Anyway to recover a wiz.bin.corrupt file?

[jbuszkie]

Is there any way to figure out how to un corrupt a wiz.bin.corrupt file? My .bak was wiped out too! I'm really bummed! I don't want to lose all my favorites are recording info!

Jim

[gplasky]

Sorry-without a backup I'm pretty sure you're SOL. (Don't you have one laying around from when you upgrade?)

Gerry

[stevech]

I run Acronis TruImage on my server's C drive - every day at 3AM it appends an incremental backup to the full backup. This yields 50MB per day of backup - that being things in the guide and Sage's database files. These backups are done across the LAN to a different PC's disk.

Once a week it creates a new full backup.
Unattended.

My videos are on the D: drive for now - and I don't back them up except the really, really good ones I manually copy to another PC (via the LAN) and burn the mpg to a data DVD.

I'm a novice and this is what I've setup so far.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by gplasky

(Don't you have one laying around from when you upgrade?)

And if you didn't keep a backup somewhere, the latest versions of SageTV automatically create backup copies of wiz.bin & the properties files when you install an update & run it for the first time -- the files are copied & the version number is appended to the end of the filenames.

- Andy

[jbuszkie]

Unfortunatly I didn't have too recent of a backup.

I need to look into an automated way to back up.. I wonder if Ghost 2003 will do that for me??

But luckily I did have one from 1/3/06. So I've only lost some recent stuff.. I can live with that.. Oh well.. Live and learn! I was really lucky to have the early January backup. The one before that was from July of last summer!
I was on borrowed time!

Jim

[BobPhoenix]

I just use the WinXP backup program that way I didn't need to spend anything. I backup to a file on another computer. Not the greatest program by any means but works for me.

BobP.

[redman]

After 2 years of service, my wiz.bin finally crapped out the other day. Didn't matter that I had a backed up copy. By the time I realised it was corrupt (about 4 hours later), it had deleted about 80% of my programs (including the archived, manually recorded, and unwatched programs). Of 1TB of disk space, it cleared all but about 200GB.

Doesn't really matter if I had a backup then....
WAF wasn't very impressed - lost all episodes of Lost, DeadLike Me and some of her other shows. Gonna have to do a lot of making up for this one....

[Opus4]

What version of SageTV are you using? As far as I know, it shouldn't be deleting shows like you described, since manual recordings & archived shows are not to be automatically deleted at all. The worst it should do if wiz.bin is corrupted is to import all the files into the library, not delete them. For the latest versions, the only thing I know of to cause mass deletions is the use of something like Norton Recycle Bin when SageTV needs to clear more space... and then it still shouldn't be deleting MRs or Archived shows.

You're absolutely certain there wasn't a big glitch on the drives that caused files to disappear?

If there is really a deletion problem in SageTV, it would obviously be good to figure out why so it can be fixed for future versions... but I can't think of why the files would be deleted like that. If you were running a beta version with logging turned on, the logs would be good things to keep.

- Andy

[stevech]

rolling back - keep the last N copies of database - each has a different file name.

That's what Acronis TruImage's incremental backups do. Most (good) backup programs will do the same.

[ke6guj]

heres a good thread about wiz.bin backups, using windows backup, or how to set up a little batch file that'll make copies for you. Wiz.bin and Sage.Properties Backup Using WinXP Backup Util.

I have my system set up to run a batch file that copies my important files; wiz.bin, sage.properties, sageclient.properties, and the *.bak files to a backup folder. I use the built in scheduler to fire off the batch at 3:00AM every day, and actually run it twice, once saving the files on the server, and a second time saving them to a secondary computer.

[jbuszkie]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

heres a good thread about wiz.bin backups, using windows backup, or how to set up a little batch file that'll make copies for you. Wiz.bin and Sage.Properties Backup Using WinXP Backup Util.

Thanks. I thought I rememberd a thread like that.. Thanks for finding it for me..

Jim

[src666]

Personally, I think that the WIZ.BIN file is the weakest element of Sage's software. There is no way to recover _any_ good data remaining in a corrupted file and no way to import/export data.

I understand they have to "protect the guide data", or whatever the excuse was. But the rest of it is _my_ data about _my_ shows and _my_ music and _my_ system.

Split the guide data off into another file, and put _our_ data into a format that we can use.

[stevech]

Having never owned a TiVo - how do they (Linux based, right) cope with a power failure that could corrupt the file system or database?
Folks I know that have one have never complained about such.

[ben_95sl1]

Ironically, last night the power went off, came on for about a second (A blip), then went off again for an hour. Repeated 3 times over the night. I looked at the pc this morning, no ups, I don't even think there's surge protection on the extensions cord, and it's running just fine again, no data loss, etc (setup in bios to turn on after power failure). Guaranteed it was recording a file cause IR was enabled too. Very ironic because I just setup a backup utility for wiz.bin last night!!! Didn't need to use it though.

[redman]

Opus,
I don't have anything running on the box, except sage (4.1.5)m which is using IR. Files removed were across all 4 physical hard drives.

The only thing I can think of, is my epg download may have added to it corrupting, as it has been flaky since I changed sources here a month ago (Singapore cable provider sent a 'cease and desist' to our local aggregator).

Another thing I have noticied is that since then, a lot of programs will stop randomly throught the show as though it had ended and come up with the restart - delete option.

[Malfunction]

I'm having something truly bizarre happening today.

Due to having problems with the Java runtime 1.4, I upgraded to 1.5 and also reinstalled Sage with the "repair" option. (Don't do this!)

Version was SageTV_V4_1_3Setup.exe, same as what was already installed.

This caused my remote control to quit working, so I uninstalled Sage and reinstalled both Sage and HERemote.

OK so now I have a stable SageTV and my remote is working again. However, I can not get my settings and database back from Sage.properties and Wiz.bin! I have numerous backups. SageTV doesn't use the files and doesn't modify them either. Where could SageTV be saving my database and settings now?

[Opus4]

Did you really install it back to the same location it was in before? It sounds like it is being run from a different directory.

- Andy

[Malfunction]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Did you really install it back to the same location it was in before? It sounds like it is being run from a different directory.

- Andy

This is really odd. It is in c:\program files\SageTV\Sagetv, whereas the old install was in C:\program files\Frey Technologies. I guess they changed the default install directory.

Thanks!