How to deal with losing your calibre library

[MonicaOP]

I don't know how to deal with this.

2 weeks ago one of my pc discs crashed, the one where I had my calibre library and also my collection of fanfics from the past 20 years or so.

I'm trying to see if I can recover some of the information on the disc, is going to be really, really costly but I just... so many years, so many books, stories, fandoms, I just don't know what to do.

Be well, Monica

[Karellen]

Do you have a single disk in your pc? ie, was everything saved on your c:\ drive?
Or do you have more than one disk?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by MonicaOP

I don't know how to deal with this.

2 weeks ago one of my pc discs crashed, the one where I had my calibre library and also my collection of fanfics from the past 20 years or so.

I'm trying to see if I can recover some of the information on the disc, is going to be really, really costly but I just... so many years, so many books, stories, fandoms, I just don't know what to do.

Be well, Monica

No backup(s)?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by MonicaOP

I don't know how to deal with this.

2 weeks ago one of my pc discs crashed, the one where I had my calibre library and also my collection of fanfics from the past 20 years or so.

I'm trying to see if I can recover some of the information on the disc, is going to be really, really costly but I just... so many years, so many books, stories, fandoms, I just don't know what to do.

Be well, Monica

Backups are the obvious answer, but that doesn't help if you don't have any.

For recovering the disk, a lot depends on how the disk has crashed, and whether it's an internal or external disk.

If it's not a physical problem, but some bad data written to the disk meaning it won't mount properly, commercial data recovery software should be able to help. In this instance the FIRST thing to do is to get another disk of the same size, and make a bit-for-bit copy of the old disk onto the new disk, and work on the new disk with recovery software. For extra safety, two disks, and make one copy onto one disk, and then copy from that to the other new disk to try out the recovery software.

If the fault is a physical failure, is the fault in the disk itself, the electronics on the disc, or (if external) in the external controller or power supply?

If in the disk itself - that is, the electronics respond, but won't read any data, then you have no option but a specialist recovery firm that has a clean room.

If it's an external disk, the solution might be as simple as switching the disk to a new enclosure.

It's its the electronics on the disk itself, you *MIGHT* be able to fix it by buying another of the EXACT SAME MODEL, include as closely as possible, the same manufacture date, and swapping the electronics. The difficult bit is finding a 'donor' disk. Actually swapping over the PCBs is simple. (I have done this ONCE, many years ago.)

[Quoth]

Yes. I swapped PCBs once due to a friend's PSU blowing most of the chips.
However newer disks have parameters in Flash memory so it doesn't work.
Also of course there are SSDs, which are only a PCB and fail without warning.

Next time make backups on at least a USB HDD (not a memory stick, BD or DVD and not solely on the so called "cloud" which is just someone else's computer).

[Quoth]

Occasionally I had drives years ago that stopped "spinning up". I found that putting computer so disk was vertical sometimes helped, or sometimes removing drive from mount and keeping it connected and rocking gently vertically on the spindle axis (spindle / motor horizontal) let the disc spin up. Have additional disk ready to copy to.

[Sirtel]

I hope you'll get your books back. It would be heartbreaking if not.

Always keep back-up copies - on external hard drives and/or in cloud storage (Dropbox, OneDrive and so on). Even better, keep multiple copies in different places.

Just a couple of months ago I inadvertently destroyed one of my photo folders by accidentally moving it to another location. Problem was, it was a huge folder and there was not enough space on my disk to do the move. Something went wrong and lots of photos just vanished, they weren't in the recycle bin either. Fortunately I had backup copies, so I could restore the folder.
Accidents and failures do happen.

My thoughts are with you. Best of luck.

[cfrizz]

Runs to reback up all music and books on to my various devices! Thanks!

[nana77]

Imho you can try also some of those tools onto GNU/linux ecosystem, to try to recover some data, or the disk (if it's possible).
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec (this can recover also other kind of files, not only photos).
Or creating a bootable USB with this set of programs: https://www.system-rescue.org/
Here are some lists of tools, too: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/File_recovery

[DNSB]

Sadly, most people do not start doing backups until after they suffer a catastrophic data loss.

As @nana77 said, there are some tools that you can use from a bootable USB drive to try to recover data. It's worth trying them first before looking into data recovery services if your disk was a spinning rust disk.

[PeterT]

Well; I thought I had backups and I did.. but all were in the house... and when fire struck; need I say more.

At least I had an older version of my calibre library on gDrive (as a backup only) so didn't quite loose everything from it plus of course some content on my Kobo which luckily I rescued.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Well; I thought I had backups and I did.. but all were in the house... and when fire struck; need I say more. .

This is why I keep two onsite backups and at least one offsite. Glad you found your gdrive

[DrNefario]

I'm not sure that I have anything in Calibre I couldn't easily download again - from Kobo, or Humble or wherever; or just copying them back off my ereaders - but (a) would I even know if I did? and (b) it would be annoying to lose the other information in Calibre: which ones I've read, metadata fixes, etc.

What I'm saying is: it might be time I made a backup.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by MonicaOP

I don't know how to deal with this.

2 weeks ago one of my pc discs crashed, the one where I had my calibre library and also my collection of fanfics from the past 20 years or so.

I'm trying to see if I can recover some of the information on the disc, is going to be really, really costly but I just... so many years, so many books, stories, fandoms, I just don't know what to do.

Be well, Monica

When you say "crashed", what do you mean? Is the disk itself dead, or is it simply your operating system that has become in operable?

I ask because I've known many people who have their Windows get into some unbootable state and think the whole drive is hosed, but it's actually quite easy to just load Ubuntu or something onto a flash drive and mount the disk so that they can view the drive contents outside of Windows and recover their files.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by MonicaOP

…
2 weeks ago one of my pc discs crashed, the one where I had my calibre library and also my collection of fanfics from the past 20 years or so.
…

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

When you say "crashed", what do you mean? Is the disk itself dead, or is it simply your operating system that has become in operable?

I ask because I've known many people who have their Windows get into some unbootable state and think the whole drive is hosed, but it's actually quite easy to just load Ubuntu or something onto a flash drive and mount the disk so that they can view the drive contents outside of Windows and recover their files.

I think MonicaOP implies it still boots.