Slow Edit metadata window

[BetterRed]

@z.nina - Move the library to the USB3.0 HD, it could well be faster than your 'good' internal SATA 2 drive - I know mine is.

What model WD - right click drive, Properties->Hardware, look up specs at WD to see cache specs. If its not last century, it's almost certainly enough. Unless WD made some disks with very small cache for some special purpose. What's the provenance of the disk. I don't trust brand box builders to not use the cheapest discontinued stock they can lay their hands on.

Have you looked at the BIOS for whether the drive is configured IDE, AHCI or RAID. Again if its not last century, then IMO it should be AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface), I've seen drives misconfigured as RAID misbehave in mysterious ways.

If everything 'checks out' then you should run some disk health checks on that second drive - you can download some from WD. Also have a look at the Windows Event logs to see if its been generating lots of read or write retries.

BR

[Katsunami]

Have you already tried to rule out your Calibre database itself? What happens if you create a new library, and then copy all books from the current library to the new one; is the new one still slow?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Have you already tried to rule out your Calibre database itself? What happens if you create a new library, and then copy all books from the current library to the new one; is the new one still slow?

@Katsunami - I think the OP has done that, and on the other drive its OK.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...8&postcount=20

And z.nina is not alone with the 'problem' - Slow response when click OK, Next etc in Edit Metadata window - couple of others chimed in with the same thing

BR

[Katsunami]

Could one the HD that causes the problem be operating in some sort of very old mode, such as PIO4? (This is, AFAIK, only possible with IDE drives.) This however, would make anything on that drive horribly slow.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Could one the HD that causes the problem be operating in some sort of very old mode, such as PIO4? (This is, AFAIK, only possible with IDE drives.) This however, would make anything on that drive horribly slow.

@Katsunami : Could be, but as you say that would make everything horribly slow - not just transiting out of editing metadata.

IMO Calibre should fly on a USB3 HD plugged into a PCIe USB adapter - as it it does here. If it doesn't then ...

Calibre has an environment variable for redirecting the location of metadata.db - CALIBRE_OVERRIDE_DATABASE_PATH. Maybe using it to separate the db and the books onto different drives might shed some light.

BR

[theducks]

Onboard cache is part of the drive. The easiest way is to Google for the make-model spec sheet.

But almost any modern drive has some device cache


I differ in the opinion to USE write behind cache
WBC only makes it appear faster ...


BUT at a risk when there are multiple files to be written that must be done in lockstep.

(I come from a DOS database background where there could be as many as 42 files in a DB family that needed to be touched-up if there was a layout or structure change. Delay one file before the main refreshed and they were declare mismatched orphans (and discarded) )
The solution was to always take the slower, write cache OFF, approach.

It is your data (and modern drives ARE lots faster).

[chaley]

Originally Posted by theducks

I differ in the opinion to USE write behind cache
WBC only makes it appear faster ...


BUT at a risk when there are multiple files to be written that must be done in lockstep.

(I come from a DOS database background where there could be as many as 42 files in a DB family that needed to be touched-up if there was a layout or structure change. Delay one file before the main refreshed and they were declare mismatched orphans (and discarded) )
The solution was to always take the slower, write cache OFF, approach.

It is your data (and modern drives ARE lots faster).

There are file open modes that tell the OS not to use WBC that all DB-like apps should use. If they do not, they are broken.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by chaley

There are file open modes that tell the OS not to use WBC that all DB-like apps should use. If they do not, they are broken.

AH!
A hold over, no longer necessary, cure from the days of MSDOS that did not have those smarts.

[z.nina]

These are the spec of my HD

Hard Drive
Form Factor: 3.5″ x 1/3H
Capacity: 2 TB
Interface Type: Serial ATA-300
Buffer Size: 64 MB
Features: IntelliSeek, StableTrac, Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR), IntelliPower, NoTouch ramp load technology, GreenPower technology
Compliant Standards: S.M.A.R.T.

