My Library of 4600 books disappeared

[kligy]

I found a serious problem when Calibre recently. All of my books had disappeared. The Calibre page was blank. I noticed a "rebuild data base" button on a pull down menu. 4 hours later about 3500 books appeared as normal including books I had read and deleted from the Caliber Library several months ago.

My 4600 books were still on my device (Sony Reater T1) with a data card installed. Since there were two new books I had downloaded but which I not placed into Calibre or the device I plugged by device into my laptop and put those two books in Calibre and then had them placed on my device. After which my device was 1000 books short.

The only saving grace is that all books I placed on Calibre are saved in a number of seperate files. But comparing one to the other and reinstalling 1000 books is not something I really want to have to do.

By the way, my Calibre Library appears in two places on my computer. One of them is in my main folder -- the one with My Documents, My Videos, etc. and the other on is in my Downloads folder. The main one may have all the books in it but they are arranged alphabetically in author folders and some of the folders are empty. The other one in the Downloads folder has only two files in in it -- 1. Metadata 127 KB and 2. metadata db prefs backup.json 13 KB.

To compare files, folders, and lists so as to reinstall will take weeks if not longer. Anyone have any shortcuts to offer? Please!

Also, I don't want this to happen again. Any ideas as to what caused it and how to prevent it in the future?

Thanks.
kligy@outlook.com

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kligy

I found a serious problem when Calibre recently. All of my books had disappeared. The Calibre page was blank. I noticed a "rebuild data base" button on a pull down menu. 4 hours later about 3500 books appeared as normal including books I had read and deleted from the Caliber Library several months ago.

My 4600 books were still on my device (Sony Reater T1) with a data card installed. Since there were two new books I had downloaded but which I not placed into Calibre or the device I plugged by device into my laptop and put those two books in Calibre and then had them placed on my device. After which my device was 1000 books short.

The only saving grace is that all books I placed on Calibre are saved in a number of seperate files. But comparing one to the other and reinstalling 1000 books is not something I really want to have to do.

By the way, my Calibre Library appears in two places on my computer. One of them is in my main folder -- the one with My Documents, My Videos, etc. and the other on is in my Downloads folder. The main one may have all the books in it but they are arranged alphabetically in author folders and some of the folders are empty. The other one in the Downloads folder has only two files in in it -- 1. Metadata 127 KB and 2. metadata db prefs backup.json 13 KB.

To compare files, folders, and lists so as to reinstall will take weeks if not longer. Anyone have any shortcuts to offer? Please!

Also, I don't want this to happen again. Any ideas as to what caused it and how to prevent it in the future?

Thanks.
kligy@outlook.com

If books reappeared, you were probably using the OS to delete (or don't have OS delete rights, but I would have expected lots of other failures along the way). An mostly empty Title folder (inside Authors) is an 'Empty book. one where all formats have been removed but keeping the metadata, status )


The Download folder location is unusual (and it is empty of books, if there are no Authors folders with them)

[kovidgoyal]

http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq....n-app-is-blank

[LadyKate]

Originally Posted by kligy

I found a serious problem when Calibre recently. All of my books had disappeared. The Calibre page was blank. I noticed a "rebuild data base" button on a pull down menu. 4 hours later about 3500 books appeared as normal including books I had read and deleted from the Caliber Library several months ago.

My 4600 books were still on my device (Sony Reater T1) with a data card installed. Since there were two new books I had downloaded but which I not placed into Calibre or the device I plugged by device into my laptop and put those two books in Calibre and then had them placed on my device. After which my device was 1000 books short.

The only saving grace is that all books I placed on Calibre are saved in a number of seperate files. But comparing one to the other and reinstalling 1000 books is not something I really want to have to do.

By the way, my Calibre Library appears in two places on my computer. One of them is in my main folder -- the one with My Documents, My Videos, etc. and the other on is in my Downloads folder. The main one may have all the books in it but they are arranged alphabetically in author folders and some of the folders are empty. The other one in the Downloads folder has only two files in in it -- 1. Metadata 127 KB and 2. metadata db prefs backup.json 13 KB.

To compare files, folders, and lists so as to reinstall will take weeks if not longer. Anyone have any shortcuts to offer? Please!

Also, I don't want this to happen again. Any ideas as to what caused it and how to prevent it in the future?

Thanks.
kligy@outlook.com

Did you by chance check to see if the library folder still exists on your system?

That would be your first step before doing a "build library" which is from scratch and looks for the books on your system.

You may still be able to "backtrack" to that library if the folder is still there and you did not build a new library using delete source filles.

And again, I will mention my fav saying. BACKUP, Backup, backup.

It is only disk space, so make a backup of your library as it sits. I personally use a rar file for the entire library, others use other methods. Just make sure, whatever method you use, you are able to restore it easily.

[maxwelledison]

Hi there,
I like to backup my library to an usb stick nightly that I have plugged into the backplane of my desktop. That way I have a copy stored away in the event of emergencies. Since it also copies the calibre library database files as well, I can open the new location to check it. I have 23,000+ books in mine. Only keep about 500 on my Sony T2 at any one time. I also back it up to a couple of external hard drives one a week or so. I would hate to lose my library.

Max...