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Old 10-14-2019, 09:33 AM   #1
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Dad's PC issue - Books Lost
Hello from Croatia.

So, my father recently formatted his PC and installed a new Windows, drivers and everything...the PC was almost non possible to use due of years and years of non maintenance.

Now is everything OK. I restored all the backup data, applications and other stuff.

At the end he asked me where are my books, articles and documents. More then 1000 he say...

Never heard about the Calibre app before. Didn't know anything about till now ... for what is used and how it works.

Can you help me how to restore the link to his library?

My father and his friend who formatted the PC didn't find and folder with the books on the C: disc so they proceeded with the formatting thinking that Calibre is just an viewer APP connected to some server on the internet for uploaded books.
How can i restore the old database? Must be some way...

Thanks in advance !
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Old 10-14-2019, 09:36 AM   #2
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https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq...libre-is-blank
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Old 10-14-2019, 09:42 AM   #3
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Originally Posted by kovidgoyal View Post
"Your metadata.db file was deleted/corrupted. In this case, you can ask calibre to rebuild the metadata.db from its backups. Right click the calibre icon in the calibre toolbar and select Library maintenance->Restore database. calibre will automatically rebuild metadata.db"

Cannot restore what is no longer on the PC disc.
Need some other way to re-access to Dad's uploaded library
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Old 10-14-2019, 09:49 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by O.K-ing View Post
Cannot restore what is no longer on the PC disc.

Need some other way to re-access to Dad's uploaded library

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and data loss.
Guess which has occurred.


calibre is a cross-platform database for storing ebooks, managing their metadata, converting to different formats, viewing ebooks, and transferring them to reading devices.

The books and the database will have been stored locally.
Last edited by pdurrant; 10-14-2019 at 09:52 AM.
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Old 10-14-2019, 09:52 AM   #5
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Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and data loss.
Guess which has occurred.
So no way to restore the library ?
Even for developers or database "holder" ?
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Old 10-14-2019, 09:53 AM   #6
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Originally Posted by O.K-ing View Post
So no way to restore the library ?
Even for developers or database "holder" ?
Restoring it would be simple if there was a copy of the data somewhere. It very much sounds like there isn't.
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Old 10-14-2019, 09:55 AM   #7
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Restoring it would be simple if there was a copy of the data somewhere. It very much sounds like there isn't.
Unfortunately no

So officially no way to solve the problem?
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Old 10-14-2019, 09:59 AM   #8
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So officially no way to solve the problem?
I'm nothing to do with calibre officially. Just another user.

If your father has an ebook reader, he may be able to recover some of his books from the device.

If the books were bought from Amazon, or other on-line book store that's still going, he should be able to re-download them. This may not be possible for books that were special offer freebies from places like Tor.com.

If the hard disk was quick erased instead of completely reformatted, if might be possible to use disk recovery software to retrieve some books from the 'empty' portions of the hard disk. This is complex and unlikely to be very successful.
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Old 10-14-2019, 10:05 AM   #9
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Originally Posted by pdurrant View Post
I'm nothing to do with calibre officially. Just another user.

If your father has an ebook reader, he may be able to recover some of his books from the device.

If the books were bought from Amazon, or other on-line book store that's still going, he should be able to re-download them. This may not be possible for books that were special offer freebies from places like Tor.com.

If the hard disk was quick erased instead of completely reformatted, if might be possible to use disk recovery software to retrieve some books from the 'empty' portions of the hard disk. This is complex and unlikely to be very successful.
Thanks for your held anyway.
Who is "official" member of Calibre? I'll try to ask in any case ...
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Old 10-14-2019, 10:11 AM   #10
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Kovid Goyal is the author. You've already had his input.
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Old 10-14-2019, 10:11 AM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by O.K-ing View Post
Unfortunately no

So officially no way to solve the problem?
Calibre doesn't store anything online or upload anything anywhere on its own. The user must take these steps (for example, store a backup copy of the library in Dropbox or another cloud storage). All the books in your father's Calibre library were probably on that reformatted drive. If he had no backup copies, then yes, they're gone.
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Old 10-14-2019, 08:40 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by O.K-ing View Post
My father and his friend who formatted the PC didn't find and folder with the books on the C: disc so they proceeded with the formatting thinking that Calibre is just an viewer APP connected to some server on the internet for uploaded books.
How can i restore the old database? Must be some way...

Thanks in advance !
You say you didn't find folders with books...is there any chance he kept his Calibre library on a USB drive, SD card, or external drive?
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Old 10-14-2019, 10:42 PM   #13
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@O.K-ing - did your Dad have any files in Documents on his PC, has he got those back - if so where did he get them from?

BR
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Old 10-15-2019, 01:57 AM   #14
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You say you didn't find folders with books...is there any chance he kept his Calibre library on a USB drive, SD card, or external drive?
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
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Old 10-15-2019, 02:01 AM   #15
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@O.K-ing - did your Dad have any files in Documents on his PC, has he got those back - if so where did he get them from?

BR
The PC if formatted after he puts pics, documents etc. in one specific folder on my external drive. He didn't backup the C: disc as image or similar but just folder by folder in some case file by file. He's 72 and doesn't know how to backup the entire disc.

Seems that i have no possibilities to restore the library
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