Kobo Forma possible database corruption, books keep "disappearing"

[pixelpaperyarn]

I think this is a just-me problem and not a bug but I could use a hand fixing up my Forma.

FWIW I'm a senior software engineer, so throw technical solutions at me if that will help me get things fixed.

My Forma contains exclusively books side-loaded via Calibre, with the Dropbox and Pocket integrations active.

A few weeks ago, my Forma froze up. It sometimes does this when I have charged it and usually a hard restart (hold down the power button) resolves the issue. This time, it took longer than usual to restart and when it did, almost all of my books had "disappeared".

When I plugged it into my machine (MacOS) I was able to open up the DB and still see all the books listed, but when I looked at the stored files, they were all gone.

I did a factory reset, then bunch of clean up via Calibre, resynced the books and it seemed like everything was okay again for another week.

Then last night, when I had to do the hard restart again after charging, the book I was reading had disappeared along with a bunch of others. I read a short story and when I closed that, it also disappeared from the library.

I'm going to reopen the device on my laptop again later today, but I'm wondering if there's something corrupted in the file system or the DB that would cause this.

Is there a way to completely reset the entire device? Like reinstall the OS and reset the entire DB?

Is there any chance this is a irreparable or is there hope here?

Like I said, I'm comfortable poking at the innards, running SQL queries, etc so I'm open to all solutions.

[rantanplan]

If you press down the power button for 30 seconds and press down the volume button, the device will do a factory reset. You have to be careful with that. This is the only device I know that is so easy to accidentally reset. It happened to me several times until I realized that I accidentally also pressed a volume button.

[rashkae]

If you want, you can completely reformat the user visible partition, (the part of the kobo that mounts as a filesystem on your pc), and re-start the kobo, the kobo will re-create what it needs to operate.). It's only a Fat32, so you can also run standard file system check utilities to verify it's integrity.

You can also initiate a factory restore on the kobo, (More Icon, - Settings - Device Information "Factory Reset your Reader.").. That will restore everything, including the operating system partition, from a backup image. But in this case, I have a really big caveat....

Based on your description of the problem, I suspect a failing storage device to be a high probability. Trying to do a factory restore under this circumstance is as likely to brick a device as fix a marginal one.

As for the database, it is unlikely to be responsible for the files going missing when you search from a pc. But if you suspect your database is causing issues, you can delete the database file at any time. (From the device, you can go into Settings - Accounts and "Sign out" of the Kobo Ereader, that will effectively do the same thing.). Please be aware that you will lose all your bookmarks, current reading positions, and probably other annotations.

[pixelpaperyarn]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

If you press down the power button for 30 seconds and press down the volume button, the device will do a factory reset. You have to be careful with that. This is the only device I know that is so easy to accidentally reset. It happened to me several times until I realized that I accidentally also pressed a volume button.

I have a Forma, which doesn't have a volume button. Already did a factory reset via the software and it doesn't seem to have helped. Thank you for replying, though. Appreciate it.

Originally Posted by rashkae

If you want, you can completely reformat the user visible partition, (the part of the kobo that mounts as a filesystem on your pc), and re-start the kobo, the kobo will re-create what it needs to operate.). It's only a Fat32, so you can also run standard file system check utilities to verify it's integrity.

You can also initiate a factory restore on the kobo, (More Icon, - Settings - Device Information "Factory Reset your Reader.").. That will restore everything, including the operating system partition, from a backup image. But in this case, I have a really big caveat....

Based on your description of the problem, I suspect a failing storage device to be a high probability. Trying to do a factory restore under this circumstance is as likely to brick a device as fix a marginal one.

As for the database, it is unlikely to be responsible for the files going missing when you search from a pc. But if you suspect your database is causing issues, you can delete the database file at any time. (From the device, you can go into Settings - Accounts and "Sign out" of the Kobo Ereader, that will effectively do the same thing.). Please be aware that you will lose all your bookmarks, current reading positions, and probably other annotations.

Thank you for replying. I've already done a factory reset and it didn't seem to help. I'm not worried about losing bookmarks or anything since this is already so messed up. I hadn't logged out last time, so I may try that and see if that resets the DB.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by pixelpaperyarn

I have a Forma, which doesn't have a volume button.

Sorry, I meant the page turn button. Something got mixed up in my brain, of course these devices don't have volume buttons

[pixelpaperyarn]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

Sorry, I meant the page turn button. Something got mixed up in my brain, of course these devices don't have volume buttons

Oh! Okay!

I did end up doing this. Apparently Kobos have 2 different kinds of reset. There's the software reset in Settings, which doesn't clear the DB and then this hard reset, which clears EVERYTHING.

The hard reset seems to have worked!

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by rashkae

Based on your description of the problem, I suspect a failing storage device to be a high probability. Trying to do a factory restore under this circumstance is as likely to brick a device as fix a marginal one.

Yes. I had a Kobo Aura HD with a failing SD card. Similar symptoms, database corruptions and occasionally missing/unopenable books.