I have a library of about 12K books, running calibre 9.6 on MacOS 26.4.1. I migrated my library from an older computer at the beginning of the month. Four days ago, I noticed that a title was giving an error, and after some searching of help I did a "restore database." I was a hurry that day, and didn't capture the error message, but it definitely pointed to running the restore based on the messages I read here and at the calibre website.
I didn't observe until yesterday that my library count had dropped from 12K to 7K, so a great deal was omitted from the restore. I tried a restore again just for kicks, but no change. I've looked for some of the "missing" books and see them in the folder structure.
I'm hoping a remediation isn't too horrible, since I still have the 12K database on the old computer, and I've had less than a month to accumulate additional titles on the new system. I'm considering a few possibilities:
0) Back up both systems/libraries before I start breaking anything. Export lists of both libraries as CSV to use for merge/compare if things get complicated.
Possibility 1: back up the old library anew, just in case that was an error point. Restore that as the new main library on the new computer. Either:
As far as I can make out, there isn't an option to recursively reimport the 5K "missing" books from the folder structure - is that correct? I would probably move all of the ebook files of a given type into a single folder and import from there, but there would be the issue of books with multiple types - ePub vs original_ePub, etc.
It seems to me that doing possibility 1 should be much faster, but perhaps the issue was dormant in the old computer's library and could recur. It will probably also lose some of the edits to book information that I've made on the new system. Possibility 2 is going to have 5K books' worth of reintegration to deal with, but might be working from a cleaner database for the 7K that stuck around.
Are there other approaches I should consider, or information I should look at first? I'm not super-technical, but I can handle some of my own diagnostics.
Any advice is appreciated!
I didn't observe until yesterday that my library count had dropped from 12K to 7K, so a great deal was omitted from the restore. I tried a restore again just for kicks, but no change. I've looked for some of the "missing" books and see them in the folder structure.
I'm hoping a remediation isn't too horrible, since I still have the 12K database on the old computer, and I've had less than a month to accumulate additional titles on the new system. I'm considering a few possibilities:
0) Back up both systems/libraries before I start breaking anything. Export lists of both libraries as CSV to use for merge/compare if things get complicated.
Possibility 1: back up the old library anew, just in case that was an error point. Restore that as the new main library on the new computer. Either:
A) Move recent adds from the current library into a subset, and add that set to the new main library, or
B) Pull all the recent add content from original sources and add that to the new main library.
Possibility 2: move the current 7K library to a new main library, restore the remaining items by reimporting them from the folder structure of the current library post-move.As far as I can make out, there isn't an option to recursively reimport the 5K "missing" books from the folder structure - is that correct? I would probably move all of the ebook files of a given type into a single folder and import from there, but there would be the issue of books with multiple types - ePub vs original_ePub, etc.
It seems to me that doing possibility 1 should be much faster, but perhaps the issue was dormant in the old computer's library and could recur. It will probably also lose some of the edits to book information that I've made on the new system. Possibility 2 is going to have 5K books' worth of reintegration to deal with, but might be working from a cleaner database for the 7K that stuck around.
Are there other approaches I should consider, or information I should look at first? I'm not super-technical, but I can handle some of my own diagnostics.
Any advice is appreciated!
