Kobo H2O and Firmware 4.2.8432

[Witty Username]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

Am I the only one who lost all my collections thanks to this FW update? I have over 100 of them, and it's one of the most important ways I keep my books organize. I had collections by author, series, topic, etc... years of work setting them up, all of them completely gone.

To say I am unhappy is an understatement.

My collections have all disappeared too. So I came here to find out if it was happening to anyone else.

JSWolf Automatic Management will help fix your collections.

Care to explain what you mean?

Edit: You mean on Calibre, right? Not a fix from Kobo.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Witty Username

Care to explain what you mean?

Edit: You mean on Calibre, right? Not a fix from Kobo.

I mean your Calibre side loaded eBooks.

If you use Calibre with Kobo Utilities and your last backup is not too old, you can restore the database and see if that restores your collections.

[ElWorm]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

Am I the only one who lost all my collections thanks to this FW update? I have over 100 of them, and it's one of the most important ways I keep my books organize. I had collections by author, series, topic, etc... years of work setting them up, all of them completely gone.

To say I am unhappy is an understatement.

I just checked my reader, all my collections have zero books. Now, that is, indeed, a major downer.

[ElWorm]

Originally Posted by ElWorm

I just checked my reader, all my collections have zero books. Now, that is, indeed, a major downer.

Okay, if you are like me and did not have any recent backups, I found a rather tedious work around, but at least it is better than rebuilding all the collections.

My solution may have been more drastic than what is needed, but here is what I am having success with.

I saved all the books on my Kobo to my PC.
I reformatted the SD card.
I factory reset the Kobo (note: it will update the firmware several times once it gets online)
Start Calibre and click the "Add Books" and navigate to where you saved the books.
This is where it gets a little tedious, the H2O has saved the books in folders by author, so you have to open the folder before you can add the books to Calibre.* But then all you have to do is send the books to your device, the collections, for me anyways, were still intact and now are back on my Kobo.

I hope you had a backup and do not need to do this, but if you did not, at least this saved me from having to build my collections again.

*mbovenka pointed out that in the "Add Books" drop down menu, there is an option to 'Add books from directories, including sub-directories (Multiple books per directory, assumes every ebook file is a different book)'. All you have to do is select this option and choose the folder where you backed up all your books and all your books are transferred to the Calibre library. Just wait until everything is transferred and send them to your reader. Easy peasy! Thanks, mbovenka!

[the.Mtn.Man]

My Aura synced and updated with zero problems. Quick, easy, painless, and no gotchas. Even my collections are intact. Should mention that my library is 100% side-loaded, so there's really nothing to sync except for reading stats which is, what, a few kilobytes?

Edit: Hmmm... spoke too soon. My collections were there, but I just checked again, and now they're gone. Strange.

Oh well, I only had a couple, and I remember what was in them, so no big deal. That's still a rather serious bug though, doncha think?

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by ElWorm

I hope you had a backup and do not need to do this, but if you did not, at least this saved me from having to build my collections again.

Regrettably I will need to do this. Thank you for sharing the workaround, that I would not have figured out on my own.

Note to self: Buy another brand next time I need a new eReader. One that doesn't release FW updates that sabotage how books from other bookstores are stored on the device.

Yeah, a bit more than unhappy here.

[PeterT]

You know this is the only time I'm aware of something like collections being affected on an upgrade.

If you read books bought from Kobo and downloaded via WiFi or Desktop then the collections are backed up on each sync with the Kobo cloud.

If you sideload via calibre then it's best just to use calibres integration to manage collections

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by ElWorm

Start Calibre and click the "Add Books" and navigate to where you saved the books.
This is where it gets a little tedious, the H2O has saved the books in folders by author, so you have to open the folder before you can add the books to Calibre.

No you don't. One of the 'Add Books' options is 'Add books from directories, including sub-directories (Multiple books per directory, assumes every ebook file is a different book)'

Create a directory, move the author subdirs into it, and do the above 'Add Books' from it. It will import all books exactly as you want them.

[ElWorm]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

No you don't. One of the 'Add Books' options is 'Add books from directories, including sub-directories (Multiple books per directory, assumes every ebook file is a different book)'

Create a directory, move the author subdirs into it, and do the above 'Add Books' from it. It will import all books exactly as you want them.

Oh, cool! I didn't notice that. Thanks a heap, I will give this a try because I still have several thousand more books to go.

UPDATE: Okay, this appears to be working and it just took one click. Again, thank you very much mbovenka.

[Josieb1]

My collections have also been wiped, i only have 1051 ebooks and 8 pages of collections!

I don't understand about restoring the database and would like to avoid the workaround if I can so i'm going to remove all books and see if adding them again using Calibre (and Kobo Utilities) works.

[Josieb1]

Actually I can't make any sense of how to patch anymore (its been a year since I had to do it) plus the 15 line values patch is now missing so i'm doing a factory reset to get rid of any patching i've done and i'll see how bad reading on the Kobo is without patches.

Things like this is why most of my reading is now on the kindle.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

I don't understand about restoring the database and would like to avoid the workaround if I can so i'm going to remove all books and see if adding them again using Calibre (and Kobo Utilities) works.

Did you originally load all the books using calibre? If you did then all you should need to do is USB-connect the Kobo to calibre which should automatically put all your books in Collections as defined in the config of your Kobo driver (KoboTouch or KoboTouchExtended, whichever you're using). You shouldn't need to resend the books if your config is correct.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

Actually I can't make any sense of how to patch anymore (its been a year since I had to do it) plus the 15 line values patch is now missing so i'm doing a factory reset to get rid of any patching i've done and i'll see how bad reading on the Kobo is without patches.

Things like this is why most of my reading is now on the kindle.

Do not rush into things. I think I read on some thread that the collections reappeared after again synchronizing with the kobo server. And to redo the patches you do not need to factory reset. GeoffR's thread will have instructions for that.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

... plus the 15 line values patch is now missing ...

It's been upgraded to patch_name = `My 24 line spacing values`

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

It's been upgraded to patch_name = `My 24 line spacing values`

Thank you.

I've started the restore now, and will decide what to redo when I get it back up and running, luckily I only have one kobo ereader, my H20, and that is only really used in the summer at the beach so i've time to set things up.

I may not even patch again as tbh I just want to read and not spend time tweaking the device. I guess a year of no firmware updates lulled me into a sense of complacency, I just wasn't ready for this update and for all my collections to be wiped.