Where to begin reloading music lost

[Nitecat]

Norm,

Thanks for your input. I'll see if I can figure it out based on what you have said. If I have questions, I'll post again here. I may not be working on it now until after Christmas, so watch for me posting next week. Have a happy holiday.

[nreel]

Nitecat

I'll be watching...

Also, if you go the Songs.MDB route, make sure you copy the Songs.MDB file to a Temporary Folder before you rebuild your Database. Otherwise, you will copy over the Old Songs.MDB and you will lose all what was logged before your HD Failure.

Also, I was thinking, if you saved your Database from which you Printed your Song Lists, you can ALPHA SORT on the Book ID Column and determine from it what BookIDs/Discs are missing as compared to your Songs.MDB after you Rebuild the Database.

Norm

P.S. I had a HD Failure earlier this year and looked into a company retrieving the data. Depending on the HD size, your looking at $700 and up. The irony of my HD failure is that I bought that HD for Backup purposes. And, no sooner I moved 100 GIG of info to it, the Heads crashed. Sux...I know.

[Nitecat]

Norm,

OK, I've made it through the Christmas festivities and am back at this thing and trying to understand how to begin my reloading process. My questions may seem dumb, but here goes....

Q1. Would the original songs.mdb file you mentioned be the songs file that is in a Microsoft Access Database format? What software is the .mdb extension from? I have my Hoster program and databases on my laptop C: drive. There is a songs file and also a couple of Temp files in the Databases folder. Not sure what they all are. Are any of these what I am looking for? What I have lost is about 15 gigs of my KMA files that were on an external drive.

Q2. I do not have Access software. Will I need this to do what you have suggested? If so, I have Access on my work PC, if I can somehow use that for this. Will I be printing something out once I open the file assuming I can find a way to open it?

Q3. You said to copy the songs file to a temp file, then rebuild database. Just to clarify for myself (and please correct me if any of this is wrong):

-copy song file to a temp file
-this temp file would have info about my original 53 gigs (what all is in this file?)
-I then point Hoster to my good external backup drive that has the 38 gigs I managed to backup before the other external drive failure and do Tools, Build Songs Database
-this will leave me with a temp file of info on my 53 gigs and a new song file with info on the 38 gigs I managed to save
-by comparing these two somehow, I can determine what I need to reload

Is this correct? What all info. shows in these files? Is there a way to print them out?

Q4. You also mentioned doing an ALPHA SORT (not sure why alpha) on Book ID and comparing this to the rebuilt songs.mdb. Which do you think would be best? I have not changed anything in the database folders on my C:drive, so what I used for my song books is still there.

Q5. I spent a lot of time correcting information that was wrong with the song title and artist names (Using the Edit Songs feature) prior to my external hard drive failure. I don't want to have to do this again. When I reload the 15 gigs that are missing, will it pull in the song titles and artist names as I had corrected then or am I going to lose that and need to fix these again? Will doing the Build Songs Database to rebuild delete all of that? Sure wish there were some way to first figure out what KMA files I am missing and get them back onto my good external hard drive without changing the databases that have been corrected. I do want the databases to still match my song books though, since I just spent a lot of time and money on new books.

Guess that is all of my questions for now. I probably sound pretty dumb, but oh well. I don't want to screw anything up and figure it's better to ask now. I understand some of how Hoster and all these files work together, but not totally and it sure can be confusing.

Any help will be GREATLY appreciated. Nitecat

[Beavis]

are you absolutely sure the hard drive is dead ??

you can always take the hard drive out of the case and hook it up to a desktop as a slave. it may run long enough to get all you kma files to another hard drive.

[Nitecat]

Beavis,

The computer tech at my electronic repair place has tried everything and says he cannot retrieve the data from the hard drive. Originally we had hoped that the hard drive inside the case would be fine. They now believe it is also damaged. They say that the USB port got pushed in and damaged some things inside (capitor, transistor.... I think). They opened the case, removed the hard drive and tried a number of things to get it to work, but no luck. They said for the USB port to be damaged like this, the drive was most likely dropped. I know for a fact that it has never been dropped or mishandled. I am very puzzled about how it was damaged, but guess even if I could figure that out, it doesn't help me now. I had tried a couple times to back up this drive that had all my KMA files, but was not successful in getting them all backed up. The drive would always stop part way through during the backup, which I now believe was due to the drive file system being FAT32 instead of NTSF. I did get 38 gigs backed up out of 53, so I am at the point now of trying to recover (reload) what I am missing. Believe me, once I manage to get the 53 gigs loaded again, I will have several drives backing this up. I will never put off getting that accomplished again.

