Dad's PC issue - Books Lost

[stumped]

Originally Posted by O.K-ing

I didn't made any search ... he and his friend did. As far as i understand, Calibre stores the books in one file, not specific folder where all the books as stored.
They didn't find anything like classic folder to save and cause of that didn't made any backup.

I'll learn him now to make occasionally some backup ...
The problem is that more than 1000 books seems to be lost forever

Not True . with default settings, it stores the books in plain sight in a folder called calibre library inside of My documents

anyone who bothered to look before formatting woudl have seen that, any anyone who formatted someone else's PC without backing up all of My Documents is a moron.
why do you think its called "My Documents"
same goes for My Music, My pictures, My Videos

those four folders are where windows expects personal stuff to be stored and where well written apps put stuff

I guess you helpfully destroyed all of those also

& if you think replacing previously purchased books is hard, try replacing lost personal photos !

[BetterRed]

Until recently, the default location Calibre's library was:

C:\Users\(user-name)\Documents\Calibre Library-

If your Dad copied that folder in its entirety to your disk then there's a chance it will be there.

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by stumped

Not True . with default settings, it stores the books in plain sight in a folder called calibre library inside of My documents

These days My Documents is a junction to Documents - and because its has the Hidden and System attributes set you won't even see it without changing File Explorer's settings and ignoring the warning it throws about making Hidden System objects visible.

I thought calibre stopped creating the default library in the Documents folder when MS's Protected Folders feature started applying itself to the Documents, Pictures, Music and Video. Can't recall where it puts in now.

BR

[Horus68]

Originally Posted by O.K-ing

As far as i understand, Calibre stores the books in one file, not specific folder where all the books as stored.

Calibre stores the books in specific folder. FAQ:
At the most basic level, a calibre library is just a folder. Whenever you add a book to calibre, that book's files are copied into this folder (arranged into sub folders by author and title). Inside the calibre library folder, at the top level, you will see a file called metadata.db.

How calibre stores books: each book has its own folder automatically named by Calibre by the book title that will be placed inside a folder named by the Author name and both placed inside a folder (a library).
So you should have books organized in folders: Library/Author/Title

A default install has a folder named "Calibre Library" inside the User Documents. But its possible to have it in any other place!

[theducks]

Calibre DOES NOT store the books in a Monolithic Database (as a Blob).

Calibre uses a standard folders, in a nested arrangement:

Library name (with the metadata DB)

/ Author

/ Title

/ all the formats for that title + cover as shown in the Library + backup of the books metadata entry

[phossler]

but just folder by folder in some case file by file. He's 72 and doesn't know how to backup the entire disc.

Maybe he backed up the Calibre library folder and didn't realize it?

Search your external drive for Calibre; maybe it's there somewhere.

The settings are stored in APPDATA, so you probably didn't back that up

[BetterRed]

FTR: for new installs: The path for calibre's default library is C:\Users\<username>\Calibre Library. It was changed from C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Calibre Library sometime after the Protected Folders feature was introduced in Windows 10 1709 --- because users started to report access problems to their libraries.

BR

[Horus68]

You can also search files in your backup.
Each Calibre library would have this two in its main folder:

metadata.db
metadata_db_prefs_backup.json