INTERACT FORUM

More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: Sam on April 17, 2004, 06:35:37 pm

Title: Recovering Library
Post by: Sam on April 17, 2004, 06:35:37 pm

My hard drive died last week.  With a data recovery app (R-Studio), I was able to recover most of my files - except for my MC database.

I have all of my music files, but I can't load my library.

One file that was corrupted is curplaylist.jmd.  I don't think that's important.  
mediafiles.jmd is readable, and since it's 16MB, I think that's where all my important data is.

But when I try to load the library, I get this message:
"Backing up library before upgrade..."
Then it says "Media Center failed to load the library"

Is there anything I can do to recover my database?  I'm willing to wade through the database with a text editor if necessary.

Title: Re:Recovering Library
Post by: KingSparta on April 17, 2004, 06:45:32 pm

why not just re-import the files?

Title: Re:Recovering Library
Post by: Sam on April 17, 2004, 07:46:29 pm

Quote from: KingSparta on April 17, 2004, 06:45:32 pm

why not just re-import the files?

Well, I'd like to get my playlists back.  Some of them took a lot of time to create.

Title: Re:Recovering Library
Post by: KingSparta on April 17, 2004, 07:50:43 pm

Quote

One file that was corrupted is curplaylist.jmd.  I don't think that's important.

Well thats counfusing since you said this was not important and corrupted.

since that is the Play list information, then the only thing left is to re-import.

Title: Re:Recovering Library
Post by: Sam on April 17, 2004, 08:27:37 pm

I think curplaylist.jmd contains the playing now - which I don't care about.

I think playlistx.jmd contains the playlists - which I want.

I'm guessing, based on the filenames and the sizes.  playlistx.jmd is 17K, while curplaylist.jmd is 1K.

I was able to pair the most recent playlistx.jmd with an old mediafiles.jmd (I think that's how I did it, but not sure) and get the right number of playlists with the correct playlist names, but containing entirely wrong songs, presumably because the playlists just point to entries in the wrong mediafiles.jmd file.

Title: Re:Recovering Library
Post by: KingSparta on April 17, 2004, 08:33:32 pm

maybe, never really looked into it.

I am guessing you did not make a backup (i don't have one also).

I don't think you will get any help on this.

Title: Re:Recovering Library
Post by: Sam on April 18, 2004, 04:30:44 pm

If my problem is only that curplaylist.jmd is unreadable (and if I'm correct that it contains Playing Now), then there should be a way of setting up a dummy file to just get MC going...

If my other files are damaged, then well, I'm luckless.

Title: Re:Recovering Library
Post by: paulr on April 18, 2004, 05:06:08 pm

If the other files are not damaged, maybe you could import them via the right click menu in explorer...  When I right click .jmd files, there is an option to import them.  Tried that?

Title: Re:Recovering Library
Post by: Sam on April 18, 2004, 09:42:53 pm

Quote from: paulr on April 18, 2004, 05:06:08 pm

If the other files are not damaged, maybe you could import them via the right click menu in explorer...  When I right click .jmd files, there is an option to import them.  Tried that?

Thanks.  I just tested it.  It looks like it only works for media files themselves.  Using it on a .jmd file just produces an error.  Note that the import function in the short-cut menu appears no matter what file you select.

Title: Re:Recovering Library
Post by: Chili-Jam on April 19, 2004, 07:03:07 am

Create a new library and re-import your files.
Then copy the old file with  the playlistinformation to the new database location and overwrite the new one.
Then you should get your playlists back.