Yesterday 14,980 songs in Hoster songs...Today 3,173.

[michbabe]

Vista or XP?
Hoster version?


I have Vista...And just bought my Hoster it was the 3.319....I am not a computer wiz, but the files were there...then pooof...gone..

I just don't know where to go from here...

[slsides]

So if I am parsing the postings by Admin correctly, KMA files stored on an external hdd have nothing to worry about. Is that assessment correct?

Shaun

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by michbabe

Vista or XP?
Hoster version?


I have Vista...And just bought my Hoster it was the 3.319....I am not a computer wiz, but the files were there...then pooof...gone..

I just don't know where to go from here...

Upgrade to 3.320. This was fixed in that one.

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by slsides

So if I am parsing the postings by Admin correctly, KMA files stored on an external hdd have nothing to worry about. Is that assessment correct?

Shaun

As long as your files were not in the MTU folders under Program Files then there shouldn't be a problem. Also be sure and install version 3.320 and not 3.319.

[slsides]

Originally Posted by ddouglass

As long as your files were not in the MTU folders under Program Files then there shouldn't be a problem. Also be sure and install version 3.320 and not 3.319.

i just want to make sure that when i set everything up for a customer, the files are stored in such a way as to not cause problems.

systems i build will have XP, but i already have one client who purchased her own laptop, which i'm sure has vista on it. i don't have any particular problem with vista on general principle, but from reading these forums it appears to be the very devil with you mix vista and hoster. :P

[michbabe]

Ok things happen. Guess I'm lucky it happened before we had the rest of our disc's entered.
I have upgraded to the 3.320.
One more question for now, how do I find all these files that seem to still be on my laptop? Even if I have to delete and start all over again, ok so be it...But I'd like to have the space back.
I am just so excited about getting this program up and running..
Thanks for all your help..

[Beavis]

this is a post by admin.




Best Recommendation!

I have checked around and the best recommendation we can make to recover files from a failing hard drive is SpinRite from GRC.com.

KickstartNews reviewed SpinRite v6.0 that seems to be very much like your condition:
The opportunity for the first test appeared only one day after we received our copy of version 6. An 80GB hard drive on one of our busy storage servers decided to pack it in. Prior to trying SpinRite we were still able to access the drive intermittently but it was impossible to copy data or run a file undelete utility. A handful of important files had been written to the drive subsequent to the last backup the previous night; files which we needed within about 48 hours, which meant that a professional data recovery service (with its three week backlog) was out of the question. We removed the drive and installed it in an identical hardware configuration, then booted SpinRite 6 from CD and did a Level 2 recovery (see above for recovery level definitions). After 22 hours, SpinRite completed its work and pronounced the drive fully recovered. We reinstalled the drive in the original server. It ran perfectly, the research assistant who had created the required files copied them off the drive and that was that. Nice job SpinRite 6. The drive was still running fine as we went to publication with this review two weeks after the incident. We used a level 2 setting in SpinRite: Recover Unreadable Data.

This can perform a rebuild of the data, as well as an analysis of the "health" of the hard drive.

GRC.com is Gibson Research Corp. owned and run by Steve Gibson. Steve is one of the "keepers of the Internet"... a white hat man who consults for NSA, CIA, FBI and the likes. He has incredible knowledge of how things work. SpinRite is $89.00 for a new buyer, or less if you have a prior version. If it recovers your 13,000 files, it's worth ever penny. Here are more testimonials if the one above didn't convince you.

[michbabe]

Thanks Beavis, I'll give SpinRite a try..

[swany]

Got real lucky, had the same thing happen to me, all of them gone. I do however have two outboard hard drives that I store all my kma files on.

Got up today to set the monitor window for doing a show on my new HP laptop with vista and 3.319 guess what all kma files gone. Went to MTU seen the sticky for the 3.320 upgrade. It is on and kma files reloaded. Viola all is well. TO ALL BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP. That extra hard drive is not that expensive, I do remember loading all my discs and converting to kma, around 14hrs a day for two weeks. Glad I did my backup.

[Karen K]

Yup, glad I had mine backed up, even though it turned out to be only a partial backup - pre fix for Jan 28 release. I am about 3-4 hours or so short of having reloaded everything. Excited to see the end of that long, horrible CDG ripping exercise FOR THE SECOND TIME. As soon as everything is re-loaded, I will back up again on the WD 500GB drive.

