Recollector User’s Guide
Backing up (and Restoring or
Copying) your Collection
It is always a good idea to periodically back up your collection data. Recollector provides a built-in facility for performing backups of your collection and, when necessary, restoring your collection data from backup or making a copy of your collection from a backup.
You back up a collection by choosing Backup from the File menu of the collection viewer window. (If you have created more than one collection, you back them up one at a time. Only the currently selected collection is backed up through the procedure described here, so to back up a different collection you must switch to that other collection, using Manage Collections / Select Current Collection on the Recollector Control Window, show the newly selected collection, and then again select Backup from the File menu on the collection viewer window.)
The Backup command will bring up the following window:
Each backup that you perform will create a new folder (directory) to contain the backup files. In the Collection Backup dialog you specify where this new folder should be created. The very first time you use this backup facility, the destination for the backup folder will be shown as C:\, but in subsequent sessions the destination will be shown to be whatever was selected the last time you performed a backup. You can use the Browse button to bring up a directory-selection window that will let you navigate to any directory on your system where you want the new backup folder to be created. The example shown above, with a directory on drive F: as the destination for the backup folder, is on a system where F: is a removable flash drive (also known as a thumb drive, memory stick, or USB flash drive). This is a very sensible place to do backups to, since the flash drive is independent of your computer’s main hard drive, and therefore the data will be recoverable in the future, even if your hard drive should suffer a complete failure.
In the dialog you also specify whether to back up just the collection file, or whether to also back up all of the individual media (image, audio and video) files used in the collection. If you are planning to copy your collection to another machine, you should back up both the collection file and the media files. If you are just doing the backup for security purposes, you may want to back up only the collection file, particularly if you have previously backed up your media files or are able to recover those file easily from some other source.
When you click OK the backup will begin. If you have chosen to include media files the backup may take several minutes to complete, and a progress window will show the course of the backup process.
When completed, the backup will have created a new folder that contains the various backup files, as shown in the Explorer window displayed here:
The name of the backup folder is created from the name of the collection and the date and time at which the backup is performed. In the example shown here, the backup was done on June 23, 2009 at 14:01 (2:01pm) for a collection named Tribal Art, so the backup folder is named Tribal Art_23JUN2009_14_01. Inside the folder are two files:
· An XML file that is simply a copy of the current collection file. This file always has a filename extension of .xml.
· A text file named BackupDescriptor.txt.
If you chose to also back up images, audio and video, there will be a sub-directory named Images, inside of which will be individual media files. (The names of the files in the Images directory are specially generated so that they can be properly restored, if necessary, in a future restore operation.)
The BackupDescriptor.txt file is a text file that contains information needed to correctly restore the collection.
Restoring or
Copying a Collection
Once you have made a backup of your collection, you can use that backup to restore your collection (in case your collection file has been inadvertently deleted or corrupted). You can also use the backup to make a complete copy of your collection to another computer (or to a different location on the same computer). Making a copy of your collection is useful if you have more than one computer, and you want to periodically synchronize your collection information by copying the latest version of your collection data to another computer.
To restore or copy a collection from a backup copy, open the Recollector Control Window and click the Restore or Copy a Collection from Backup button. If any collection is currently open, you will be prompted to close the open collection, since a restore or copy operation can only be performed when no collection is currently open. A file selection dialog will then open. Use this dialog to navigate to and select the .xml file is the backed-up copy of the collection that you wish to restore or copy. You will then be asked whether you want to perform a Restore operation or a Copy operation. The next two sections on this page describe the subsequent actions, depending upon whether you have chosen to do a restore or a copy. As mentioned above, if you plan to copy your collection, you should do this from a backup that includes the collection’s media (image, audio and video) files. Otherwise the copied collection will not contain any images or audio/video clips.
Restore
Note: Normally you will only need to restore a collection if your collection has been inadvertently deleted, the collection file has become corrupted, the disk on which your collection resides has been damaged, or you have made changes to your collection which you decide are not wanted (and you want to revert your collection to an earlier backed-up state).
