Successful hack - backup & restore of markups, possible solution for researchers

[metaman]

The way I read is to make highlights as I go along. Then after finishing a book I like to come back and read only the highlights as a way of better assimilating the material. Unfortunately when we try to export our highlights to an RTF file using the Sony Reader Library software, only the first 100 characters of each highlighted paragraph are saved. So for me, this is not a solution.

I next looked at marking up the paragraphs with the handwriting tool, as a quick and dirty way to remember the paragraphs that are important to me. This is a compromise that would work for me because the Reader Library software allows me to quickly find the next markup and manually copy and past the text from the paragraph I thought was important into a text file or Word document. It's not fully automatic but for me it's a workable solution to get my highlights from the reader device.

However, I want a way to save my markups. What happens to the markups if I need to delete a book I spent hours reading and marking up? What happens if I lose my reader device, or need to format it? You lose all your work and Sony do not provide a way to save your work, so I started hacking around to see if there was a workaround, and what follows is an account of what I found.

Once you have marked up your book and want to backup your work, you need to save the following files/folders:

1. database\cache\cacheExt.xml
2. database\cache\media.xml
3. database\markup\database\media\books\MYPDF.pdf (folder)
4. database\media\books\MYPDF.pdf
5. Digital Editions\Annotations\database\media\books\MYPDF.pd f.annot

If you later want to restore your markups, having deleted your book from the device then here are the steps:

1. First, manually copy 3, 4 & 5 back into the correct folders on the Reader.
2. Second, go into the backed up cacheExt.xml and media.xml files and hit Ctrl-F and do a search for MYPDF.pdf. In the cacheExt.xml file it should look like this:

<text path="database/media/books/MYPDF.pdf">

</text>

You then simply copy all the stuff in between
<text path="database/media/books/MYPDF.pdf">
and
</text>
and paste it into the corresponding place in the cacheExt.xml file on the Reader, replacing what is already there. Finally, you do the same thing for the media.xml file.

You now unplug your Reader from your PC, and the markups should appear in your Reader. It worked for me this morning. I made two markups as a test, saved all the files mentioned above, deleted the book from within the Reader (which automatically deletes all the metadata), and then followed the restore steps just outlined. The media.xml may in fact not be relevant, as I experimented with not restoring this file and it seemed to make no difference.

This procedure was done successfully on my PRS-600 this morning, and I have only done it once. There may yet be further subtleties to uncover but I wanted to share my findings with the forum in case it is of help to others.

[huari]

Thank you for posting the results of your metadata experiments, most informative and helpful.
I checked the cacheExt.xml thinking a xslt stylesheet or jquery parse could be written to extract the values from the

<text>

element and was surprised to find some old persistent highlights in the

<deletedMarkups>

element from a book returned to the library. Looks like the old cruft is saved which is good if such material is needed.

[raymondchen625]

I'll try this later, thank you. I usually read multiple books at the same time. Hope this also works.

[el.astrologo]

Thank you so much for this tip, I'm sure it will come handy.

[facruz]

Originally Posted by metaman

The way I read is to make highlights as I go along. Then after finishing a book I like to come back and read only the highlights as a way of better assimilating the material. Unfortunately when we try to export our highlights to an RTF file using the Sony Reader Library software, only the first 100 characters of each highlighted paragraph are saved. So for me, this is not a solution.

I next looked at marking up the paragraphs with the handwriting tool, as a quick and dirty way to remember the paragraphs that are important to me. This is a compromise that would work for me because the Reader Library software allows me to quickly find the next markup and manually copy and past the text from the paragraph I thought was important into a text file or Word document. It's not fully automatic but for me it's a workable solution to get my highlights from the reader device.

However, I want a way to save my markups. What happens to the markups if I need to delete a book I spent hours reading and marking up? What happens if I lose my reader device, or need to format it? You lose all your work and Sony do not provide a way to save your work, so I started hacking around to see if there was a workaround, and what follows is an account of what I found.

Once you have marked up your book and want to backup your work, you need to save the following files/folders:

1. database\cache\cacheExt.xml
2. database\cache\media.xml
3. database\markup\database\media\books\MYPDF.pdf (folder)
4. database\media\books\MYPDF.pdf
5. Digital Editions\Annotations\database\media\books\MYPDF.pd f.annot

If you later want to restore your markups, having deleted your book from the device then here are the steps:

1. First, manually copy 3, 4 & 5 back into the correct folders on the Reader.
2. Second, go into the backed up cacheExt.xml and media.xml files and hit Ctrl-F and do a search for MYPDF.pdf. In the cacheExt.xml file it should look like this:

<text path="database/media/books/MYPDF.pdf">

</text>

You then simply copy all the stuff in between
<text path="database/media/books/MYPDF.pdf">
and
</text>
and paste it into the corresponding place in the cacheExt.xml file on the Reader, replacing what is already there. Finally, you do the same thing for the media.xml file.

You now unplug your Reader from your PC, and the markups should appear in your Reader. It worked for me this morning. I made two markups as a test, saved all the files mentioned above, deleted the book from within the Reader (which automatically deletes all the metadata), and then followed the restore steps just outlined. The media.xml may in fact not be relevant, as I experimented with not restoring this file and it seemed to make no difference.

This procedure was done successfully on my PRS-600 this morning, and I have only done it once. There may yet be further subtleties to uncover but I wanted to share my findings with the forum in case it is of help to others.

Hi, how do you access those folders to backup? I have accidentally deleted several ebooks that I would like to restore. I need to run an undelete on the memory, but I'm not sure how to access it. Is it done directly through Windows Explorer? Thanks.

[metaman]

Windows Explorer will do the job. Just do a search for the files mentioned and use Notepad to edit them.

[edelcorrallira]

Sorry for the necro, but this solution was spot on.

That said I use a Sony PSR 600, with the old firmware and had to do an additional step. So I figured it was best to register and share...

First of all I hadn't erased my book, it was still in my device. Its just that for some reason the Sony ereader software periodically crashes and erases my highlights (and I'm currently at training in work, so that's not a good thing). What I did was simply to highlight another bit of text in your device so it performs whatever internal validations it requires, then insert your old tags before your newly created tags as mentioned above.

If I didn't create new tags it just didn't recognize it for some reason; my guess is that it has to validate it somehow (some hash keys or something).

So again thanks! I'll see if I can restore the rest of my work but at least I got some solid eight hours worth of work back

Hope this helps others as well !!