directly in the root directory. That has a limited number of directory entries available.

[MerlinMama]

This has been happening to me as well. Whenever I power on my Kobo (Sage, just recently updated to 4.37.21533), out of 4 sideloaded books (I use Calibre), only one remains. When connecting to the computer and Calibre, file explorer shows the books on the Kobo. When I disconnect, (without using send to device in Calibre) I get a message as though it uploaded the books again, and the books reappear on the Kobo. Next time I close and then reopen, same thing happens.

I have not changed anything about how I use the Kobo (this one and all previous Kobos I've owned over the past 5+ years), and it really started after I updated the software.

Will try repair, just in case

[ghira]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Hopefully, in a directory off the root directory and not directly in the root directory. That has a limited number of directory entries available.

Thank you. I had never heard that. Searching in this forum I see the limit is 65k, which I am absolutely nowhere near. Still, hm.

[ghira]

Originally Posted by MerlinMama

This has been happening to me as well. Whenever I power on my Kobo (Sage, just recently updated to 4.37.21533), out of 4 sideloaded books (I use Calibre), only one remains.

Mine said there were no books at all, sideloaded or purchased. And no collections.

[MerlinMama]

After I posted here, I got an error message when connecting (which didn't happen before). It says I have a "CorruptError: database disk image is malformed". Probably not the same problem at all, just a similar symptom

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ghira

Thank you. I had never heard that. Searching in this forum I see the limit is 65k, which I am absolutely nowhere near. Still, hm.

Remember that a file/directory can and will use more than one directory entry depending on the length of the name. One entry will be used for the short (8.3) filename and misc. info and an extra entry will be used for every 13 characters in the long file name. That is a file called this_is_a_somewhat_long_filename - author_names.epub which is 53 characters long would need 6 directory entries (1 for the short filename and file date, etc. plus 5 for the long filename). So that 'generous' looking 65,535 directory entries can get consumed very rapidly.

[ghira]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Remember that a file/directory can and will use more than one directory entry depending on the length of the name.[...] So that 'generous' looking 65,535 directory entries can get consumed very rapidly.

I didn't know this until I saw the earlier message about the limit. Thanks.

Hmm.

If I move all my books to a subdirectory now will that zap reading progress?

What's the limit on entries in a subdirectory, or is it so high that for all practical purposes it might as well be infinite?

[Aleron Ives]

If you create a Books folder with sub-folders for each author, you'll have effectively no limits on how many books you can store.

[ghira]

I had somehow always imagined I was just supposed to put books in the root directory so had never really considered other ways to do it. Thanks. I might do "Books" with as you say authors under it, but also magazine titles and whatnot.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

If you create a Books folder with sub-folders for each author, you'll have effectively no limits on how many books you can store.

And eventually you end up with a lot of empty directories. Directories by author is a bad idea (IMHO).

I put my eBooks in a directory called Books. If you want more directories, Books 2, Books3, etc. Or you could do directories by genre.

[ghira]

I have large numbers of issues of magazines like Lightspeed, Uncanny and Locus so giving them their own folders might make sense for a start.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Directories by author is a bad idea (IMHO).

Much better than any other scheme and if you have too many authors then use Books or ebooks etc as a top level.
Even if each author used in reality 6 directory entries that's over 10,000 authors.
A 32 G byte storage (and part would be OS unless a separate SD card) would allow maybe 18,000 books (depending on text vs illustrations, PDFs with scans, comics etc so can be more or less). You'd likely run out of storage before the author entries have used up the directory space in FAT32 root.

A larger storage than 32 G would want a top level and at 32 G it's debatable.

But you don't want titles in the top level! They are longer than authors on average and would be 1 per book.

My Calibre Library has 1528 folders/directories for authors but 6187 books (most in multiple formats except PDFs). It would take 16 years to read that at an average of one book a day.

Of course if you had a castle or mansion and a massive (inherited?) library which is updated by the butler at "money no object" you'd only read titles you wanted to read, not plan to read all of them. I've a small library that used to be a bedroom that escapes into other rooms so about 3,000 paper books/texts.

My TBR pile isn't all the unread books. I add a few PD ones most days.

So an advantage of an ereader is that you can carry your whole library and read a book on a whim, unless you have acquired a huge number of books that would take a lifetime to read.

Conclusion: A top level folder/directory is a good idea. Calibre supports that and with a Kobo you can save the reading positions/status, move the ebooks, disconnect/reconnect and restore the position/status. The worst thing is titles in the root. Author folders are not a big issue and the best way under a top level. Any storage more than 32G should absolutely have a top level and at 16 G and less author folders are certainly OK