Norm has been kind enough to offer advice. I don't want to proceed with anything until I know for sure what I am doing. I'm in a bad enough spot now without making it any worse. So that's where things are.

If you know of any other way to try and get the data from the damaged drive, please give me detailed instructions. I'll try anything. Thanks. Nitecat

[nreel]

Q1. Yes, this is an MSAccess Database. MDB is from an MSAccess Database.
You are looking for SONGS.MDB

If you cannot see the extension "MDB" then do this: (assuming you have WinXP)
Open MY COMPUTER

Click on TOOLS at the top

Click on FOLDER OPTIONS at the Bottom of the TOOLS Menu

Click on the VIEW Tab in the FOLDER OPTIONS Menu

Under FILES and FOLDERS, make sure all Boxes are "CHECKED" but the box next to the one that says "Do Not Cache Thumbnails."

Under HIDDEN FILES and FOLDERS, make sure the RADIO BUTTON on "Show Hidden Files and Folders" is selected. Make sure all Boxes are "CHECKED" except the FOUR boxes next to the ones that say "Hide Extensions For Known File Types," "Hide Protected Operating System Files," "Restore previous Folder Windows at login," and "Show Control Panel in My Computer."

Click APPLY
Click OK

Now you should be able to see all extensions on all files.

The, original, Songs.MDB, prior to Hard Drive Failure, is what you are looking for and trying to save.

Q2. I have MSAccess Software, so I don't know if you will be able to OPEN the SOngs.MDB if you do not have MSAccess.
Once you locate the Songs.MDB, double-click the file and see if it Opens. If it does Open, then you can read the file.

Q3. Correct
Info about Brand/Disc#/Track#/BookID#
If you can Open the files, you can Print them.

Q4. Alpha Sort, meaning, "to put in order," however that order is.
First, I would Alpha sort the Book ID column so that an accounting of all Book Ids will be at a ready reference and Print the Data.

This gets tricky Alpha Sorting this column because there are no leading ZEROS on BOOK ID 1, which is where MTU didn't see the wisdom in adding Leading ZEROS - which, as you can see, is needed for just this purpose - Alpha Sorting, and you will end up with this kind of Sort:
101
10101
Obviously, 10101 (ten thousand one hundred and one DOESN'T come after one hundred and one...does it? I mean, there are a lot of Book Ids between 1 and 101 that will not Alpha Sort where they should be due to the lack of leading ZEROS.)
With 3 Leading Zeros: (This accounts for 9,999 discs, which we will never see in our lifetime.)
000101
000102
etc.
010101
Which, an alpha sort would be 100% meaningful on the Book ID column.
But, suffice to say, most of the Book IDs will be in order.

Unless you know how to REPLACE text...Then, you can add 3 ZEROs in front of all numbers beginning with 1 through 9 and Two ZEROs in front of 10 thru 99 and One ZERO in from of 100 thru 999 so that all Book IDs will have the same number of Place Holdings for true Alpha Sorting. This is very complicated, though.

Then, I would Alpha Sort on the Disc# and Track#. Go through Disc by Disc and separate what I have from what I don't have.

Once separation is accomplished, I would use the OLD Songs.MDB to determine, on a disc by disc basis, what Book IDs belong to the remaining and unaccounted for discs and Re-import those discs using the, now, known and previous assigned Book ID.

The saved SongBook file may help, somewhat, but, Book Ids without Disc Numbers may be worthless. Even, assuming you had your SongBook print the Disc Id info, the Disc IDs are not in columns by themselves in order to perform an Alpha SORT.

Basically, it may become an added reference for checks and balances.

Q5.Fortunately, when the database is rebuilt with what you have salvaged, all the editing, previously done to the KMA Header, will be restored.

Unfortunately, any disc that needs to be re-imported will only go by the data pulled from the BUCKET.MDB. However, the silver lining is that, with the Original SONGS.MDB, you can compare, line-by-line, info of how its Artist/Song Title info was to the Song info you are getting ready to Import and make changes accordingly.

I know that this is a lot of info, but approaching the problem in a systematic way will help ease the burden.

If you need help in manipulating your Songs.MDB PM (Private Message) me your email and I will help as much as I can. I could probably tell you, in about 3-hours, what is missing and what Book Ids belong to what is missing.

Norm

For those of you, other than Nitecat, who may read this POST but do not have the ability to understand what I am offering, in the way of help, I will spell it out.

I am not asking Nitecat to send me ANY KMA files. I am only offering assistance with his MSAccess Database.

[Nitecat]

Norm,

Well, I just finished typing a long posting to you on all of this. When I hit send, I discovered my internet connection was gone.....and of course then so was the lengthy posting. So, I'll start again. My luck just has to get better.

