Cloned my recording drive, lost all recordings

[nv40]

Tried searching for this...didn't see much.

I had a 400 GB drive that GBPVR was set to record to, and store the tv buffer on. I pulled it out, cloned it to a 750GB drive I am upgrading to. When I put the new 750 in...and booted windows..for some reason windows did not assign it the same drive letter as the old drive.

I didn't notice this until after I opened gbpvr. I went to recordings..it sat frozen for a minutwe..and then listed my recordings as "failed". I realized the problem, and fixed the drive letter, but gbpvr now only shows like the last 4 things I recorded, and all show "failed".

Is there any way to fix this...I had probably 30-40 episodes of some shows...probably 100+ recordings total...I really really don't want to lose the link to them. I realize they still exist on the drive, but since gbpvr thinks they don't..I can't play them within gbpvr, and I can play them on my mediamvp in the other room.


Help?

[psycik]

You'll have to go to your backup gbpvr.db3 file (you do have one don't you!!!!) - failing that you may be lucky and have a recording-dump.xml file in the gbpvr directory. Which you can import from the plugins tab of the config app.

In the config.xml you probably have deletemissingrecordings turned on. This is what deleted all the recordings.

[nv40]

Yes, I admit...I didn't do a backup. In my defense, I wasn't changing a single thing on the main boot drive, which contains gbpvr....just cloned the recording drive. I have cloned drives more than I can count, and this is probably the first time I have cloned a drive and windows assigned it a DIFFERENT drive letter.

Anyway...can you give me some more details on the methods you mentioned. I don't know the inner workings of gbpvr...hell the software works so well I don't think I have had to touch this machine for anything more than the occasional reboot in the last year (oh...and some gbpvr updates every 6 months or so).

[nv40]

You'll have to go to your backup gbpvr.db3 file (you do have one don't you!!!!) - failing that you may be lucky and have a recording-dump.xml file in the gbpvr directory. Which you can import from the plugins tab of the config app.

In the config.xml you probably have deletemissingrecordings turned on. This is what deleted all the recordings.

I found a recording-dump.xml file in my gbpvr folder that has a modified date of early this morning....are there any side effects to importing this I should be worried about?

Oh, an it's only 64 KB, is that a bad sign?

[psycik]

It could be that the dump that is there, is from AFTER you lost your recrdings, so it may not help.

Take a backup first. and try it is all i can say. Recordings if there will be Listed against their old path - so you might want to make sure the paths are still valid.

You can also read the file since its just text, and see what it contains

[johnsonx42]

there is a program somewhere on the forums (or maybe in the wiki) that will scan your recordings files and read the metadata from the files... from that it will build a new 'recording-dump.xml' file that you can then import using the config utility. I don't remember what it's called, and I'm away on vacation so I have no access to my main computers/gb-pvr box where I have it downloaded. But it worked wonders for me. For some reason it would claim that some files lacked metadata, but it was fairly easy to add in a couple by hand.
Search around, you'll find it.

[nv40]

Thanks a million..to both of you.

The dump file I had was BEFORE I started the process earlier, so it fixed everything!!!

Also, good to know about that program that scans your files and tries to create a new dump file. I am going to go find that anyway, sounds like something handy to have on file.

Again, thanks....support on these forums is incredible.

[johnsonx42]

glad you got it sorted. I was just coming back to post this:
http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Utility/MpegImport
It is not the utility I used before, but it appears to do the same thing. Apparently it uses the metadata if available, but will also generate proper entries in the xml file just using the directory and file names.

[nv40]

glad you got it sorted. I was just coming back to post this:
http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Utility/MpegImport
It is not the utility I used before, but it appears to do the same thing. Apparently it uses the metadata if available, but will also generate proper entries in the xml file just using the directory and file names.

Awesome man...thanks again. I love these forums, I just wish i could do more to give back...but my knowledge is more in the networking/system admin area...oh well, have a good one!

[psycik]

BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP - if nothing else keep backups of your gbpvr directory. Means DB corruptions like this will be a thing of the past. And make it automated if it you can, Nothing fails so much like a manual backup that gets not done as the person forgets about it.