LOR directory structure and re-load files

[alchrisr01]

Good morning folks, hope you all had a fine Thanksgiving.  I had an issue with the annual Thanksgiving light-up and my show would not run in the scheduler, so I just ran songs manually.  I have a few other bugs around but that is another story!  Anyway, for many years I have used three computers on my network, one dedicated to running the show and two for sequencing.  I have used GoodSync to sync the files over the network through a backup hard drive.  Well, two weeks ago the backup drive failed and I have not had time to get it replaced (and my laptop blue screened the same weekend!) so I have been using a thumb drive to sync the files.  I must have caused some corruption along the way and caused the scheduler to not work.  While looking at the LOR folder it would seem that over the last ten years or so I have complexly FUBARed it.  It is bloated with way too much data and directories that are not used currently.  My thoughts are to rename the current LOR folder _OLD, uninstall S4, re-install S4, copy sequences from backup, copy video from backup,  copy audio from backup, copy clipboards and any other files needed (I had multiple backups just in case).  I think I should be ok to copy from the re-named _old file as well.  My goal is to de-bloat the LOR file and make sure the structure is the same on all machines.  I plan to have my old backup / GoodSync method running again this weekend.  I have a question on copying the files.  If I understand correctly, I can copy the .LMS and .LID files and the others extensions are created when a sequence is opened and saved.  I plan to open all the current sequences and re-associate the audio and or media files as well.  I will only need to do all the copying and pasteing on one machine and then use GoodSync to sync them up and they should be identical. 

Does this sound like a viable plan or would any of you recommend a different method?

Also, has anyone used a data recovery service get data from a failed hard drive?

 

Thanks,

 

Chris

[dibblejr]

14 minutes ago, alchrisr01 said:

Good morning folks, hope you all had a fine Thanksgiving.  I had an issue with the annual Thanksgiving light-up and my show would not run in the scheduler, so I just ran songs manually.  I have a few other bugs around but that is another story!  Anyway, for many years I have used three computers on my network, one dedicated to running the show and two for sequencing.  I have used GoodSync to sync the files over the network through a backup hard drive.  Well, two weeks ago the backup drive failed and I have not had time to get it replaced (and my laptop blue screened the same weekend!) so I have been using a thumb drive to sync the files.  I must have caused some corruption along the way and caused the scheduler to not work.  While looking at the LOR folder it would seem that over the last ten years or so I have complexly FUBARed it.  It is bloated with way too much data and directories that are not used currently.  My thoughts are to rename the current LOR folder _OLD, uninstall S4, re-install S4, copy sequences from backup, copy video from backup,  copy audio from backup, copy clipboards and any other files needed (I had multiple backups just in case).  I think I should be ok to copy from the re-named _old file as well.  My goal is to de-bloat the LOR file and make sure the structure is the same on all machines.  I plan to have my old backup / GoodSync method running again this weekend.  I have a question on copying the files.  If I understand correctly, I can copy the .LMS and .LID files and the others extensions are created when a sequence is opened and saved.  I plan to open all the current sequences and re-associate the audio and or media files as well.  I will only need to do all the copying and pasteing on one machine and then use GoodSync to sync them up and they should be identical. 

Does this sound like a viable plan or would any of you recommend a different method?

Also, has anyone used a data recovery service get data from a failed hard drive?

 

Thanks,

 

Chris

Seagate has tool online that may help retrieve some files. 

I did that and only was able to recover a small fraction so then I contacted Seagate.

I sent them the failed HDD and they recovered 100% and put the files on a new HDD and sent it back.

Cost was around $600 but it was all children and family pics so well worth it.

ironticly it was my wife’s backup drive and only used when she needed to load pics. Stayed in safe.

When I opened the drive enclosure I found the date of mfg was 6 years prior to me buying it. It was already passed the life expectancy when Passport sold it to me.

i will never buy another Passport device.

It was only 2 years old and maybe used 10 times.

