0.8.43 - Books disappearing!

[dmcd]

Is anybody else having books completely disappear from a library when you move them to a new library and auto delete them from the original?

Just noticed it happened today because I wanted to read a series of three books by the same author and found that I only had two of them after moving them from the temporary library where I sort, convert if necessary and check metadata and then move to their permanent genera based separate library. I had imported about 250 books into this temporary library and moved a few strays that did not belong in the one genera and then moved the remainder into the fresh new library. This was when I noticed that at least one was missing.

Checked the library folders in Win Explorer and the book is not there either, so it is not just a matter of a corrupted Calibre database. The missing book is not in the Recycle bin either. Seems to have disappeared into the ether.

I have no idea how many books went missing other than the one I noted as it was a collection obtained from a third person and I've deleted the original file - which wasn't clever when I was still working on it.

Dale

[speakingtohe]

I am sort of a nutbar about backing things up, I have way to many backups

I usually copy my calibre library using Windows 7 copy and I have lost books/formats every time. Same with the calbre move to/copy. And I get no error messages during/after copy. When I copy to a USB drive to transfer library to another computer same problem.

I don't think it is a calibre programming problem using the calibre copy to library function. I suspect it uses OS copy functions.

What has so far worked flawlessly for me is using winrar to archive the library and unarchive it in new location.

I get winrar error messages on occasion saying path name is too long and coincidentally these are usually the missing books.

At least it tells me and I can fix the problem immediately.

Helen

[toddos]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I am sort of a nutbar about backing things up, I have way to many backups

I usually copy my calibre library using Windows 7 copy and I have lost books/formats every time. Same with the calbre move to/copy. And I get no error messages during/after copy. When I copy to a USB drive to transfer library to another computer same problem.

I don't think it is a calibre programming problem using the calibre copy to library function. I suspect it uses OS copy functions.

What has so far worked flawlessly for me is using winrar to archive the library and unarchive it in new location.

I get winrar error messages on occasion saying path name is too long and coincidentally these are usually the missing books.

At least it tells me and I can fix the problem immediately.

Helen

The "path too long" sounds like the problem here. Windows allows up to 260 characters in a path, not counting file names. I suspect that wherever you're backing up your calibre library has a longer base path than its original location (for example, if your library was in "c:\foo" and you backed it up to "c:\foo\backup", that extra "\backup" string may be just long enough to break some of the longer paths). It sounds like your normal library location is safe, just that you're losing them on backups (not sure about the OP's problem), so try backing them up somewhere else or simply leaving them in .rar format unless/until you need to unpack them back to the original library location.

Edit: This was specifically in reply to speakingtohe and her long path issues with backing up, and does not speak to dmcd's problem at all.

[dmcd]

No, you misunderstand what happened. I'm well aware of the file path problem and part of my cleanup process is to truncate some awfully long book titles. I've also tried not to bury my libraries way down in nested folders either, just to avoid this problem.

What happened is that I transferred all the books in my "CleanUp" library, to what was to become their permanent home in a new library I created titled "Biography". The book disappeared during the transfer from "Cleanup" to "Biography"! I suspect that a few others also disappeared by cannot check by comparing the list with the original source file of the books as I've deleted that source and of course the original "Cleanup" library is now empty as I chose to move and delete the originals in one swoop. Next time I will just move and then manually delete after checking that all books are present and correct in their new home.

This has however left me wondering if

a). this is a new problem with this version of Calibre,

b). a random glitch or

c). something that has been happening all along and I just haven't noticed because I'm cleaning and organising thousands of books into their genera libraries right now and have been just trusting that the transfers were going well.

Hence my asking if others had noticed a similar problem.

Thanks for the replies.

[kovidgoyal]

Make sure you dont have auto merge enabled in Preferences->Adding books. If you do, copy to library will merge the books automatically into duplicate records in the target library, leading you to think they have disappeared.

[dmcd]

Oh thank you. I do have automerge enabled! That's what must have happened.

Problem solved!!!!