Restore Library from Device to Calibre - missing info

[katysan55]

Hi All, hoping someone can help, I've tried search the forums for an answer but no luck so far. My hard drive crashed last month and I had to replace my laptop, and the drive wasn't recoverable. Unfortunately I didn't back-up my calibre library properly so I also had to start from scratch.

When I copied the files over from my device to calibre, it didn't bring all of the information over. My biggest issue is that only 70 files are showing as read, when actually I've read almost 500. There's no rhyme or reason to which files are showing as read, some are booked I downloaded wirelessly from the Kobo store, some are fanfics or books I sideloaded.

I really don't want to have to update my library one by one to show what I've read accurately, and I'm afraid if I send new books to the device it will overwrite the data, so I'm at a loss.

Is there anyway to get the proper data back into calibre from the device? Maybe I did it wrong the first time? Any help is appreciated, thank you!

[theducks]

Devices have their own idea of what is important metadata and some do not use the books (internal) OPF. Also this is format dependent.

A Calibre Library stores way more metadata than Dublin Core calls out.

So back to the question. Nothing is better for a Calibre restore than from a recent backup.
Use hard core types keep more than 1. The more extreme of us keep a Few Generations, archived , not just the latest.
Your backup does not have to be a drive stuck away. I sometimes make a copy to a USB stick that has Calibre Portable. Another copy on my Laptop (The master is my desktop)


MAIN RULE These are COPIES of the Main. DO NOT MAKE CHANGES (Add, Edit, Update) books. The real main is the only place to do all that because a Restore from backup will stomp the Master (and lose any changes not on the copy)

Freefile sync (MIRROR MODE) does an incremental backup. What it does is scan and only copies over changed files, saving time and wear on the storage.

[DNSB]

If the books are marked as reading/finished/etc. on the device and you have the Kobo Utilities plugin installed, you can try using it to copy that information back to calibre. That is, if you open the Finished item in the My Books dropdown and it shows 500 finished, you should be able to recover that information using the Store/Restore Reading Positions tool.

Unfortunately, if the status has been overwritten at some point during your attempt to recover your calibre library, this will not help.

[katysan55]

Originally Posted by DNSB

If the books are marked as reading/finished/etc. on the device and you have the Kobo Utilities plugin installed, you can try using it to copy that information back to calibre. That is, if you open the Finished item in the My Books dropdown and it shows 500 finished, you should be able to recover that information using the Store/Restore Reading Positions tool.

Unfortunately, if the status has been overwritten at some point during your attempt to recover your calibre library, this will not help.

Yes!! This did it, I had to select "store" from the options and it updated calibre with all of the progress/finished files - THANK YOU!!!

[katysan55]

Originally Posted by theducks

Devices have their own idea of what is important metadata and some do not use the books (internal) OPF. Also this is format dependent.

A Calibre Library stores way more metadata than Dublin Core calls out.

So back to the question. Nothing is better for a Calibre restore than from a recent backup.
Use hard core types keep more than 1. The more extreme of us keep a Few Generations, archived , not just the latest.
Your backup does not have to be a drive stuck away. I sometimes make a copy to a USB stick that has Calibre Portable. Another copy on my Laptop (The master is my desktop)


MAIN RULE These are COPIES of the Main. DO NOT MAKE CHANGES (Add, Edit, Update) books. The real main is the only place to do all that because a Restore from backup will stomp the Master (and lose any changes not on the copy)

Freefile sync (MIRROR MODE) does an incremental backup. What it does is scan and only copies over changed files, saving time and wear on the storage.

Thank you, I need to figure this out and save it in a few places. I had to redo everything last year too after a housefire. I am not sure what I did wrong with the back up, but I had a few different libraries and I think I'm just going to stick with one and use the tags to filter them going forward.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by katysan55

Thank you, I need to figure this out and save it in a few places. I had to redo everything last year too after a housefire. I am not sure what I did wrong with the back up, but I had a few different libraries and I think I'm just going to stick with one and use the tags to filter them going forward.

They are not really 'different' except for how they are treated (The copies are treated as READ ONLY except the Generational)
For a long time, I had 3 tapes (Yes, cartridge tape drives were the backup medium):
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (I noted the actual date on the label).
Yesterday was the tape I grabbed if I accidentally deleted a file and had to restore it. Today is the target for Today's backup, Tomorrow (was the day before 'Yesterday') Tapes were a bit pricey back then . The big guys used 9"tape (like the ones seen in older SiFi movies), Those had a complete SET copy shipped off site for disaster recovery. The estimate was we could be up and limping on a remote site (we had agreements in place) in 2 days in case of a computer room disaster. Thank the stars, we never needed that.