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This is why you should backup everyday.

A

Anthony31

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So I got a big ugly blue screen of death today while working on applying some textures to a model.

I rebooted the PC and restarted PSP and reloaded the texture. I had made one small change since the last save but I was able to take the BMP I had exported and cut that change out and put it back into the texture file.

But when I restarted FSDS and tried to load the project I got an invalid file format error. My project file was now effectively cactus.

Fortunately I have written a batch file which makes a couple of backups to separate HDDs every time I run the batch file so I was luckily able to copy across one of the backups and in the end I only really lost about 20 mins of work.

If your project file became corrupted right now how much work would it take you to recover?
 
Something it have became imperative is to save regularly when modelling something, if you not want disgusting crashing after an hour of work, for exemple.
By the way what is that of "batch file" I think I know what it is, but how this work in your work process.
 
Not sure what Anthony's using but here's a generic batch file that backs up one location. It copies only files that have been changed since the last backup.
Code: 
set src=D:\Projects\X40 KINF Inverness
set dest=E:\Projects\X40 KINF Inverness

>backup.log xcopy "%src%" "%dest%" /c /e /r /D /y /i /l

notepad backup.log

The "/l" in:

>backup.log xcopy "%src%" "%dest%" /c /e /r /D /y /i /l

...tells xcopy to only check and report without actually copying anything. When you remove the /l it goes to work and copies the files.


The batch file will make a log file (backup.log) telling you what's been copied, it will open backup.log in notepad when it finishes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's one that copies two locations, in this case the project folder and also the active scenery installed in the sim (which backs up your autogen, don't forget that!). This one inserts some labels into backup.log making it a little easier to decipher what's been copied:
Code: 
set src1=D:\Projects\X40 KINF Inverness
set dest1=E:\Projects\X40 KINF Inverness

set src2=C:\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Addon Scenery\X40_KINF_Inverness_FL
set dest2=E:\Projects\X40 KINF Inverness\Addon Scenery\X40_KINF_Inverness_FL

>backup.log echo backing up: %src1%
>>backup.log echo to: %dest1%
>>backup.log echo.

>>backup.log xcopy "%src1%" "%dest1%" /c /e /r /D /y /i /l

>>backup.log echo.
>>backup.log echo backing up: %src2%
>>backup.log echo to: %dest2%
>>backup.log echo.

>>backup.log xcopy "%src2%" "%dest2%" /c /e /r /D /y /i /l

notepad backup.log

All you need to do is copy the code to notepad, change the set src and set dest paths to work with your own folders and then save it as backup_report.bat or similar. Double click the .bat file to run it.

I keep two batch files, one that just checks (with /l) and another that does the dirty work (with /l removed). I run the check first and read what it's about to copy, often there are some temp files or something I want to delete before I do the backup. Sometimes maybe you've made a change to a file that you didn't really like so in that case checking first allows you to restore the file from backup before it gets overwritten permanently on the backup drive with the changed file you didn't like.

Jim
 
Thanks for the explanation, interesting, I'll try to put all together. :scratchch, I had seen the batch files to convert image files format, but not this,
 
Well when I'm modeling in gmax, I never save the project to a single file........matter of fact I never save ANYTHING as a single file, I use an incremental system! Even for textures! Every time I make a change and I feel the need to save, I append a number to the file so that if I make a mistake, I can easily go back and start over as opposed to starting from scratch, OUCH! Gmax is well in that it has an incremental file saving feature built into it but for other pieces of software, it takes discipline to remember to do that!! When you have programs running for several hours, a lot of system memory gets shuffled back and forth and in the mix eventually an error occurs and the program ends because it doesn't know how to handle the error or WORSE, it is glitched.
 
For me (as a programmer) I use a simple SVN Setup that commits changes every time I build it. That way I have indexed every version of the project code since the beginnings.
 
I am paranoid about backups. Mine work on three levels
  • A short term incremental backup of every file changed as it is saved (I keep a days worth of these)
  • A backup every eight hours
  • I use Git and Bitbucket as my source control and make saves on that at the end of each day
Of course none of these are being stored on my computer. The first two go to a 1TB external drive and the last is obviously going into the cloud.
 
Well, I figured out why the BSOD happened. Or at least what actions cause the problem. If I start windows media player and click on a particular song it causes an instant BSOD. This happened today and was exactly the same thing I was doing with the original BSOD. At least this time I didn't corrupt the save file. I guess the first time it was in the middle of saving the file when the BSOD happened.

I converted the song from an apples itune to a wav and then to an mp3 so maybe that will stop it happening again.

The batch files I use are based on Jim's explanation. He wrote a similar post somewhere else on fsdeveloper and I gratefully used the information to build my own.
 
Song must have been "There's a tear in my beer"? That song will still crash your PC no matter how much converting you do, my pickup dies if it plays on the radio while I'm driving down the road. :D
 
JRobinson said:
Song must have been "There's a tear in my beer"? That song will still crash your PC no matter how much converting you do, my pickup dies if it plays on the radio while I'm driving down the road. :D
Click to expand...
Oh, thank you so much Jim for the aural nightmare!
I'll have that bloody awful song running through my internal sound system all day now... :yikes:
 
n4gix said:
Oh, thank you so much Jim for the aural nightmare!
I'll have that bloody awful song running through my internal sound system all day now... :yikes:
Click to expand...

Heh, sorry Bill! :D

...and to think some folks actually paid money to hear that song! :confused:
 
mp3s are a thing of the 90s, you've gotta go .flac now...all my songs are in .flac format. I rip the cds I buy with Banshee. The reason .flac is better is because it doesn't destroy the quality of the audio. I have a particular song from Lana Del Rey that sounds horrible in .mp3 format no matter what bit rate I save it in...but in .flac it sounds crystal clear!! It may be a little bit bigger tho...mp3s are mostly 3-4mb while .flac files easily go 30-40mb!
 
Don't know about new file formats but the more flack aimed at Jim's bleedin' song the better. There isn't even a little saving irony in its performance...
 
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