Performance
Drive Transfer Rate: 300 MBps (external)
Internal Data Rate: 110 MBps
Spindle Speed: 5400 rpm

[Katsunami]

Could it be something very simple... such as your hard drive going belly up?

To be certain, I'd create a backup and format the drive using a slow format to have the surface checked. Then restore the backup.

[z.nina]

Sorry, you have lost me My Knowledge of pc is not so great and I'm Italian so the more specific your terms gets the less I understand Be patient please

@BetterRed The description of the HD in bios is only SATA 2
I will try to move my library in the external drive asap and hope for the best.
Just in case... How do i set the CALIBRE_OVERRIDE_DATABASE_PATH?

@Katsunami When I noticed the problem with the old library I've created a new one from scratch.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by z.nina

@Katsunami When I noticed the problem with the old library I've created a new one from scratch.

Yes, but a hard drive can become very slow if it has problems reading data. It reads over and over and over again until it succeeds. These hard drives often go "click, click, click" (the "click of death"). If you have a well-insulated case, you might not notice this clicking and the drive just feels slow until it finally dies.

[z.nina]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Could it be something very simple... such as your hard drive going belly up?

To be certain, I'd create a backup and format the drive using a slow format to have the surface checked. Then restore the backup.

I've run a defrag and a quality check on the disc the last week and all seam ok.
I've no problem whit the other program on the HD or ever noticed a delay in retriving data...
If there isn't any other solution I'll try but I'd like to keeping it as last resource
(it's a tedious task)

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by z.nina

These are the spec of my HD

Hard Drive
Form Factor: 3.5″ x 1/3H
Capacity: 2 TB
Interface Type: Serial ATA-300
Buffer Size: 64 MB
Features: IntelliSeek, StableTrac, Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR), IntelliPower, NoTouch ramp load technology, GreenPower technology
Compliant Standards: S.M.A.R.T.

Performance
Drive Transfer Rate: 300 MBps (external)
Internal Data Rate: 110 MBps
Spindle Speed: 5400 rpm

@z.nina - Well that isn't any last century drive - looks like a WD20EZRX or immediate predecessor, 64MB cache is industry standard on current model desktop drives.

I wouldn't be surprised if that drive wasn't still under warranty, so if it has serious problems WD would replace it. I just checked a Caviar Black I bought last year, its warranty is good up to July 2017.

Did you get a chance to try with the library on your USB3 external drive - as I said I would expect calibre to fly. I'd really like to know that before suggesting anything else.

If it shows the same slowness when exiting a Metadata Edit, then there's probably no mileage in looking for BIOS drive configurations, running diagnostics, looking at event logs or reformatting drives.

Also, without having the BIOS in front of me it's hard to tell you how to determine if the drive is precisely configured. But as its SATA that eliminates Katsumi's concern regarding old IDE modes. And if other programs and data are OK then its probably AHCI too, so lets put that avenue of enquiry aside for now.

I'll put together some screen shots for setting that Environment variable. Because that's what I'm going to suggest you do if calibre doesn't fly on the external USB3 drive.

BR

[BetterRed]

@z.nina - here's what you you need to do to use that environment variable

1. Close calibre down.
2. Create a top level folder on your C: (system) drive called _CalDatabase
3. Copy the metadata.db file from your library folder into that folder
4. Rename the metadata.db file in your library folder to save_metadata.db
5. Now refer to the attached image, I'm hoping its self explanatory
6. Start calibre and do some Metadata Editing.

I have no expectation as whether this will change anything. If it does change for the better then the best people to comment would be chaley and/or Kovid, if it doesn't then we're probably back to that 2nd drive.

To undo the above - close calibre, remove the environment variable, remove the _CalDatabase folder, and rename the save_metadata.db file in your library folder back to metadata.db

BR

Tip : to get the path to the metadata.db file into the Variable value

• shift right click the file,
• select Copy as Path (to the clipboard),
• now you can paste the clipboard, should be C:\_CalDatabase\metadata.db

NB: I always start any top level folders I create on my system drive with an underscore '_'.
I do this to ensure that they're separated from the folders that Windows etc create.