Is my library gone?

naivebelle · 03-12-2018, 10:34 PM

My mom and I traded computers. I thought I'd backed all of my stuff up but I forgot about Calibre. Of course, it was deleted when I put her information on my computer. Have I completely lost my library or does Calibre save to a server too?

theducks · 03-12-2018, 10:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by naivebelle

My mom and I traded computers. I thought I'd backed all of my stuff up but I forgot about Calibre. Of course, it was deleted when I put her information on my computer. Have I completely lost my library or does Calibre save to a server too?

What is in Calibre is the only place unless you set up a Cloud backup.

Did you wipe the old computer (reformat the HD)? If you just created a new user, the library folder may still be there. have her search the whole drive for metadata.db. The active place will have many aythor folders in the same place (you may also have an empty library, there will be no author folders). You want the ENTIRE good folder

naivebelle · 03-12-2018, 10:54 PM

I'll look but I doubt it's there since I created a new admin user then deleted my admin user for good measure (stupid of me, I now know).

deback · 03-13-2018, 09:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by naivebelle

I'll look but I doubt it's there since I created a new admin user then deleted my admin user for good measure (stupid of me, I now know).

Deleting your old user account will not delete the Calibre folders, which should still be there, unless you installed Calibre on your mother's computer. I think your library should still be where it was originally.

theducks · 03-13-2018, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deback

Deleting your old user account will not delete the Calibre folders, which should still be there, unless you installed Calibre on your mother's computer. I think your library should still be where it was originally.

Uninstalling Calibre does NOT remove the Libraries (or user settings).
Iv'e never removed a user account, so I don't know if user owned folders, just get orphaned or cleaned.

deback · 03-13-2018, 12:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

Uninstalling Calibre does NOT remove the Libraries (or user settings).
Iv'e never removed a user account, so I don't know if user owned folders, just get orphaned or cleaned.

Correct, as I said, the libraries should still be there.

Removing a user account does not remove the software folders (in c:\program files), which should still be there. It just removes all the folders under c:\users\username\*.*.

itimpi · 03-13-2018, 12:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deback

Correct, as I said, the libraries should still be there.

Removing a user account does not remove the software folders (in c:\program files), which should still be there. It just removes all the folders under c:\users\username\*.*.

the default location for the Calibre library is under c:\users\username so the library may well have been lost. Still cannot help to check, and it was always possible the library had been put somewhere else.

ilovejedd · 03-13-2018, 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by itimpi

the default location for the Calibre library is under c:\users\username so the library may well have been lost. Still cannot hurt to check, and it was always possible the library had been put somewhere else.

Yep. I seem to recall that Windows asks if you want to save the deleted user's files when deleting user accounts so there's still hope.

Now if you had done a complete reformat and reinstall of Windows (which is what I do when giving away computers), that would be pretty difficult to recover from.

naivebelle · 03-13-2018, 08:56 PM

I searched for the metadata.db file but didn't find one. I remember telling it to delete the files when deleting my user account so it's probably gone. My Calibre library was in C:\Users\username\Documents\My Kindle Content\Calibre.

Most of the books had been uploaded to Amazon via SendtoKindle. I just won't have the original files if I ever need to modify them for anything. I also didn't get the Kindle folder but I can go to Amazon's Docs and resend those to my PC.

I was so worried about getting mom's crap backed up that I forgot most of mine. When I told her she just laughed. So not cool. Fortunately, I save all of my documents to Dropbox (nothing gets saved to my hard drive) otherwise I'd probably have forgotten a lot more stuff.

ilovejedd · 03-13-2018, 10:54 PM

Quite honestly, user error (mine) is the most frequent reason for data loss hence I'm pretty big on backups. There was one time I formatted the wrong 12TB RAID array (~8GB data). Good thing I had copies of the lost data on 2TB portable HDDs. Took a while to copy back but at least it was available for recovery.

03-12-2018, 10:34 PM	#1
naivebelle Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2015 Device: none	Is my library gone? My mom and I traded computers. I thought I'd backed all of my stuff up but I forgot about Calibre. Of course, it was deleted when I put her information on my computer. Have I completely lost my library or does Calibre save to a server too?

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03-12-2018, 10:54 PM	#3
naivebelle Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2015 Device: none	I'll look but I doubt it's there since I created a new admin user then deleted my admin user for good measure (stupid of me, I now know).

03-13-2018, 08:56 PM	#9
naivebelle Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2015 Device: none	I searched for the metadata.db file but didn't find one. I remember telling it to delete the files when deleting my user account so it's probably gone. My Calibre library was in C:\Users\username\Documents\My Kindle Content\Calibre. Most of the books had been uploaded to Amazon via SendtoKindle. I just won't have the original files if I ever need to modify them for anything. I also didn't get the Kindle folder but I can go to Amazon's Docs and resend those to my PC. I was so worried about getting mom's crap backed up that I forgot most of mine. When I told her she just laughed. So not cool. Fortunately, I save all of my documents to Dropbox (nothing gets saved to my hard drive) otherwise I'd probably have forgotten a lot more stuff.

03-13-2018, 10:54 PM	#10
ilovejedd hopeless n00b Posts: 5,111 Karma: 19597086 Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: in the middle of nowhere Device: PW4, PW3, Libra H2O, iPad 10.5, iPad 11, iPad 12.9	Quite honestly, user error (mine) is the most frequent reason for data loss hence I'm pretty big on backups. There was one time I formatted the wrong 12TB RAID array (~8GB data). Good thing I had copies of the lost data on 2TB portable HDDs. Took a while to copy back but at least it was available for recovery.