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Comment by thrower123 | Hacker News Reader

The one thing I really don't like about Calibre is how it will copy all of my ebooks into its own file organization. There is probably a way to disable this, but that is the default.

Kind of irritating when you have Calibre in a cloud-storage folder and your books are also in the cloud storage, and it uses up your space with duplicates.

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"There is probably a way to disable this"

No, there is not, and never will be:

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#why-doesn-t-calibr...

Calibre's library is meant to be the place where you store your books.

I'm curious why you want to store a second copy outside Calibre. Is it because:

1. Calibre doesn't allow you to find books the way you want? (e.g. tagging doesn't have the all metadata you want)

2. You have other software (e.g. ebook reader software) that needs to read ebook files, and it's impossible/inconvenient to use Calibre's OPDS server for that purpose?

3. Some other reason?

I've already got them organized. At this point some of these PDFs and CHM and LIT files could get drafted, they're so old.

Same reason here: by the time Calibre was moderately usable, I had a thousand plus ebooks and an organizing system.

From the linked Calibre FAQ:

> Why doesn’t calibre let me store books in my own folder structure?

> ... a search/tagging based interface is superior to folders ...

> ... much more efficient than any possible folder scheme you could come up with ...

Quite opinionated software. That and the quirky UI are reasons why I only use Calibre for a conversion or de-DRM here and there. Jump in, flail around until task done, fast exit.

I just dislike library software in general. I like files, I like keeping files neatly in folders and subfolders (and adding tags in filenames if necessary), so that I can easily use whatever software I like at the time on whatever platform to view or edit them, without ever being dependent on any. I organize all my movies, music, photos, documents, etc. this way, and I didn't want to hand over my ebooks to some software to keep it organized in its own way.

I don't even like it if a program scans my existing files to form a database without affecting them; but as long as it's not too in-my-face I guess I don't mind it so much; as I can get rid of the software and its database whenever I like, and I wouldn't notice anything was different. But Calibre decidedly takes the opposite approach, so, as the link says, I decided it's not for me. There are many parts of Calibre that I thought I might find useful, but it would be tiring to fight against a software that actively tries to work fundamentally differently than the way I like. (And I did try it, but using it felt almost as frustrating as using much of Apple software; it's an agony unless you use it exactly the way they want.) That's why I don't have Calibre installed on my computer even just for those useful parts; I just found other software to do things I like. Which is sad, because as an ebook user I really tried to like Calibre, and I really thought I would because I tend to love software that people criticize as "ugly/not modern" and "too cluttered/bloated". If only those things came with a package that didn't make it its "mission" to get me "to stop storing metadata in filenames and stop using the filesystem to find things".

Once I put a book into Calibre, and make sure the metadata is correct, I delete the original. If there's any important info in the original filename I put it in the metadata. Is there a reason I need to save the originals?

I was surprised by this on my first use too. I just decided to give up and store my ebooks in the format that it wants, rather than just the media/books folder I already had.

...and rewrites/truncates the file titles

It is not meant for you, it is done that way by design for calibre's database. If you use the export feature, then you can set how the way you want it.

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