JR

[alchrisr01]

I don't think I am a prospect to spend $600 bucks.   I found some videos on trying to make it work again and have not been successful yet. The disk don't appear damaged, just the reader arm not "parking".  I too had this one in my safe hooked to my network.  It was a Seagate 2tb.  I am going back with a WD hooked to my WRT1200ac router and a Seagate in the safe.  The PC I use to run that HD is XP and WD devices aren't compatible.  When my laptop blue screened my life flashed before my eyes!  I had plenty of LOR backups and a few other things but all my financial life was gone! I was lucky enough to have disk on hand and got the laptop going again in about an hour and a half.   Never again, redundant onsite backups from now on..I am backing up now on a WD easystore until I get the network backup going again.

I still got to get this LOR file thing done today.

 

Chris

 

[dibblejr]

1 hour ago, alchrisr01 said:

I don't think I am a prospect to spend $600 bucks.   I found some videos on trying to make it work again and have not been successful yet. The disk don't appear damaged, just the reader arm not "parking".  I too had this one in my safe hooked to my network.  It was a Seagate 2tb.  I am going back with a WD hooked to my WRT1200ac router and a Seagate in the safe.  The PC I use to run that HD is XP and WD devices aren't compatible.  When my laptop blue screened my life flashed before my eyes!  I had plenty of LOR backups and a few other things but all my financial life was gone! I was lucky enough to have disk on hand and got the laptop going again in about an hour and a half.   Never again, redundant onsite backups from now on..I am backing up now on a WD easystore until I get the network backup going again.

I still got to get this LOR file thing done today.

 

Chris

 

Mine was WD Passport! No more WD drives for me.

You sound exactly like me. I watched YouTube videos, canabalized my second WD passport. That didn’t work.

just like you not parking correctly. Every now and then I could view some of the folders and files but couldn’t copy them.

Yes I could have purchased more controllers but the happiness it brought my wife was priceless.

Of Seagate can’t recover you are refunded your $. Just food for thought. If you try to remove the platters you will probably damage beyond repair

JR

[alchrisr01]

Don't worry, I am not going to take out the platters.  if i can't spin and move the arm, I am done. I don"t even know what all is on there. Been outside working on some troubleshooting and it seems I have a bad LOR 10w flood.  Got to put in a support ticket.  I also have a ws2811 ribbon with a short.  I have spares but I am going to try to solder it first.  These silicon filled ribbons are a pain to fix.

 

Chris

[Mr. P]

Get a NAS that can hold 2 or 4 hard drives and run them in Raid 0, that way you have a backup for your backup. 

[alchrisr01]

That sounds like a good idea.  I have seen those online.  For the short term I have connected a Seagate Slim 2tb to the router.  I could not get it to work with the XP laptop connected to the safe even after format.

For those that may be interested in my solution to the original post, this is what worked for me.  I read some post and learned a few things along the way as well.  First, I chose one machine to work on.

1: I changed the LOR file in My Documents to _OLD.

2: Navigate to the LOR directory in Program files and find LORPost.exe and run it.  This will create your new File locations.  I had to create an additional file for videos as that is not done automatically. 

Open two windows, the new LOR folder and the LOR_OLD.  At this point copy over only the files you absolutely need to run your LOR programs.  I copied audio files that I use now (I even ran them through Audacity just in case), clipboard files, sequences I am using this season, video for this season, Visualization folder files, and Superstar folder files.  For sequences, you only need to copy .LMS and .LID files. After all this was done I opened SE and VIS and ran through and saved all the sequences.  Success!  A quick copy to a thumb drive and I was ready to sync all the machines.  On the other two laptops I only did steps 1 and 2 (there was no need to uninstall / re-install as I originally thought) and used GoodSync to sync up the files.  My original LOR folder was 22.3gb, the new folder is 3.49gb.  The old folder is a cluster with unused files and duplicates gathered over the years.  Now everything is identical in all three machines and the show ran perfect last night, well almost.

All of the issues I was having were self inflicted by using LOR over the years and not really understanding where to properly save files.  For some reason I had at least three different Audio folders in several different locations, as an example.

This worked for me, YMMV

 

Chris