Migrating from Win2K Sage 5 to Vista Sage 6

[cracula]

My 6 year old Win2k box with Sage 5 crashed and burned (processor literally burned up, hard drive is still fine) which gave me an excuse to upgrade my hardware to a Dell 531s running Vista Home Premium.

What is the best way to get my history and files moved over? I've already read the FAQ entry about moving the recordings, so I think I'm okay with that, but what I'm really concerned about is how to move the sage.properties and wiz.bin file across operating systems and Sage versions. I don't really care about all my custom Sage settings since I'd like to get a clean start on that in Sage 6 anyway, but I really don't want to lose all of my viewing history.

Does Sage 5 run on Vista?
If so, is the best course of action to install 5 and then upgrade to 6?
Do I need to migrate anything other than sage.properties and wiz.bin?
Has the file structure on those files changed from version 5 to 6 or could it really be as easy as just installing 6 and then copying the files over?

Thanks for your help!

[omega]

There's really no reason to install version 5 before version 6. SageTV will automatically upgrade the format of an older Wiz.bin file, so you can safely just copy that into the new installation. It will create a backup of the old version before upgrading it, but I'd also recommend keeping a backup copy somewhere outside of the SageTV folder, just in case something goes wrong.

The .properties file format will not change - it's just a standard Java properties file - but some of the settings in it will no longer be recognized, some of the defaults will change, and there will be some new options. SageTV will automatically add any missing settings and ignore (but not delete) any that are no longer valid, but it won't modify any settings that might have changed defaults from version to version. It's safe to copy the .properties files into the new installation, but it might be a good idea to start over from scratch and go through the Setup Wizard and then the Detailed Setup menu to make sure you take advantage of all the changes. I usually start with new Sage.properties and SageClient.properties files whenever I upgrade to a new major version, but I keep them between minor versions unless I run into problems.

As far as the Vista questions... I personally won't touch it until at least one or two Service Packs fix most of the bugs (maybe not even then), so I can't help you there.

[Opus4]

I would not use the properties file from the old system on the new system -- that FAQ covers moving wiz.bin & does not mention copying the properties file because you should with a fresh properties file. As the FAQ says regarding moving to a new system: do the initial configuration, then exit SageTV & copy the recordings & wiz.bin into place.

BTW: check out the this FAQ about Vista to see where you might need to look for the location of wiz.bin.

- Andy

[omega]

Originally Posted by Opus4

I would not use the properties file from the old system on the new system -- that FAQ covers moving wiz.bin & does not mention copying the properties file because you should with a fresh properties file. As the FAQ says regarding moving to a new system: do the initial configuration, then exit SageTV & copy the recordings & wiz.bin into place.

Nice catch, Andy!

I had momentarily forgotten which question I was answering. You definitely don't want to copy over the properties file to a new PC or a new OS.

For some reason I was thinking of doing an upgrade from v5 to v6 on the same PC. Even then, I would still recommend starting over with a new properties file, but you probably could get away with keeping it in that situation if for some reason you really wanted to.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by omega

For some reason I was thinking of doing an upgrade from v5 to v6 on the same PC. Even then, I would still recommend starting over with a new properties file, but you probably could get away with keeping it in that situation if for some reason you really wanted to.

For an upgrade install on the same PC, I would simply install the new version on top of the existing one w/o uninstalling the previous version first, as mentioned here. That should allow the installer to know where it was installed already & use that same location. And, all your previous settings will be kept -- I usually close SageTV, backup the install dir, install the new version, restart SageTV, done. It is too much work to reconfigure every time.

- Andy

[cracula]

Thanks for your help, everyone. I ended up doing a clean V6 install on the new Vista machine, then I copied over all of my existing media files, then I copied over my old wiz.bin file. Sage started up perfectly and all my media files were there, and all of my viewing history and favorites were there. Flawless!