The first time I run Calibre after a system restart, if I do a search it takes 1--2 minutes for the results. After that it is 1--2 seconds. Frequently the screen dims and says Calibre is not responding, but if I wait long enough, it comes back with the search results. This occurs only the first time following a system restart, and is 100.00% repeatable. If I had to guess, I would say that it is rebuilding an index file each time the program starts up following a system restart, thus the delay.

Calibre makes it so difficult to file a bug report that I have more than once given up in frustration.

This problem began with my new computer running Windows 8.1, and I don't know if this is really a Calibre bug or just something wonky with my computer.

Does anybody else have problems with Calibre on Windows 8.1?

tanstaafl.

I don't use Calibre, but I doubt this is a bug. It sounds more like it puts its index into cache the first time round, and then just reads it from cache from then on.

I know you have quite an extensive collection of ebooks, so I can imagine your index file would be quite large. Maybe you should consider installing Calibre onto your SSD drive instead of your other harddisk. IIRC you don't really install stuff onto your SSD, right? In this case, I'm guessing it would make a big difference.

All of my software is installed on the SSD, including Calibre; I don't keep any data there.

Wouldn't the cached index be kept with the program?

tanstaafl.

Not necessarily, it could just as well reside where the data is located. It could also be re-built (or re-checked) every time you reboot your computer, which could cause these sorts of slowdowns. Maybe you can define this in in Calibre's preferences?

Not likely with any semi recent program that is following the platform standards. The cache in this case would be user specific, and data that doesn't need to be backed up or migrated to different machines as part of your user profile. Thus on Windows, the "proper" place would be inside your user folder, likely C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Calibre or similar. Local in this folder path indicates it's data that is not automatically propagated around if your computer is part of a Windows domain with profile roaming enabled.

Though not all programs follow this recommendation, so it's usually hard to generalize across much at all.

I'm pretty sure it is kept on the same drive as the data -- take a look at the attached.

Calibre is pretty good about answering tech support questions, I'll ask them about the problem.

db

Well, it took several hours, but I got an answer back from Kovid Goyal himself (the primary author of Calibre) and he said:

And the way calibre works is
that when the library is first loaded, all the db contents are read into
memory. Searches then take place in memory with no disk activity.

The only exception to that is that you have defined a custom column that
shows what formats are available for a book. This will cause disk
activity when searching since calibre has to verify the individual
format files exist. This info is then cached.

You can work around that in two ways:

1) Remove the formats column and replace it with a approximate_formats
column that does not verify on disk status, use the template
{:'approximate_formats()'} instead of {formats}

2) Go to preferences->searching and restrict the list of columns
searched for unprefixed searches.


I went for option #2, and that solved the problem.

tanstaafl.