My harddrive is dying, what do I need to back up?

[judoGTI]

Hello Sage users -

I have a very old version of sage (version 5x something). And my harddrive inthe HTPC is finally giving up the ghost. What do I need to backup when I get a new HD and reinstall?

Do I need to do anything special to retain my license for the copy I have purchased?

How do I save my 'series' recordings list? Im not so concerned with the shows I have recorded but the list of my favorite shows is important to me.

Thanks!
-Brian

[S_M_E]

I prefer to backup the whole SageTV folder but all you really need is the wiz.bin (for your favorites, etc) and Sage.properties (for your settings) if you want.

You should have an e-mail with the license key(s)...

[davephan]

If your hard drive is still working, then you should image your boot drive to another hard drive or use a hard drive replacement utility to copy the hard drive onto a new hard drive.

If your hard drive no longer boots, and you don't already have a image of the drive, you may be able to get the drive working with a program called "Spinrite". http://www.grc.com/intro.htm. The program isn't cheap, but it would probably get the drive working.

You should be taking periodic images of your hard drive to avoid the situation you are in now. A free disk imaging program is called PING, http://ping.windowsdream.com/

Dave

[GKusnick]

The new disk you replace it with will in all probability be much bigger than the disk you're replacing. My practice in such situations is to simply copy the entire directory tree (i.e. everything from C:\ on down) from the old disk to a subdirectory on the new disk. Then if anything turns up missing later, I know where to find it. After a year or so, if you haven't had to retrieve anything from the old directory tree, you can delete it to free up space.

[judoGTI]

Great! Im upgraded and everything, before I copy my old wiz.bin to the new fresh install of Sage one last question. (well really 1.5 questions)

1) Since I upgraded from 5.01 to 6.5.9 there won't be any 'compatibility' issues (since the fresh install has already created its own wiz.bin). I haven't saved any new favorites, etc...

.5) I didnt keep any of my old recordings, will this cause sage to choke? (thinking I have saved recordings in directories that no longer exist) or can I just delete these in sage and go about my business?

Thanks again for the help!

[GKusnick]

1) Just overwrite the new, empty Wiz.bin with your saved one. Sage will automatically convert it to the current format if necessary.

.5) Sage won't choke on the missing files. If the old drive letters no longer exist, Sage will assume the drive is offline and keep the old database entries around in case the missing drive comes back. However if you show it an empty drive with that letter, then it will know that the old recordings are really gone and will clean up their database entries.

Obviously you should keep a copy of your old Wiz.bin backup until all this conversion and cleanup has been carried out successfully, just in case.

[judoGTI]

Thanks!!

[davephan]

Since you have your system working now, you should take an image of your boot drive (which also contains the programs). Save the image to a USB hard drive. Or, you could copy the whole hard drive to another hard drive with a hard drive replacement program.

Keep periodically backing up the 'working' boot drive, then you will always be prepared before the drive crashes the next time.

Dave