Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[labambo]

Hi there,

i had a hard drive crash on my library server pc and lost my server library. Knowing that on every client connection, the client downloads the server library, I looked around in client Media Center files and found my last library somewhere in there. Perfect!

However, I copied the library on the server and tried to play files (all paths being the same than before the hard drive crash) and it doesn't work. When trying to locate it MC tries to send e to m01p://.... Find & Replace inside the filename (e.g. m01p:// --- to --- X:/) does not work.

Can anyone help me and let me know how I can make the last step to saving my library?

Thanks a lot for your help.

[labambo]

Anyone?

[glynor]

That's not going to work well.  The cached libraries on client machines is altered to work in client mode.

You lost everything from the original hard drive and don't have any of the Library Backups MC automatically makes?

[labambo]

Unfortunately not. Automatic backup was done on the same drive. Not really smart - now I know better. Is it not possible to search and replace with a text editor in some of the Library files and get it working like this.?

[glynor]

Hmmm... Bummer.

Find and replace won't work because the filenames in the client-version of the Library aren't the same at all, so there's nothing to find and replace.  So, for example, here's one of mine:

Original Filename: M:\Video\TV Show\Game of Thrones\04\s04e03 - Breaker of Chains.ts
MCWS URL: m01p://SERVERNAME:PORT/MCWS/v1/File/GetFile?File=14261740

So, you can't find-and-replace because the URL doesn't contain the original filename field at all.  It is a reference to the file in the database, not a reference to the file on disk.

There might be a way to hack it back to think it is a "normal" Library rather than a Client library, though I'm not sure how, and it seems risky.

[glynor]

Oh, I just checked... It is way easier than all that! You grabbed the wrong copy of the Library from your client!

You grabbed this one from your client copy:
C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 19\Connected Library

That's the modified-for-client-use copy.  However, when MC downloads the Library as a client, it actually makes a copy of the complete, original source library and saves it.  It is here instead:
C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 19\Connected Library\Original\

Get that one off of your client machine, and save it to a new folder on your server, and it should be a completely normal copy of the server's original Library, from whenever the client last connected to the working server.

After this is done on the Server and you get it loaded, I'd recommend that you make a clone of the Library with the Library Manager to a new location and actually use the clone, not the one you "saved" via this method.  That's because MC uses GUIDs linked to the Library to manage things like settings for Auto-Import, and they can get confused if you "copy" Library files in manually rather than using the Backup/Restore function.

So, make a temp folder on your server and copy those files over to it from that "Original" subdirectory.  Add this folder as a Library on the Server and load it up.  Then, go back into the Library Manager section of the tree, select this temp Library, and clone it over somewhere ELSE.  Then you can remove the temp Library from MC and just use the new clone.

I bet that'll work and get you going again.

[labambo]

Hi Glynor...thanks for your quick replies.

Unfortunately, I don't have the Original folder. I just have a folder called "Server Delta" and the library inside is really small and doesn't contain any files.

Any more ideas?

[glynor]

I'd take the one you have, then, and clone it over to a new Library.  That should, one hopes, fix any of the weirdness from the original source.  Then, remove all of the files from the new copy and re-import them from disk.

Unfortunately, that means you'll lose any Library-only metadata you may have entered (a good reason to keep the file tags in sync, and not mess with the default options in MC as much), but you'll still have your Library setup with all of your views and whatnot.

[labambo]

Hi glynor,

thanks for the help. I will try your last advice.

Thanks...

[glynor]

Actually...

I'd still do the following:

1. Make a backup of the Library you have (the messed up ones with the m01p addresses).

2. Clone it over to a new Library and then delete the original one you made.  Hopefully this will just "fix" things, but maybe not.  It still might help clean up some of the "underneath" and isn't a bad step.  Alternatively, you could make a new Library, and then restore the backup you made in Step 1 to it.

3. Make another backup of this Library.  And, assuming it isn't just fixed already, then...

4. With the new Library, you could try (instead of removing all of the existing "broken" files), use my MCFileIngester app in Replace mode to replace them with the new "copies" (the real ones on disk).  Since the single-file mode works using a filename source, I don't think it'd work one at a time.

However, if you use it in Playlist mode, it should.  Add ALL of the files in your Library to some pre-sorted Playlist.  Make sure you can replicate the order (I'd probably go by Filename).  Then, import the "real" files.  Put them in a second Playlist in the exact same order.  Then, run MCFileIngester in Replace mode using the appropriate Source and New Playlists, and it should work.

It doesn't use the Rename, Move, and Copy tool, or Find and Replace, but operates directly on the data in the database via COM.  There's no restriction on what I can write to the files.

The problem might be if those file records are marked as "special" in some way other than by a field in the database.  I'm not sure how this works.  I could look at one via COM, I suppose, and look through all the fields.  But, it could be a full "database" flag of some kind (in that case, though, just doing #1-2 might fix it.  Still, it clones all of the Fields from one file to the other, and then replaces the original file record in the Library with the new one.  It might just work.

If not, you can always just restore the second backup and do the re-import anyway.