Backup!!! Backup!!! Backup!!!

[chrysek]

What I can say is that if your SageTV is working fine just bring it down (ALT+F4) once in a while and just copy wiz.bin and Sage.properties to something.

What I do is I do copy those two files with today date, both of them at the same time... then I start SageTV.

I also use program called Second Copy, but since Sage does lock to those files and I cannot copy them while Sage is running.

Why do I mention this, well today, somehow all my scheduled recordings were not showing up, none of the recordings even the ones that sage does chose were showing up. Have no idea what got screwed up but something did... instead going crazy I just took those two files that I did cope earlier today and I was on my way running fine as nothing happened...

I did see few emails from people that suddenly SageTV was acting weird after running just fine for months or weeks, I would suggest that you just go back to your best working configuration.

Another good thing to do is to create image of your partition with something like Norton Ghost for example and in case your system just works strange, boot from CDROM or partition and recover your last good settings.

Yet again another feature of Windows XP is the recovery, it is by default turned on on all the drives, so if you did not disable it you can just go to your recovery menu in windows XP and just recover to the last checkpoint and see if your recovery would work...

Just a suggestion....

[mls]

Originally posted by chrysek

Yet again another feature of Windows XP is the recovery, it is by default turned on on all the drives, so if you did not disable it you can just go to your recovery menu in windows XP and just recover to the last checkpoint and see if your recovery would work...

Just a suggestion....

While I will agree on the concept of making backups, the section quoted above may actually be the reason SageTV is puking things.

The System Restore periodically makes its own backups of certain files. In that process it has to lock some files and also has extensive disk drive activity... all of which can cause problems with SageTV recording or totally puke it.

While it may sound like a good idea, System Restore really doesn't work that well very often anyway.

*ALL* and I do mean *ALL* things that can automatically run at unknown times or in the background should ALWAYS be disabled on a machine dedicated to heavy use or 24/7 PVR use. That includes windows auto-update, auto anti-virus updates, auto backup software, etc.

*DO* make back ups, and *DO* the other updates often, but do them in-between when you can totally shut down programs like SageTV.

This has been a key factor in why I have some computers that run 24/7 for day, week, and even months without every crashing... simply because they only are doing what I want them to be doing without other things interrupting/interfering.

Unless there is some hardware problem or driver issues that are causing problems/crashes theres realy no reason to be that concerned about things as long as you do some occasional updates and keep the machines behind a good Firewall.

Unfortunately, those with PVR-350's are having problems keeping a machine running for even a day. Sorry, that's a problem that still needs to be worked out in the software/drivers.

What I'm trying to say is that one needs to find the root causes of problems and fix those. Once they do that, then the computer just runs, and runs, and runs without having to hardly ever mess with it (kind of like the Energizer bunny lol).

But, by all means, do make occasional backups just in case!

[mls]

chrysek -

Was it you or someone else, but think went thru this before with some one...

Your motherboard and vid card are a level above mine, but yet similar so I don't see a reason you should be having ANY problems.

If you are and would like to discuss/compare settings, setup, and such feel free to PM me and I'll gladly go thru comparing things with you to see if we can find any differences that may be causing problems for you.

I'm especially interested in this since we both have 800IPE-1000 motherboards and ATI vid cards and I've had almost zero problems with mine.

[chrysek]

Mls, thank you so much, yes I would like to do this if possible, yes, I do have almost no problems except every day or so sage crashing on me, but this is nothing comparing to what I had my system reset when I had abit motherboard. This Topic I started mainly to make people aware of having backups. I did see few posts where all of a sudden their system started to act very weird, if they had backup they could easily recover and be on their way. This actually happened to me the other day where after I restarted my htpc my system did not recognize one of the PVR-250 cards, so all I did was to recover to the point of last checkpoint and I was on my way.... if I did not have that I would then need to try to figure out what was the problem and how to resolve it....

Thanks all for youe great support )))) If not for this forum I would quit with Sage so many times already, but I love it, I love it more an more...

Chris

[jimbobuk]

Just to add that I've always been doing backups for some time.. its added onto the software list here

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...light=jimbobuk

and will backup 15 of the last versions of all (bin/bak/properties) your sage files into a subdirectory called backup.. its got some rudimentary protection for if you usually have your sage starting on a CRON type task at a set time when you've already ran it manually..

The only difficult thing is that you have to call IT instead of Sage to run sage.. and it'll leave a command prompt at all times its running... also i turn my PVR machine off daily so its backups are quite current, if you leave your machine for an age then you aren't going to get as much benefit from it..