How to save Library path?

[bobnelsonfr]

Hi,

I have a pocket computer (Win10 Home) with just 32 gigs, so I put everything other than "system" on disk D: which is a 128 gig microSD card that never leaves its slot.

Calibre refuses to install to D: so I have installed Calibre-Portable. That works very nicely. The Library (2 gigs, 5000 books) is in my Google Drive folder (on D: ), so it constantly syncs to the cloud, and I have a utility on each of my Android devices to sync the cloud-Library to them.

This all works very nicely if a bit slowly for the Android syncs.

But!

Calibre does not "remember" my Library path. Each time I start the program, I must "Switch/create" to the proper path. Interestingly, Calibre retains the Google Drive address in the dropdown list in the "New Location" data-entry field in the "Choose your calibre library" box.

I don't know the origin of the problem. It may be that Calibre-Portable has constraints on Library location.

It would be so very simple if I were able to install the regular Calibre program to D:. Calibre is just about the only app I have that refuses to do this.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[itimpi]

Calibre portable DOES have restrictions on where libraries it will remember are located. They must be sub-folders of the folder where the Calibre-portable.exe binary is located.

As to why you cannot install full Calibre on your D: drive I have no idea what is causing this. I have never had problems installing Calibre to my D: drive.

[BetterRed]

@bobnelsonfr - calibre Portable expects libraries to be in the where calibre-portable.exe is located, if the library is elsewhere you could use a symbolic link.

I can install calibre on a regular d:drive, even tho' c: is my system drive



I can uninstall it too.

But, before you go much further, you should read the last paragraph of this ==>> I am getting errors with my calibre library on a networked drive/NAS?

BR

[bobnelsonfr]

Thanks for the response.

I think I'll try installing non-portable Calibre, and then using a junction to D:. I'll report back on the results...

As to why it won't install on D:, I suspect that's because D: is "removable media", even if I NEVER remove it, and Korvid considers that there's Portable for such cases.

Originally Posted by itimpi

Calibre portable DOES have restrictions on where libraries it will remember are located. They must be sub-folders of the folder where the Calibre-portable.exe binary is located.

As to why you cannot install full Calibre on your D: drive I have no idea what is causing this. I have never had problems installing Calibre to my D: drive.

[eschwartz]

WARNING - Google Drive Incompatible with Calibre!

You are currently at significant risk of data loss, please move your library out of Google Drive immediately.

If you want to use Google Drive as a backup, use a tool like Microsoft SyncToy to mirror a copy of your library into Google Drive. Even when (not if) the folder structure gets borked and the database is thereby rendered invalid, you will still be able to import the books into a fresh library and start anew -- so it can still serve as a backup, but only if you don't mind having to completely re-import your library.

[bobnelsonfr]

I solved my problem by moving Calibre to D: and creating a symbolic link with junction.exe. (I looked into this method because I wanted to free up space on C: by moving chrome.exe and its 300 MO of files to D: !)

Here's the method (copy pasted from a site... whose address I have lost... ):

Go to the Microsoft website "SysInternals", and download the "Junction" file on this page:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb896768.aspx.
Extract "junction.exe" to C:\Windows\System32. Junction is a command-line program used to make "junctions" in Windows.

Close the program you want to move. Copy its folder from C:\Program Files to wherever you want it. Rename the folder in C:\Program Files to something else -- add "_old", for example.

Right-click the Desktop Windows button and select "Command prompt (Admin)".
At the command line, type:

junction.exe "C:\Program Files\Calibre2" "D:\Win_10_apps\Calibre2"

using whatever folders and paths are appropriate for you.

Launch the program (using the same shortcut icon that you were using before the move!) to test the validity of the junction. If the launch is successful, delete the "_old" folder.

Very useful!!

[dwig]

Originally Posted by bobnelsonfr

...
As to why it won't install on D:, I suspect that's because D: is "removable media", even if I NEVER remove it, and Korvid considers that there's Portable for such cases.

That's exactly the issue. Calibre will not install to a removable drive. This is coded into the installer.

I use calibre on a very similar system (Dell Venue 8 Pro, originally Win8.1 and now Win10) and encountered the same issue. I used Portable, installed in my D: microSD, for a while but had several workflow issues. I then moved to the standard installed version of calibre and used a klug that maps an empty folder on C: to drive D:. This worked OK and calibre would install to Drive D: thinking it was actually a folder on C:.

