How do you maintain and backup your ebook library?

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

I also back up my calibre library to Dropbox whenever I think of it. Could you tell me please how you make it back up to Dropbox automatically?

I also back up my ebooks folder (containing mainly all the ebooks I have designed) to Dropbox whenever I think of it, and would really like to know how to back up this folder automatically.

Anything in your Dropbox folder is automatically copied to their servers, giving you an off-site backup. So, if you put your Calibre library in your Dropbox folder, it'll automatically be backed up. Similarly, just put your ebooks folder in your Dropbox folder and it'll be automatically backed up.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Luckily, I had a friend who had the same type of NAS, so I put my drives into his NAS box, and was able to copy all my data onto an external USB hard disk, but that experience made me very wary of NAS boxes - of Buffalo in particular.

Ouch. I'm intending to set up a NAS at some point, and I'd been debating whether to buy a NAS box or build my own. After reading that, I think I'll build my own - at least then I can make sure that I'll be able to get the data off the drives if something other than the drives fails.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by avantman42

Ouch. I'm intending to set up a NAS at some point, and I'd been debating whether to buy a NAS box or build my own. After reading that, I think I'll build my own - at least then I can make sure that I'll be able to get the data off the drives if something other than the drives fails.

Just make sure what the company's exchange policy is before you buy. In fairness to Buffalo, they did clearly state in the "small print" on their web site what their policy was, but I hadn't read it.

[sakura-panda]

I manage my library in Calibre and I trust my online retailers to save copies for me.

My library is on a portable external hard drive and if I want to re-read a book, I copy the epub over to either Dropbox or iTunes on my computer's internal hard drive --that would be my backup of the books most important to me.

(I should add that I download books to my computer and I leave them there after I import them into Calibre; I otherwise do not do anything in particular to preserve them. They fall under whatever back up strategy I use on my computer, but they are "raw downloads" and not "cleaned". In theory, I could go back to them if I needed to, but am not concerned with them.)

Of all the digital media I keep, books are low on my priority list, so I do minimal management of them.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Take care with a NAS. I used to use a Buffalo NAS. RAID 5, so I thought I was safe enough - after all, what are the odds of 2 drives in the array failing?

That's why I back it up. RAID is not a backup.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by avantman42

Ouch. I'm intending to set up a NAS at some point, and I'd been debating whether to buy a NAS box or build my own. After reading that, I think I'll build my own - at least then I can make sure that I'll be able to get the data off the drives if something other than the drives fails.

RAID is for availability of the data, it is not a backup. You still need to backup the data on a NAS/RAID box.

If you make the mistake of getting it because you think that means you won't have to back the data up anymore, you'll end up in the same situation Harry was.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

RAID is for availability of the data, it is not a backup. You still need to backup the data on a NAS/RAID box.

If you make the mistake of getting it because you think that means you won't have to back the data up anymore, you'll end up in the same situation Harry was.

RAID does tend to lull you into a false sense of security. After all, you say yourself that you only back yours up "once in a while - when you remember". That's what I did too; I had a backup of my data, but it wasn't terribly current.

[mayoi]

Everything goes into Calibre (with the appropriate plugins), then backed up locally and on Dropbox.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by avantman42

Anything in your Dropbox folder is automatically copied to their servers, giving you an off-site backup. So, if you put your Calibre library in your Dropbox folder, it'll automatically be backed up. Similarly, just put your ebooks folder in your Dropbox folder and it'll be automatically backed up.

Thanks, Russell

[Kaysclie]

This is a most interesting thread and I have picked up quite a few ideas on what I should be doing to back up and protect my ebooks. I have a dropbox account, but it is the basic one...I think that's 5 gb? Is that sufficient for most users? I don't store pictures or much of anything else on it. Mostly password protection software and now ebooks. Does anyone know how many ebooks one can store in dropbox with just the basic free account?
I am afraid that my ebook reading is increasing by megabytes now that I have a kindle3 and the sony T1!

[K. Molen]

Originally Posted by Kaysclie

I have a dropbox account, but it is the basic one...I think that's 5 gb? Is that sufficient for most users?

Well, the best way to answer that for you is to go to the folder where you have your Calibre books stored (if you click on "Switch/create library..." it'll tell you were your books are currently stored) and then see how much space it takes up, and then just do the math yourself to see if 5 Gb is enough for you right now and for your future library growth.

That said, here's some information on my library:

I have 275 books in Calibre and they take up 1.05 Gb. The vast majority of those books are novels and novel-sized non-fiction, with a few manuals and how-to books.

268 of the books are in MOBI format and 7 are in PDF format. And 121 of the MOBI books also have EPUB versions, as they were originally bought in that format and then converted in calibre.

So, taking all that into account it seems the average book size for me is about 2.5 Mb. I don't know how representative that is of a typical person, but you can probably use it as some kind of yardstick to figure out if 5 Gb is enough for you.

[Kaysclie]

Thank you K.Molen.
Your reply is quite helpful and fear alleviating.
You gave me quite a bit of information and from that it seems that I don't have to worry for quite a while. I will additionally back up my calibre library on a hard drive disk and a usb 16 gb flash. That with drop box should keep me sufficiently paranoid free .

[aagstn]

I used Calibre on my PC and I copy that to a portable HDD and Box.com. That gives me 3 places with 1 offsite just in case. I also have all of mine disinfected after purchase so I never have to worry about losing books because of DRM that is no longer supported.

[ManosHandsOfFate]

I put books into Calibre. The Calibre folder is monitored by Crashplan so within a couple of minutes, books are backed up on both an external hard drive sitting on my desk and on the offsite Crashplan servers. I take a bit of comfort in my data being quickly stored in three places.

I think people are nuts not to backup offsite, especially important things like digital photos.

[KarlL]

[QUOTE=Lynx-lynx;2106431]Wow - thank you everyone, you've given me some ideas re not just storage but other ways to use Drop Box etc.

/QUOTE]

One that wasn't mentioned: I use Carbonite which is a cloud service (commercial) that
automatically backs up new items (there may be a few second delay but not much more)
on the hard drive.

BTW, the latest release notes on Calibre are:
Calibre is meant to be a complete e-library solution. It includes library management, format conversion, news feeds to e-book conversion as well as e-book reader sync features.

Calibre is primarily an e-book cataloging program. It manages your e-book collection for you. It is designed around the concept of the logical book, i.e. a single entry in the database that may correspond to e-books in several formats. It also supports conversion from a dozen different e-book formats to LRF and EPUB. A graphical interface to the conversion software can be accessed easily by just clicking the "Convert E-books" button.

Supported input formats are: MOBI, LIT, PRC, EPUB, ODT, HTML, CBR, CBZ, RTF, TXT, PDF and LRS.