Wish I could get over the concern that when I turn my computer on the songs will be gone! Tincture of time is the prescription here I guess.

K

[Beavis]

i like to have a ghost back up of my hard drive. this way if the drive ever fails, im not out any time other than the time to replace the hard drive with the cloned one.

[dcrog]

No offense to anyone here, but Karen back up at the end of each session or day. You can never be too careful.

[Karen K]

True enough - I guess the time spent waiting for the backup is worth it. I am feeling a little paranoid about this whole thing already...not a good feeling...tincture of time...tincture of time....



k

[Beavis]

Originally Posted by Karen K

True enough - I guess the time spent waiting for the backup is worth it. I am feeling a little paranoid about this whole thing already...not a good feeling...tincture of time...tincture of time....



k

this is the first time this has ever happaned. im sure admin will make sure it never happens again.

not quite sure why this wasn't caught in beta.

[Metalgodz]

So is the new upgrade ready? Should I wait ? Do I need to uninstall the old stuff????

[admin]

Folks, and Karen especially, we too are paranoid!

This has NEVER happened before in my 40 years in business.

We are hot... Hot... HOT and heavy on Hoster 3.321 to do our very best to insure nothing that Vista is doing will affect Hoster again.

We discovered yesterday that:

IF... you have the Vista User Access Control (UAC) DISABLED, you are 95% safe. This was REQUIRED to install Hoster on Vista, so at one time every Hoster/Vista user did this.

IF... you RE-ENABLED the UAC, You're dead!!!!!!!!!! Sometime shortly after you do this, IT APPEARS TO US that Vista will move all your KMA files, Playlists and songs database to this folder:
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Micro Technology Unlimited\Hoster\Songs (or \Databases or \Playlists).

This "VirtualStore" stuff is what appears to be messing everyone up. Your files were under \Hoster\Songs, now they're not. Big PANIC! No warnings, no indication, and buried so deep no one would ever find them.

If you want to see the instructions we will display when (during installation of 3.321) we find 1) Vista OS, and 2) Hoster already installed, read this page.


What about 2000/XP? Basically, the problem in 3.318 & 3.319 that set up for Widows to delete massive numbers of files in no time has been stripped out of 3.320.

DO NOT RUN 3.318 or 3.319!
We will send out an email notice of this once we have 3.321 released (expected this week) because 3.320 can still not show your existing Songs Database, making it APPEAR that your KMA files are again gone. If you simply run Tools menu > Build Songs Database command it will build the songs.mdb in the correct new folder. Version 3.321 will fix this also.

Are we wrong to not warn others NOW? I have put an Announcement in this Hoster Help forum as a warning, and with the link to the Hoster Upgrades page to get the free download of 3.320 to install. I'll modify this to 3.321 as soon as we release.

If you are under 2000/XP, the cause triggering Windows to delete your files is gone in 3.320. SAFE!

If you are under Vista, DO NOT DISABLE your UAC. You're in trouble if you do!

[Beavis]

how come a billion dollar company like microsoft doesnt come up with answers this quick ??

[michbabe]

Ok Question now....is it safe for me with this dumb ole vista to go ahead and start reloading my discs?
I have updated to the 3.320 hoster ..
I will save onto my external hard drive daily, unstead of waiting until I have completed.
Hate to do this more than twice!!! LOL or should I wait for the 3.321 to come out??

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by Beavis

this is the first time this has ever happaned. im sure admin will make sure it never happens again.

not quite sure why this wasn't caught in beta.

Because most of us are old hands at this, have a huge amount of files and don't keep them on the C: drive? It never happened to any of those testing at the time.

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by michbabe

Ok Question now....is it safe for me with this dumb ole vista to go ahead and start reloading my discs?
I have updated to the 3.320 hoster ..
I will save onto my external hard drive daily, unstead of waiting until I have completed.
Hate to do this more than twice!!! LOL or should I wait for the 3.321 to come out??

You should be ok as long as you are not importing to the old folder under C:\Program Files\... But if you are just not sure then MTU should have 3.321 out very quickly.