I changed to install calibre directly on C: after a series of issues with my card no mounting or self-ejecting. While this seems to gone away will BIOS upgrades and/or upgrading to Win10, I still use it this was. My 32gb Drive C: is limiting, but calibre itself is not large. My library lives on D:

[BetterRed]

You do not need the junction utility to create symbolic links in Vista or later versions of Windows, better by far to use the built-in MKLink command.

The only reason MS keeps junction 'on the books' is for legacy reasons, which is primarily a concern for corporate LOB systems.

And if you put 'foreign objects' into Windows/System32 then should you ever need to reinstall Windows you will lose them. Far better to put such things into something like a C:\Utilities folder, and add that folder to the Path environment variable.

If you want a GUI tool to create symlinks, Symlink Helper adds an option to Windows/File Explorer right click menu (n.b. first time it's run you need to run it as admin). I use Link Shell Extension, which also handles hard-links, junctions, and mount points, includes a drag/drop create feature, a repair function for symlinks, mount points and junctions, hard-link lists and counts, and icon overlays etc.

BR

[bobnelsonfr]

Thanks for the additional information. ... I think...

As a result, I have just spent an hour or two learning about junctions, hard links, and soft links.

My conclusion is that for my needs (linking on a single computer, not across the local net) the following commands are functionally identical:

(command line from anywhere as long as junction.exe is in C:\system32)
junction.exe "C:\Program Files\Calibre2" "D:\Win_10_apps\Calibre2"

(command line from within C:\Program Files)
mklink /D Calibre2 D:\Win_10_apps\Calibre2

Is there any advantage in mklink on a single computer? I will use mklink in the future because it is an internal command, but is there any point in going back on the junctions I have already created with junction.exe?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by bobnelsonfr

Thanks for the additional information. ... I think...

As a result, I have just spent an hour or two learning about junctions, hard links, and soft links.

My conclusion is that for my needs (linking on a single computer, not across the local net) the following commands are functionally identical:

(command line from anywhere as long as junction.exe is in C:\system32)
junction.exe "C:\Program Files\Calibre2" "D:\Win_10_apps\Calibre2"

(command line from within C:\Program Files)
mklink /D Calibre2 D:\Win_10_apps\Calibre2

Is there any advantage in mklink on a single computer? I will use mklink in the future because it is an internal command, but is there any point in going back on the junctions I have already created with junction.exe?

IMO junctions are a twentieth century MS only artefact, they don't do anything that can't be done with a symlink; but a symlink can do more than a junction, they can be used on - folders and files, across networks, with absolute or relative paths, and they are POSIX compliant.

It it were me, I would ditch any junctions I created in favour of symlinks, in fact that's what I did when I got Vista in 2007, back then I had hundreds of the beggars.

BR

[bobnelsonfr]

OK... I got rid of the junction links and set up symbolic links instead.


May I ask a question that has nothing to do with Calibre, since you seem to know about these things?

The BIG folder on my C: disk is WinSxS. I looked into doing the copy-and-link-and-delete procedure, but found quite a few comments saying that this could be dangerous. I also found some comments saying that it works just fine.

Do you have any thoughts?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by bobnelsonfr

OK... I got rid of the junction links and set up symbolic links instead.


May I ask a question that has nothing to do with Calibre, since you seem to know about these things?

The BIG folder on my C: disk is WinSxS. I looked into doing the copy-and-link-and-delete procedure, but found quite a few comments saying that this could be dangerous. I also found some comments saying that it works just fine.

Do you have any thoughts?

My advice is : don't mess about in the Windows folder with Windows Explorer - period.

The WinSxS (Windows Side by Side) folder is MS's solution to a problem known as DLL Hell. Most of the files in there are hardlinks to files elsewhere in the Windows folder its subfolders, so they only consume space in the MFT which is pre-allocated space, so they effectively take up no space.

Most of the utilities that calculate folder size (including Windows Explorer->Properties) fail to take hard links into account, so they include the size of many files multiple times in their accumulation. The only tool I know of that doesn't do this is FileMenuTools, its Folder Size tool has an option that discounts files with multiple links (it's an option because it's slow). Here's a comparison, on the left all instances of all files are included, on the right only one instance of each file is included.



Of the 3972 files in my System32 folder, 3612 have at least one extra link, one of them, win32k.sys, has eleven extra links sprinkled around WinSxS subfolders.

BR

[bobnelsonfr]

OK.

Thanks for the advice. I won't attempt anything unless I'm completely stuck, and faced with a clean install unless I find some solution for making room.

I had to do a clean install for the Anniversary update, because the update required 16 gigs of free space, and I already had more than 16 gigs in just the Windows folder (out of a total of 29 on the disk). It's hard to fit 16 gigs into ten gigs of free space!