Does anyone have any ideas or methods on how to make a preferably automated backup of the contents of their Empeg drive(s) with a Windows PC (preferred)

I have just upgraded my unit, and before I invest a lot of time in sending songs to the unit, creating playlists, etc. I would like to know if there is some way of making a good backup periodically?

Thanks,

Rob

If you want to keep backups of your music files, it's best to just back up your songs before sending them to the player in the first place (or just leave them on your PC's hard disk).

There is no need to back up the player software, since it is completely re-written from scratch with each upgrade file.

If you want to copy the songs back onto the PC from the player, right-click on any playlist in Emplode and select "Download" (requires version 2.0 software).

Well, I find that I spend an inordinate amount of time getting the playlists just right, and my empeg is far better organized than my pc has ever been. Once I "finish" getting everything I want on my empeg, I know I'm going to want to back it up.

It's possible to dupilicate the emepg's file system on another empeg with tar piped to netcat, so this would probably be a good option for backing up. I have no idea if there's a netcat for windows though.

Matthew

I think it's possible to use FTP to copy the contents of the FIDs folders anywhere you like. I think that's all that's necessary to back it up.

I asked elsewhere whether or not this was the true absolute correct way to back up your playlists and songs, and never got a straight answer. So that's why it's not in the FAQ.

Tony,

Thanks for the idea. I suppose it would be easy to just keep them on the PC, although my eventual goal is to just use the Empeg as my be all, end all location of MP3s, for both car and home.

That is, unless someone writes a slick conduit for communication between the Empeg and that upcoming Rio Home MP3 component. I would love to stick a bigger drive in that box and transfer away!

Rob

That is, unless someone writes a slick conduit for communication between the Empeg and that upcoming Rio Home MP3 component.

If you're referring to the Rio Central HSX-109, yes, they are talking about upgrading its software so that you can plug the car player directly into it, taking the PC completely out of the loop. I'd like to be able to do this as well.

I asked elsewhere whether or not this was the true absolute correct way to back up your playlists and songs, and never got a straight answer. So that's why it's not in the FAQ.

Oh. What was sideways about the answers you got? Backing up the contents of the "fids" directories (one per drive) certainly backs up all the songs and all the playlists and all their attached "static" or permanent information (the tags for artist, album, auto-repeat, auto-shuffle etc.).

It does not back up the "dynamic" or writable information (play count and last played), or the other data not related to individual songs or playlists (bookmarks, tuner presets, equaliser settings, owner's name, configured IP address).

The only other thing to know, is that after restoring a backup of the "fids" directories, you'll have to remove the three files database, playlists, and tags from the /drive0/var directory to force a database rebuild. (You have to do this whenever you fiddle with the fids without Emplode/Emptool/JEmpeg knowing.)

Peter

What was sideways about the answers you got?

They didn't include that critical information you just supplied in your post. Thanks.

Off to make a new FAQ entry.

Okay, a complete description of the backup and restore procedures are now here.

I'd be interested to know if anyone actually tries this.

The FAQ says:

Put the player's hard disks back into read-only mode (don't forget this!).

Reboot the player (it will rebuild the database files on its first boot)

You'll then need to connect with Emplode/Emptool/JEmpeg and get it to rebuild the database too. The database gets written to disk when the PC rebuilds it, but not when the player rebuilds it (*). Until you sync using Emplode/whatever, the player will rebuild its database on every startup.

Peter

(*) The player will, in fact, write the database to disk if you start (not reboot) the player with the disks read/write. But you can't easily do that except from the shell, so Tony's instructions are more foolproof.

Corrections made. Thanks!

Is there any way to download those fids only if they are more recent than the ones on the PC hard drive? That way, the first downlaod would take forever, but subsequent ones would only download the changes.....

Interesting idea.

I'd guess just sort the files by date in your FTP software.

Only problem is... It won't handle deletions... Things could get really ugly with deletions...

Okay, a complete description of the backup and restore procedures are now here.

Sigh... I realize that, coming from my position if invincible ignorance, something that seems to me like it would be simple is probably not. But...

Can't we ever have something either in emplode or as a standalone program, where I can connect my USB cable to my empeg, click on an icon on my PC, and end up with an exact, perfect mirror image of the data that was on my empeg? An image such that I could completely erase my empeg (diskbuilder?) and then click a second icon on my PC to restore, and have my empeg be in exactly the state it was when I started?

And yes, USB would be my choice. I don't care if it's slow -- I would run it overnight. Have it work from USB and Ethernet and even serial. Just make it a simple one-click idiot-proof operation.

Somebody who could write such a program could sell a lot of them at $20 apiece!

Anybody?

tanstaafl.

In reply to:

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The player will, in fact, write the database to disk if you start (not reboot) the player with the disks read/write.

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Thanks for this information - I didn't know that. It'll certainly save some time when it crashes during the database build and drops into the shell. I just need to type "rwm; exit" instead of "exit" then.

I said the exact same things you said on an earlier thread about a month.

Stupid question. Have you check out latest JEMPLODE? There is a beta version of a USB interface that seems to work OK for downloading from the EMPEG. (Haven't tried uploading though) and even creates a directory structure like that on your Empeg when it downloads the track.

Only caveat is the case where you have same tracks in different playlists. I think it skips duplicates but I'm not entirely sure. You still won't have a perfect copy of your database.

It should go some of way of accomplishing what you want, though.