Copy is shutting down

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Ellachanted

This is all well and good, but other than Dropbox, which is too expensive for me, which of these cloud drives won't destroy my Calibre library?

I use DropBox for my main library, but have a library in Box as well and haven't had any problems with it. Their free version will give you 10GB (250MB files size limit).

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by Conan46

Just curious, I see my router has a usb input on it, if I were to just stick files onto a usb stick and plug it in can I see and reach those files through my router?

Depends on the router, some yes, others the USB socket is for firmware upgrades.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Ellachanted

This is all well and good, but other than Dropbox, which is too expensive for me, which of these cloud drives won't destroy my Calibre library?

Google destroyed my back up library. The books were all still there, but I lost all the metadata. I do not use the cloud library as my main library, I just copy the files to it in Calibre. I have had to restore my library from my Copy backup before. So I really like having it. I'm trying out Amazon, but I don't think it will work because I had to upload the file, rather than sync it. I guess I will see once it finishes uploading.

I don't have any family nearby and I mostly work from home, so I don't have an office at which to store a backup. Has anyone tried storing in a safe deposit box? I realize I will be limited to accessing it only during business hours. But at least my old tax return stuff would be safe there - stuff I would never store on a cloud storage.

I use OneDrive (Microsoft's cloud solution). It works almost the same as DropBox. It has clients for Windows (mobile and desktop), Android and Ios.

I have my library synced across three devices (two tablets and a PC) and never had a problem. I've been known to open the same library on multiple devices at the same time and the only thing that happens then is that the machine that closes the database last makes a new .db file and I'll have to figure out which one I want to keep (but that's entirely my own fault!)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I use OneDrive (Microsoft's cloud solution). It works almost the same as DropBox. It has clients for Windows (mobile and desktop), Android and Ios.

I have my library synced across three devices (two tablets and a PC) and never had a problem. I've been known to open the same library on multiple devices at the same time and the only thing that happens then is that the machine that closes the database last makes a new .db file and I'll have to figure out which one I want to keep (but that's entirely my own fault!)

Sooner or later you will trash your Calibre database doing that. Do make sure that you take frequent backups of it, because it's simply a matter of time until it happens.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sooner or later you will trash your Calibre database doing that. Do make sure that you take frequent backups of it, because it's simply a matter of time until it happens.

How? I've been doing that for several years now, and I've not had one single problem with it (except when I find multiple copies of the .db file in my folder, all nicely with the name of the device that saved it attached to it).

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

How? I've been doing that for several years now, and I've not had one single problem with it (except when I find multiple copies of the .db file in my folder, all nicely with the name of the device that saved it attached to it).

Most people who do as you do, find that dozens of books and book folders also have multiple copies, and not necessarily a single coherent set.

The database is by far the least of the problem -- the database itself usually only becomes corrupted when two processes (calibre, shared folders) write a db transaction to the database without being aware of each other.
File syncing/cloud storage issues tend to manifest as an incomprehensible maze of file duplicates.


Maybe you were lucky and none of your exploits took place while manipulating the title/author of any books.

[Katsunami]

I use this for backing up:

robocopy D:\ X:\ /e /mir /tee /mt:4 /XD "D:\$RECYCLE.BIN" "D:\System Volume Information"

(In Linux, when I use it, I use rsync in the same way.)

It basically backs up my D: drive, which contains all my data, to an external drive at letter X:. I also have a second drive configured at letter Y:, which is at my mom's house. I swap the drives every two weeks or so.

So, I can at most lose two weeks of data, and that will only happens if my computer and the backup drive fail all at once. For that to happen, the computer probably has to be struck by lightning while it's creating a backup, or the house must burn down. If the latter happens, I don't really care about two weeks of (possibly changed) data.

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Depends on the router, some yes, others the USB socket is for firmware upgrades.

Thanks. I hadn't considered it for firmware upgrades.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Conan46

Thanks. I hadn't considered it for firmware upgrades.

I'd suggesting looking in your router's manual. It should be available for download on the manufacturer's web site.

[ApK]

I use Dropbox w/ some added bonus storage for what little stuff I use cloud storage for. I also got a free 50GB Box account a while back, but I haven't used it for anything but to make sure it's there.

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Everything I want saved is on a NAS (full backup raid, I never know what number it is, so that if one drive crashes, the other still has all the data the first held, the only drawback is that you have only half the storage space). It's also on one of two cloud services.

The chances that both my house burn down (or both the HDDs of the NAS crash at the same time) and the cloud service closing down without notice is so small, I'll take the risk.

It's worth reminding folks that the NAS gives you High Availability, NOT a proper backup, in and of itself.
If, say, you accidentally delete a file, or you corrupt your Calibre database on your NAS, it's gone, corrupted across all the drives, and you have no backup.

Same goes for most cloud storage as commonly used, of course. But it's still good to have important files in at least two places that aren't instantly 2-way synced with each other.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ApK

It's worth reminding folks that the NAS gives you High Availability, NOT a proper backup, in and of itself.

Yep. I had a Buffalo NAS with four drives, configured for RAID5. A power surge fried two of the drives; everything lost. (Or would have been lost had I not had a proper backup, I should say.) RAID arrays are not a backup mechanism!

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Conan46

Thanks. I hadn't considered it for firmware upgrades.

Some can actually serve as a printer server using the USB-port

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Some can actually serve as a printer server using the USB-port

I had also forgotten about that. I'm guessing that is how to use cloud printing?

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Conan46

I had also forgotten about that. I'm guessing that is how to use cloud printing?

It's potentially one way to use an older printer as a cloud printer.
There are other ways, including connecting it to a network-connected PC, or just using a new cloud-enabled printer.
Not sure how Apple's cloud printing stuff is, but I've tried Google Cloud Print on two different new printers over the past 2 years, and just gave up. It was totally unreliable.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by ApK

It's worth reminding folks that the NAS gives you High Availability, NOT a proper backup, in and of itself.
If, say, you accidentally delete a file, or you corrupt your Calibre database on your NAS, it's gone, corrupted across all the drives, and you have no backup.

Same goes for most cloud storage as commonly used, of course. But it's still good to have important files in at least two places that aren't instantly 2-way synced with each other.

It depends a bit on how you use your NAS Yes, it gives you high availability, but we mainly use it as backup. We also have a file server for the files we use more often (which is also RAID'ed, with 2 HDDs at full backup). And that one is also not connected to any of the cloud storages.

Also, even if you use, let's say, an external HDD, which you then put away (either in your house or somewhere else), that one can also break down. So, no matter what choice you use, as long as it's only one backup, you can still lose your data.