If the collection that you are restoring would cause the existing .xml collection file to be overwritten, the program will prompt you of this (showing the modification dates and sizes of both the file to be overwritten and the file which you are restoring). If the restored collection included media files, the restore operation may take a few minutes, and a progress window will show the course of the restore process.
If you restore a collection that is not currently among the collections that Recollector knows about, the restored collection will be added as a new collection to your list of collections. (Note that if you restore a collection from a backup that did not include media files, the images and audio/video clips in the restored collection may or may not be visible/playable, depending upon whether the media files referenced by the collection are in their expected locations. Any image file that is not found will be displayed, in the Item Details view, as the text pathname of the expected file, rather than as a thumbnail image.)
If any parts of the restore operation could not be successfully completed (for example, if a media file was to be restored to a directory that no longer exists), you will be notified of these problems. When the restoration is complete, a window will inform you that the restored collection has now been set as the current collection, and you will be asked if you want to show that collection.
A log of the restore operation is written to the same folder to which the collection file was restored. This file is named CollectionRestoreLog.txt and can be viewed in any text editor. The log notes each file that was restored, as well as each file for which the restore could not be completed. The log file overwrites any previous version of CollectionRestoreLog.txt, if one existed from a prior restore operation.
Copy
If you have chosen to make a copy from the backup, the program will prompt you for where to put the collection (.xml) file. Use the file dialog to navigate to the directory where the copied collection should be placed. You can keep the name of the collection file the same as it was in the backup copy (which is what the file dialog initially displays), or you can modify the name, but you should make sure that the file type (.xml) stays unchanged.
Once the destination collection file has been specified, the program will copy the collection from the backup. In addition to the collection file itself, an images folder will be created in the same directory that contains the new collection file. The images folder will have the same name as the collection file (without the .xml file-type) with _Images appended. So if the new collection file is named CoinCollection.xml, then the program will create a directory named CoinCollection_Images in the same directory. All of the images (as well as any audio or video clip files) from the backup will be placed in this image folder, and the image folder will be set as the Image Directory for the copied collection. (This will be done even if the original collection, from which the backup was made, did not have an Image Directory specified.)
If the original collection, from which the backup was made, included an Image Directory, then any images or audio/video files that were located in the Image Directory (or its sub-directories) will be placed in the corresponding location in the copy. So, for example, if the original collection had an Image Directory named pix, and one of the collection’s images was located in a sub-folder named pix\closeups, then a closeups sub-folder (of the _Images folder) will be created when the copy of the collection is made, and the image will be put into the new closups sub-folder. In this way, any directory hierarchy that existed in the original collection’s Image Directory will be preserved in the copy. Any images (or audio/video files) in the original collection that were not located in the Image Directory hierarchy will be placed in the top-level _Image folder. If there is more than one media file with the same name to be put into the same folder by the copy operation (but which had been in different folders in the original collection and so were not causing any name conflict), the program will modify one or more filenames by appending numbers, as necessary (e.g. turning photo.jpg into photo1.jpg) in order to guarantee that all media files have distinct names. The copied collection file itself will be automatically updated to reflect any such filename modifications.
When the copy operation is completed, the new (copied) collection will be added to the set of collections that Recollector knows about, and you will be asked whether you want to show the newly copied collection. If any parts of the copy operation could not be successfully completed, you will be notified of these problems.
A log of the copy operation is written to the same folder to which the collection file was copied. This file is named CollectionCopyLog.txt and can be viewed in any text editor. The log notes each file that was copied, as well as each file for which the copy could not be completed. The log file overwrites any previous version of CollectionCopyLog.txt, if one existed from a prior copy operation.
Note regarding
space requirements for backups
Since each backup creates a new folder and new copies of your collection file, you may find that the disk space used by backups grows faster than you might have anticipated, particularly if you include images (and audio or video) in your backups. For this reason you may want to periodically review your backup folders and clean up (delete) some of the older backup folders that you don’t think you would ever want to restore from (since more recent backups are available).
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