Wow, thanks for all of the great information. I had been trying to figure out how to get those file extensions to show and knew there was a way, just hadn't found it yet. Your intructions were great. Anyway, I do have the songs.mdb file, but cannot open it without Access. I'll either take the file to work where I have Access or buy Access for use at home. I'm stuck till I do one of those. I think I understand everything you have said. If I run into trouble, I'll send a PM. Was posting on here so that others might benefit from something we cover.

As for the Alpha Sort, I did understand that you meant for me to put the file in order by Book Id. I was just confused that it was an Alpha sort when it looks like it should be a numeric field. Perhaps it is categorized as an Alpha field even though it contains numbers. I don't know if I'll try the adding zeros thing to the 1-9 and 10-99 listings. You are right, I wish MTU had that already built in. Would be one less thing for me to handle right now.

I'm glad there is a way for me to be sure I have the song title and artist listed the same as before on the songs I reload. Whew! This will be quite a process. I do have one more question at this point:

Q1. I understand that MTU changed some of the disc names in Hoster 3.0. I read a post someplace about that, but didn't look into it much, since I had just printed my books with the old names. How do you think that will affect what I am doing now? How have you handled that with your database and songbooks? I'd prefer that my songbooks match the disc names in my database, but maybe that is not possible now with Hoster renaming discs and my having to reload some. I suppose if I have to reload a disc that was renamed by MTU, it will have to have the new name? If so, then it won't match the songbooks that I just printed.

Guess that's about it for now. Thanks again for all your help. You'll probably hear from me again. Oh, by the way.......I'm a chick!! I thought your assumption that I was a guy was kind of cute though. You've been great and very clear in your instructions. Thank goodness for the boards here. Would you believe this hard drive problem happened at my FIRST Hoster show? I had hoped for a glorious night like other Hoster users, since I had been working on getting ready for this since August 1. I had had no problems with anything until my external drive went bad. That is of course the worst thing I could imagine happening. I will certainly understand better how it all works and will get through this problem, if it kills me. Until I can run Hoster, I'll be looking up each song manually (my books now show Book ID for Hoster use) and flipping discs. I want to resolve the reloading issue soon!!

The not techy enough Chick.......Ruth (Nitecat)

[nreel]

Hi Nitecat,

Sorry about the gender comment. I usually keep it neutral but I see I slipped in that last sentence. I almost made it...LOL.

I kind of figured you weren't seeing the file extension names. So, I'm glad my directions worked out.

MSAccess has two Tool Icons to perform a SORT. They are side by side with one icon having a letter A above the letter Z with Down Arrow and the tool tip says SORT ASCENDING. The other Icon is just the opposite with letter Z on top of the letter A with the tool tip saying SORT DESCENDING.

Since the Icons were showing letters and could be used to sort any column, whether or not the column was Numeric, Alpha/Numeric, or Text, I just called it an Alpha Sort.

Yes, adding leading ZEROS is quite tricky when performing a REPLACE function. You want to add 3 Leading ZEROS to all Book Ids from 1 to 10, but you don't want to add 3 Leading Zeros to Book Ids from 100 to 1000, which start with a 1, and so on.

But, if you take the time to get all the Leading ZEROS in the right place, sorting the Book ID column will prove invaluable.

Q1. First, I do not use the MTU SongBook Feature to print my SongLists. However, I think, in your case, you will be OK with your newly printed SongBooks and should not affect your show. It is true that some BRANDS have changed, but the BRAND, if you chose to list them in your SongLists, are only for the Singer's convenience. These BRAND Prefixes have nothing to do with you running your show because you will only be interested in the Book ID Numbers that the Singers give you.

If any BRAND is different upon re-importing, then, this will straighten itself out upon the next Complete SONGBOOK printing that you will, eventually, do.

What you see, when operating Hoster at a show, compared to what the Singer sees in your newly printed SongBooks, will not be in conflict if you run into the situation of a BRAND change. Because, again, you are only concerned with the Book ID numbers...not the BRAND.

You will be the only one to know the difference. For instance, and, I'm not sure what may have changed, but, for example, if the Previous designation for POP HITS ROCK 0410 was PHR0410, and, is listed in your new SongBooks that way, with Book ID 102, now becomes POP HITS MONTHY ROCK 0410 with a designation of PHMR0410, with Book ID 102, you will be the only one to know anything has changed. You will have, still, assigned and IMPORTED this disc on the ORIGINAL Book ID…So, no harm.

My New Year wish is that you will be successful with all your shows using Hoster.

Again, if you want me to straighten out your Songs.MDB by adding ZEROS where needed, just say the word. I've done this several times over the past year and a half that I've been using Hoster and I have become quite proficient.

Norm