Backup entire book library from Kindle Oasis & re-import onto new device incl. note

[ACTG]

Dear Community,

I apologize if this question has been asked before. I have looked around here, searched the next like crazy, but have not managed to find anything so far, hence I decided to join this forum, share my problem and ask this expert community for advice.

That's the situation:

For three years now I have owned a Kindle Oasis reader and have quite a few Amazon- and non-Amazon books on it, the latter bought in various online bookstores which I then successfully converted and uploaded onto my device with the help of Calibre (great program, by the way). So far everything has gone very smoothly, and I have been able to work a lot with my Kindle by annotating my books, underlining and highlighting sections, leaving extensive notes etc.

Recently, however, the Kindle has been behaving erratically (e.g, suddenly it takes one screenshot after the other, without me doing anything) and I would have to either reset or replace it entirely, Amazon tells me, to fix that issue. Again, all fine and not a problem as such -- if it were not for those tons of notes and annotations in non-Amazon books which I do not want to loose throughout the process. Hence my question:

How do I backup EVERYTHING that is currently stored on the device (including notes and annotations), save it on my harddrive, and import it then back once I have a new reader or the old one's technical issues have been fixed? Would anyone be able to give me some advice? I have contaced Amazon and they -- surprise, surprise -- have not been too helpful.

Any help somebody might be able to provide would be much appreciated.

With thanks,

Alexander

[j.p.s]

Make a zip file of the entire documents folder and all the subfolders in it on your kindle. Be sure the zip file preserves the folder structure.

That takes care of the backup part.

If the firmware version of the replacement kindle is significantly higher than the version on the old oasis, restore might be a bit tricky, but at least you will have the backup.

[mergen3107]

If you are concerned about saving just notes and highlights to be able to read them from PC (for example), you can use such software as KindleMate. Either connect your Kindle and sync in KindleMate, or just open MyClippings.txt from Kindle/documents/ folder in it — and you can export every book’s annotations.

If you want them to re-appear in each book on new Kindle as on old one, this will be trickier. First you need to copy over all book files along with their respective .sdr folders (the same name plus “.sdr”, they contain all notes in Kindle formats). Then, you also need to rename the endings of each such file according to device id (or something like that). You can find it out by opening any book on your new Kindle, the new sdr folder will appear with appropriately-named files in them.

[stumped]

the downloaded-from-amazon books on the old device re locked to that device. it you copy them to a different device they will NOT open
amazon should have explained that. google kindle DRM. But notes you made for those will be in amazon could, easy to copy
for sideloaded books: its the other way around. you can copy off the books, but there will be no notes in amazon cloud for those. you have to get them off of the device somehow

[ACTG]

Thanks to everyone, truly appreciated!

I do have access to the notes as such. I am using a little program called Klib which works quite well; plus there is simple txt file on the Kindle which contains all of them.

But the question is really: how would I get them back onto the new device, in a way that each single book, Amazon or not, has all my 'old' and complete annotations? Would be so stupid to have lost hours and hours of work....

[stumped]

Split it into 2 projects.
1. How to do this with books bought from and downloaded from Amazon.
2. Side loaded books

Because the solutions will be different

For the Amazon books, I think you just redownload them from Amazon onto your the new Amazon device , registered to the same Amazon account, and it should all just work, automatically. But in have not personally verified that, others may have...

Amazon whispersync should have copied your notes etc to cloud, so long as your old device was online. And should restore those to the new device. Just ensure that whispersync is enabled on both.

[j.p.s]

You can not directly use the MyClippings text file to make highlights show up on the new device. That is why you need a backup of the contents of you .sdr folders. Where to go from there depends on book formats.

Are your amazon books KFX or azw3? That is, do you get them wirelessly or over USB?

[ACTG]

Dear all,

First of all many thanks for all your prompt and expert suggestions, and sorry for being such a slow correspondent. But let me assure you that your help is truly appreciated.


3 replies and/or new questions:

1. @stumped and others are right, of course: The Amazon books themselves are not the problem as all notes and annotations are indeed wirelesssly synced across platforms. So that part has been taken care of.

2. But what to do with the 'side loaded books'? And how do I get their notes back onto my new device where I want to continue working on them? I have followed @j.p.s' suggestion and made a backup of the entire Kindle documents folder and saved in on my harddrive (rather than the Kindle itself). That's what you suggested, correct? For on he Kindle itself would not work.

And what would be the next step, just replace the documents folder on the old Kindle with the documents folder currently saved on my harddrive? What do you mean, @mergen3107, by saying:

'Then, you also need to rename the endings of each such file according to device id (or something like that). You can find it out by opening any book on your new Kindle, the new sdr folder will appear with appropriately-named files in them.' ?

