Where to begin reloading music lost

[nreel]

Nitecat,
Greetings in the New Year!!

I've been very busy these last few days as I see you have been as well.

Yes, night owl here too...Karaoke, you know.

Yes, you can sort by Disc Number, if you prefer…That will work. But, you probably Imported, some or part of, your Disc library in order. By having the Book IDs SORTED, you will be able to have Hoster AUTO INCREMENT the Book Ids...if only for 5 or 10 or 20 discs that are sequential in your library.

Of course, sorting by Book ID will only help if you Imported your Discs in, somewhat of a, sequential order.

I imported my SoundChoice Spotlight Series starting with 8100 and ending with 8900. Since I don't own all the SC Spotlight Series, my, somewhat sequential, order may look like this:
8105,8115,8125,8136...etc. 8115 comes sequentially comes after 8105, in my library, because I do not have disc8106 to 8114.

My Book ID Roots for these discs are:
8105-110
8115-111
8125-112
8136-113

So, if I scrutinized my missing list by BRAND, I may end up Importing in this order: (Unless, after scrutinizing, I performed an additional step of putting the missing Discs in sequential order.)
8115-111
8105-110
8136-113
8125-112

I will not be able to let Hoster AUTO-INCREMENT the Book IDs. As soon as I hit the BookID ROOT, Hoster will automatically fill-in BOOKID ROOT 110, because it is the next one available. So, I would end-up comparing the BOOKID to what Brand/Disc#, anyway, in order to find out what goes with what.

I would want to take advantage of every time saving tool available and HOSTER'S AUTO-INCREMENT BookID is one of those Time-Saving TOOLS.

I see from your last POST that you were able to get the leading Zeros added. Good Job!!!!!!!!!!

My instructions weren't in vain !

Happy New Year !!

Norm

[Nitecat]

Norm,


Help! I knew things were going too well last night. I printed out 244 pages with 083908 as the final Book Id listed. I think everything looked OK and believe this printout is of my original 53 gigs of music. I have now spent the entire afternoon trying to get a similar file to print of the 38 gigs of music I was able to save in order to have a comparison. I did a "Build Songs Database" and assumed the songs.mdb file would be a new file with the 38 gigs. The file was the same size as the old file though, so I knew something was wrong. I then tried deleting the songs.mdb and the songs_backup.mdb files and doing a "Build Songs Database". The songs.mdb file was now smaller (1248 KB vs. 2264 KB) so I assumed I was on the right track. Funny thing is that when I follow the steps on the new smaller file to add the zeros, I keep coming up with the same number of Book Ids as before. I am at a loss trying to understand this and what I'm doing wrong. I thought I would be able to have one printout with all the original 53 gig Book Ids and another printout with the Book Ids for the 38 gig I saved. I figured I would compare the two lists and know what to begin importing.

Any ideas about what I am doing wrong or need to do?? I'm stuck at this point and don't know what to do next. When I talked about sorting by manufacturer, I was thinking of using the list that comes up when locating the file using Windows Explorer. It seems to be in manufacturer order, but I can't figure out how to print it. At this point, I'm trying to get the two lists I mentioned in the first paragraph for comparison by Book Id.

I'm not sure I totally followed your previous post. I did not designate certain sequences of Book Ids for certain brands. Most of my discs are filed in order by brand, but are not totally. I just started loading discs with how I have them filed and let Hoster assign the Book Id. However, discs in packs like Chartbuster Essential 450 were done separately, so they would not fall in sequence with my other individual Chartbuster discs. Maybe I should have thought that through better at the time. Live and learn. I sort of assumed that when I begin reloading what I've lost that I'd have to enter each Book ID to be sure it's what I want.

I hope I have given you enough info. to help me. It's probably getting confusing to follow all my posts. I know I'm confused, at this point anyway. I'd sure like to get started loading music, but can't till I know what to load. AAaarrghh. How frustrating.

Thanks for any help you can give me. Ruth (nitecat)

[Nitecat]

Thanks so much to Norm who was kind enough to call me at home and resolve my problem. Of course it was a silly little oversight of mine (being a new user of Access).....I was looking at the last Book Id in each file, which happened to be the same and therefore thought the file was the same. Instead, with Norm's instruction, I learned to look at the total number of records showing at the bottom left corner. Turns out my 2 files were fine and I was able to proceed with comparing them to determine what Book Ids I was missing.

Just to let Norm and others know, after making the comparison, it turns out that the kma files missing were everything alphabetically after a certain point. This means that when I was backing up one external drive to the other and it quit midway, it was backing up the list of kma files alphabetically by file name. I could find what I have left by using Windows Explorer and looking at the folder directory where the files are saved plus using the 2 Access printouts of my songs.mdb files (file before and file after crash) sorted by BookId. The 2 Access printouts are also a great help to be sure the song title and artist names are the same as what I had before while reloading the lost kma files, which I am now in the process of doing.

I would suggest to everyone that they not only back up their kma files, but also have a backup of their songs.mdb file. Having my original song.mdb file has been a great help.

Norm, I hope what I am doing at this point is correct. I created a new folder on my external drive called reloaded songs. I changed where I am importing my files to this folder. I did this thinking that it would give me a way to keep the reloaded files separate for now. Just trying to be careful in case there is some need for me to have them separate from the others. I also thought it would make it simpler when I back up the reloaded songs up to my other external drives to not have them mixed in my the others. It will only be the songs in this folder that will need to be backed up because the others in my songs folder are already backed up.

One thing confuses me now, should I have deleted my songs.mdb file or any other files before I started importing the lost songs? I am importing on my show comnputer. It still contains the orginal songs.mdb file from before I lost part of the kma files from my external drive.

Here's what I was thinking.....once I'm sure I have all of my kma files again, I will move the reloaded songs so all my songs are in one folder on my external drive called songs. I will point Hoster to this folder. Then.....do I delete songs.mdb and rebuild the database? Is there anything else I should delete before rebuilding? Does this sound like it will get me back to where I need to be? Do I need to delete the artist and title rtf files and do a recreate on them? As you know, I've already printed my books and want the rtf files to match what was printed and I'd want Hoster to be set so that if I buy new music, it knows what to print for new release pages.

Guess that's all for now. I still get confused about how everything works together....the Access database, the kma files, rebuilding the songs database, what the other files are for like temp1.mdb etc. etc. In reading the boards here I finally figured out that if I edit the song title and artist name before importing a song, there is a header in the KMA file that retains this information? Is this correct? Rebuilding the songs database should take the header info. from my KMA files to use for the song title and artist name? I keep worrying about losing what I have edited on these. Guess that only happens if I lose the kma file as I did when my drive crashed and I wasn't totally backed up?

I realize this is long. Hope it makes sense. Let me know if what I have said is correct, if I'm doing anything wrong and/or if you have suggestions.

Again, thanks a bunch to Norm for saving me on this disaster of mine. Norm, it was great talking to you!! I owe you. Ruth