Losing songs from database

[Lloyd Te Kani]

Hi guys,

I have two Toshiba A100 Satellite Laptops with Win 7 OS, one as back-up with Hoster version 5.07 on both and KMA and DAT files in the C drives as well as in an external hard drive.

I am constantly rebuilding my databases but every time I delete or add a folder, I lose some of my song files. I understand it may be caused by a duplication of files causing the duplicate file to be rejected.

Is this a possible cause and what is the best way to overcome this problem?

[Roy Dennis]

When you say you delete a folder are you doing this in windows explorer or through the Hoster program ?

To remove a folder from Hoster build database dialog you would choose "Exclude folder" button it would then remove that folder from the songs database, to reimport it you would first have to select view the Excluded folders by pressing that button then select the folder again then press the remove folder from list button in that dialog to allow it to be reimported.

If you delete a folder in Windows Explorer then Hoster still thinks it's in it's database so will think it is seeing a duplicated file.
So if you do delete the file in explorer you should rebuild Hosters database straight afterwards, it will then clear those missing songs from it's database.

Also as you have two computers one as a backup are you inclined to sometimes add new songs on one then next time add new songs on the other, this can also cause conflicts with bookids, best to always use one computer for newly imported songs. Then either just add the new folder to the backup machine or if it's new songs in an existing folder just use the rescan folder button to add the extra songs.

If you are missing songs I should also check the Quarantine folder, if you find any in there you should be able to copy them back to their original folders.

[Lloyd Te Kani]

Thanks for your reply Dennis. I actually remove the folder using the Hoster "Exclude folder" option, however I must admit that over the years, I may have added files to one computer and others to the back-up but I have always tried to avoid doing this realising the problems it may cause. I now add songs to the back-up computer only and ensure that I exclude all folders before adding the folder with the new songs in it. (Hope you can understand what I am trying to say here).

I have now re-started the whole process by loading new folders with KMA and DAT files. I will exclude the old folders using Hoster to eventually delete them completely and add the new folders. Hopefully that will resolve the situation.

[Roy Dennis]

You have confused me a bit.
When you say "I now add songs to the back-up computer only and ensure that I exclude all folders before adding the folder with the new songs in it."
Do you mean that when you add new songs to the backup computer you first exclude all the previous folders from the backup computer ?

If so that would cause havoc with the Disc ID and Book ID system.

When you import any types it allocates both a Disk ID and a Book ID which is stored in the kma or kmh header, these 2 ids are fixed on import and can't be edited after.
To explain this here is an example:
1st track given a Disc ID XYZ0001 Book ID 101
2nd track can have same Disc ID but book Id will be 102
and so on.
Now if you remove that folder with the exclude folders button then import a new folder, it could allocate those same id's again to the new folder because by removing them Hoster thinks they are free, if you later restore the removed folder then you have a conflict of ids.