No available formats - epubs disappeared?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by theducks

D: is normally a removable (CD/DVD) drive for most off the shelf PC's
(a bunch of us have 2 or more internal HD, So I also have a D: )
Did you try and restore or something from a CD/DVD? Or did you fix a Missing CD drive? This might be a letter shift that can happen under certain conditions.

Thumb rule for (default assignment) letters: Floppies (A, B), Internal HD start at C:, Next comes other Internal drives (CD, DVD, Zip ), Next comes removable drives (SD cards), External detachable (USB/FW) drives <<A device that appears as a drive, might fall here.

On my computers with 2 internal disk drives (SSD and/or HDD), the second disk drive is D: the optical, if present is E: - been ever thus.

BR

[Katsunami]

If you did actually delete the books and the file recovery tool is able to get them back, the chance that your entire library is recovered perfectly is still very small.

I would have the tool recover all the books, and copy the files to one (new) folder, if it can do that. If not, recover the files, then search for the EPUBs using the Windows Search function, and copy the books to a new folder on your desktop yourself.

Then remove all the books and libraries and create new ones. Lastly, re-import all your books from the new folder on the desktop.

And finally, go create at least three backups... good luck.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by mariekes

@BR: I ran Recuva. It has found a good deal of the lost books. But unfortunately most are tagged unrecoverable because they have been overwritten :-(
Most books appear to be in the recycle bin, but some are in an unknown location D:\?\ What does that mean?

Attachment 147627
For those with "a green dot" can the epub simply be "recovered" by right-click and then magically all is well? :-)

Yes but restore it to another drive, recovery is not done by updating the MFT like restore from the recycle bin, it's a bytewise copy, hence Recuva can write over another restorable (green dot) file. So restore the green dots to a scratch folder on C: - I would create the folder on the desktop - right click->New>Folder FromRecuva.

Then I suggest you create a fresh calibre library (e.g. 'Ex Recuva Books') and add the books to it from the scratch folder. I would then

• eyeball the book format files (ie is Bleak House.epub actually Bleak House by Dickens or The Hobbit by Tolkien);
• fix the metadata - title, author and ISBN at least;
• run Find Duplicates->Library Duplicates against your 'main library' to make sure there are no duplicates
• use Copy to Library to move (copy delete after copy) the non duplicate books from the Ex Recuva Books library to your main library.

It would appear from your screen shot that the EPUBs were in the Recycle Bin, but since they were put there it's been emptied. If you can post a screen shot from Recuva for a green dot file that was in the Recycle Bin I can probably suggest how it got there. My current guess is that you did it inadvertently from within calibre.

Have you suppressed the following confirm message via unchecking this box at some time...



If so, you can get it back via clicking Preferences->Behaviour->Reset all disabled confirmation dialogues

Hmmm - if one selects some books, taps Alt+Del, and then selects a format there is no confirm message Ψ²

Important : As time passes the writes to drive D: will result in fewer and fewer files being recoverable because of the overwrites.

Originally Posted by mariekes

@theducks: I have tried your suggestion. When I drag an epub from the explorer window to calibre (either book detail panel on the right-hand side in the main calibre window or the book-format box at the top-right in edit metadata, a +copy appears but nothing actually happens?

If you drag an epub into the book details panel on the right, and that book already has an epub it will overwrite what's there, otherwise it will add an epub format to that book. Same deal with dragging files into the formats box in metadata edit. To add a book to calibre via 'drag and drop', drop it into the book list.

And ditto what Katsunami said about backups - even one would be better than none

BR