Andy101
Level: Master Delver
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It's always a good idea to back the drod data files up at regular intervals but I for one am too lazy to do this as often as I should.

It would be nice if in the DROD settings screen there was an option to create a backup of all the vital .dat files and store it to a location of your choice.

I know that it's possible to create a .bat file to do a similar thing as mentioned here but an ingame option would be more helpful IMO. Such an option would help make sure that people always backed up all of the vital files and could be very handy for Mac uses for whom it appears just finding the correct files to back up is a bit of a nightmare.

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[Last edited by Andy101 at 09-05-2006 01:06 PM]

Elfstone
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Oh, here! here!!

Oh, yes!!!!

Oh, please!!!!!!!!!!!

I'll second that!
Elf.
(once badly bitten and now very shy)

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Hikari
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Not ever been bit by this (though *have* been bit by other things related), but I'll... um... third it? ^^

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Alneyan
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I'm juming on the bandwagon. I would like some way to automate exporting the player file myself, as I rely on that file for progress retrieval. Uploading the player file every week or so is trivial; my mind has the nasty tendency of forgetting to do a weekly export, though.

Mmh, perhaps I should just settle on a weekly mail yelling at me... "Upload ~/Alneyan.player within the next five minutes, or we'll play Russian Roulette with your partitions. First one to go is /usr." That should be trivial to set up.

michthro
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Great idea. Much better than exporting your player too, in that copying your .dats will only be faster, and you won't have to redownload holds if the worst happens and you have to restore backups. I'd suggest that the default location for the backups be far removed from the DROD directory, and not a hidden directory either, to make it as easy as possible for people to find them, and not accidentally delete them.

Tim
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I think this is a great idea. As long as every version of JtRH (and I have some of them) has it's own storage, I don't mind at all.

Although, perhaps it's a good idea to be able to store this on CaravelNet (and be able to use it even if I'm not at home).

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Alneyan
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michthro wrote:
Great idea. Much better than exporting your player too, in that copying your .dats will only be faster, and you won't have to redownload holds if the worst happens and you have to restore backups.

Well, that would depend on what you do with your backups, really. With only one HD on my box, there is little point in keeping my data on the same box (unless I start screwing up with rm * or some such). A media backup would serve, and I occasionally use those, but I don't put too much faith in these ones as I got a couple bad burns. Redudancy is good.

So, exporting the player file is a much better solution when space is limited, or for speed when *exporting* (I don't mind a slow importing much, and I don't think importing a player file takes much time). The biggest problem is, of course, having to download all those holds again. DROD 3.0 should fix that, but until then. *Shrugs*

Dats and player files don't quite serve the same purpose, I think. That, and I guess I'm biased: I can set up an automatic dat backup already in a couple seconds, so I don't need that feature, but automated player file exporting won't work out. Mmh, unless I made a custom build just for that purpose... which would be somewhat inefficient, but a good excuse to toy with the source.

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[Last edited by Alneyan at 09-05-2006 09:58 PM]

coppro
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Alneyan wrote:

michthro wrote:
Great idea. Much better than exporting your player too, in that copying your .dats will only be faster, and you won't have to redownload holds if the worst happens and you have to restore backups.

Well, that would depend on what you do with your backups, really. With only one HD on my box, there is little point in keeping my data on the same box (unless I start screwing up with rm * or some such). A media backup would serve, and I occasionally use those, but I don't put too much faith in these ones as I got a couple bad burns. Redudancy is good.

So, exporting the player file is a much better solution when space is limited, or for speed when *exporting* (I don't mind a slow importing much, and I don't think importing a player file takes much time). The biggest problem is, of course, having to download all those holds again. DROD 3.0 should fix that, but until then. *Shrugs*

Dats and player files don't quite serve the same purpose, I think. That, and I guess I'm biased: I can set up an automatic dat backup already in a couple seconds, so I don't need that feature, but automated player file exporting won't work out. Mmh, unless I made a custom build just for that purpose... which would be somewhat inefficient, but a good excuse to toy with the source.

I find that keeping an extra backup is actually quite handy, even if on the same box. That way, while it won't save you in a hard drive crash, at least if something causes the files to corrupt (in my experience, much much more common), you have recent backups.

Dolan42
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With Windows Xp you can make a .bat to back up the .dat files and then use the task scheduler to run the file weekly or daily or whatever to back up automatically.

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Kevin_P86
Level: Smitemaster

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You can do so with any version of Windows. Something like the following:

IF NOT EXIST c:\DRODbackup mkdir c:\DRODbackup
copy /Y data\drod2_0.dat c:\DRODbackup\drod2_0.dat
copy /Y data\player.dat c:\DRODbackup\player.dat
copy /Y data\data.dat c:\DRODbackup\data.dat
copy /Y data\text.dat c:\DRODbackup\text.dat

Place the above lines in a .bat file in the DROD directory (the one with drod.exe). When ran, this .bat file will make copies of the four .dat files, placing the copies in a folder located at c:\DRODbackup. If you would like them in a different location, you must simply change the six occurrences of "c:\DRODbackup" with the directory of your choice.

It is possible to use command line variables, but then it is required to be ran through the command prompt, which isn't as convenient for windows users.

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NiroZ
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Hey, i like the idea. It would make it alot easier to get the next version of the demo. A extra would be to have the ablity to have them exported as one file(reduces the chance of loss even more).

also, i would not be so sure about backing up all your dats to caravelnet, as some of them get pretty big. A text file of all the holds in your drod directory and your player file would suffice.

Dolan42
Level: Master Delver

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I can’t resist simplifying Kevin’s .bat file. Put these line in a .bat file in the DROD\data folder.

md C:\DRODback
copy *.dat c:\DRODback


*edit* optimized it further, I can now do it in 22 characters

____________________________
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"To understand recursion you must first understand recursion."

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[Last edited by Dolan42 at 09-07-2006 06:35 AM]

Kevin_P86
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But is it really safe to assume there are only the four .dat files in that directory...?

Yes, probably. But maybe not...!

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Dolan42
Level: Master Delver

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If there are more than 4 I'm assuming that the extras are also important to backup for forward compatibility.

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"To understand recursion you must first understand recursion."