Just take the entire folder, put it on the new device, and everything will be taken care of automatically? Or do I have to rename the ends of all file names manually first before doing so?

@j.p.s: The books as such are indeed in both .azw and .kfx format.

3. Finally, a question for the future. I want to see my notes and highlights saved for future use and would rather not want to repeat such a complicated procedure every single time I change devices. Is there an easier way of doing this?

Again, with lots of THANKS to everyone!

[j.p.s]

If the firmware version on the Oasis is close enough to the firmware version on the new kindle, you can copy the book.sdr folder and all its contents to the new kindle.

I would try this as an experiment. rename the book.sdr on the new kindle and copy over from your computer for 1 azw book and one KFX book. Only try this with non-amazon books. It sounds like your amazon books are already OK.

Longer term, you need to hope someone will write companion utilities for jhowell's KRDS reading utility that can write to kindle reader data store files. jhowell has already said he has no plans to do so.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=322172

[ACTG]

Again, many thanks, j.p.s, truly appreciated. I purchased the old kindle four years ago = too old? And yes, that would be fantastic and really helpful.

[mergen3107]

Originally Posted by ACTG

And what would be the next step, just replace the documents folder on the old Kindle with the documents folder currently saved on my harddrive? What do you mean, @mergen3107, by saying...

0) You have your old Kindle's files.
Let's say, there is a book in the /documents folder called:
"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling.mobi".
It also has its .sdr-folder in the same place:
"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling.mobi.sdr/".
1) Now, go inside this folder. You should see 3-5 items, maybe more. Depending on format type, there could be files of different extensions. Some are for highlights, some are for pages, etc, you don't need to know them all. Just make sure you notice files, which have longer filenames. For example, for this book, I have the following sdr files:
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling.apnx (page map)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling.mbp (most probably ToC)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowlingad23************************382c.mbp1 (highlights)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowlingad23************************382c.mbs (font settings maybe?)

2) These random numbers and letters in bold (I covered the middle part for privacy reasons), are in fact the ID of the Kindle, on which these files where created.

3) Take your new Kindle, and put any book. Open it, make a highlight. Go and check the sdr folder. You now should see similar files, but now with new Kindle's id.

4) Copy your book "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling": its book file (mobi, or else) and its sdr folder. Go to this folder and replace
these numbers and letters with new ID.
Done.

If you do it correctly, then now you should have all of your highlights made on old Kindle visible on new Kindle.
If not — you will see there are new files ".mbp1" and other which have new Kindle's ID.

That's it!

[mergen3107]

How many books do you have?
If a few, then you could probably do this by hand.
If a lot, then I could possible try to make a script to automate the process of renaming.
Which PC operating system do you use for transferring books to Kindle? Windows/Linux/Mac?

[mergen3107]

(for those curious about these Kindle's ID: )
With JB, this ID can be found in /var/local/java/prefs/ , there are two files with this ID:
ad23************************382c.reader.glb
ad23************************382c.reader.pref

So this is particular ID assigned to the Amazon reader-booklet based on device hardware. I don't know whether it can be the same within the same production batch, but I tested this procedure of transferring between Kindle 4 Non-Touch and Kindle Paperwhite 3, and IDs where of course different.
It worked! I was able to see all highlights from one Kindle on another, both ways.

[ACTG]

Dear mergen3107 et al,

Once again, many thanks for all those tips and ideas. I find it quite impressive and actually heart-wearming to encounter such a community of helpful and knowledgeable experts here, hence kudos to everyone!

Now with regard to the various questions and points:

1. The firmware version of the 'old' Kindle is 5.12.4

2. I have a total of about 300 books on that device. What I find a bit confusing that some of the folders mentioned are seemingly empty whereas have tons of different files. For a third group no folders exist whatsoever. All pretty confusing, I am afraid.

3. I am on a Mac and use calibre (https://calibre-ebook.com/) to manage all those ebooks. Originally I had assumed the program would be able to handle the back and forth of all files including notes etc. but, alas, that does not seem to be the case.


Finally, now that I know that this should be doable and _think_ I know how to approach the problem, I have actually decided to wait for a bit before I start moving everything, until the new Oasis generation is out, to be precise. Once they are on the market, I will instantly get hold of one, start the migration process and surely report back should I run into difficulties (or not).

In the meantime, many thanks again to everybody, your help is truly appreciated, and keep up the good work here!

Very best


ACTG

[stumped]

i think you will find that if calibre manages the USB sideload it puts books neatly into sub folders.

, should those books be deleted via device menus later on, you may end up with empty orphan folders as the Kindle software does not clean up