Lost A HD, How will Sage Handle it?

[camus]

I think I lost a HD, ugh. Anyway I am going to troubleshoot tommorrow. For now I disabled Sage. If I run Sage and later find HD ends up being recoverable what will happen to those recordings?

Edit: I just checked the FAQ's and as I understand it Sage won't look at those recordings as deleted unless/until I add a drive with the same letter?

[zoso]

If all else fails you can try putting the drive in a zip lock bag and putting it in the freezer over night. Right out of the freezer hook it up and boot the computer, and you may have access to the drive any where from 20 minutes to an hour. Several runs at this and you may be able to retrieve all your recordings.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by camus

I just checked the FAQ's and as I understand it Sage won't look at those recordings as deleted unless/until I add a drive with the same letter?

Right -- if the drive is not seen at all by SageTV, it should keep the info for those recordings in its database. However, if you do have that drive letter visible w/o those recordings being there, their show info could get removed.

Until you get it straightened out, you could set this property:

wizard/disable_maintenance=true

That should prevent the database from removing old show info as new info is added when the EPG updates. The new info will still get added, so wiz.bin will grow faster than usual. Once you have things fixed, reset the property to false.
Edit: added short blurb about that property to the top of the file moving FAQ.

Also, I would make sure to keep backups of your wiz.bin and all properties files.

- Andy

[camus]

Thanks, turns out the drive is shot, not going to pay $70 for software to try and pull off any data. The worst part is most of the wifes recent recordings ended up on that drive, she felt bad because she thought she broke soemting, I felt bad because all her favorites that recording this past week are gone.

Now when I put in a new drive and the recordings that where on the old one will show up as deleted and Sage will remove them from the recordings menu?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by camus

Now when I put in a new drive and the recordings that where on the old one will show up as deleted and Sage will remove them from the recordings menu?

Yes - when they aren't seen on that drive letter, SageTV should remove them from its list.

- Andy

[stevech]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Right -- if the drive is not seen at all by SageTV, it should keep the info for those recordings in its database. However, if you do have that drive letter visible w/o those recordings being there, their show info could get removed.

That's an absurd design.

Mere mortals use PVRs.

So if one replaced the failed drive then replaced the files from a backup, the database would lose track of "has been watched", etc?

[camus]

Originally Posted by stevech

That's an absurd design.

Mere mortals use PVRs.

So if one replaced the failed drive then replaced the files from a backup, the database would lose track of "has been watched", etc?

I really don't think it is absurd and if you recover the files the can stay intact if you follow the instructions.

What would be absurd would be if you manually deleted the files but Sage would not reconize them as deleted which would be the case if it was not designed in this manner.

[Opus4]

In a previous post elsewhere, I said:

Originally Posted by Opus4

... a future version of SageTV will be more conservative in terms of removing data for older airings. Right now, airing details are retained for items that have a reason to be tracked, such as being watched, marked Don't Like, and so on. In the future, the fact that an airing was recorded will also cause SageTV to retain that airing's details in its database so that that the info won't be removed when the file disappears. As long as the filename doesn't change, the ID that is part of the filename should allow restored recordings to be matched up with their airing info.

As usual, only existing recordings that are known to exist, or those that it can't confirm have been removed (drive not currently seen), are listed in the SageTV Recordings list. The above-mentioned change will allow restored recordings to be reconnected to their airing details even if the recording had never been watched or tracked for any other reason.

- Andy

[stevech]

Originally Posted by Opus4

In a previous post elsewhere, I said:

As usual, only existing recordings that are known to exist, or those that it can't confirm have been removed (drive not currently seen), are listed in the SageTV Recordings list. The above-mentioned change will allow restored recordings to be reconnected to their airing details even if the recording had never been watched or tracked for any other reason.

- Andy

The show ID is the unique identity of the show. What drive/folder it is in now or has been or will be should be totally irrelevant.

[GKusnick]

Andy's already said it will be fixed in a future release. You've won that argument. Until that fix arrives, however, understanding how it actually works now is not irrelevant if you want to move files safely.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by stevech

That's an absurd design.

Yeap, you are not the only one. I too found this out the hard way recently as my wife lost several favorite shows I was able to extract but ended up in the imported section.

Nasty design flaw in my opinion - will upgrade as soon as fix is introduce.