Lost application files. Sync from Pocketpedia?

[jluckhurst41]

Last year my hard drive in my computer crashed and caused white sceeen and unfortunately I don’t have a recent backup of some files, mainly my DVDpedia library. Not until last week have I had time to work on it and try to recover files from this old computer. But when i finally did I manage to connect and recover other things there was nothing in the Application support folder in the Library like I’d hoped and had read up on. Any other place that I can look that you recommend? Isn’t that where the database should be stored?

If not, instead now my other hope is that my portable copy which was synced to Pocketpedia on my iPhone and has the latest version short of maybe a day or two before the crash. Is it possible to sync the pocketpedia version to a clean version of the app on my new computer? I replaced my old one after the crash due to time restraint and have now downloaded DVDpedia to it but haven’t entered anything into it. I’m thinking if I sync, hopefully everything from the iphone could load into the computer. But on the other hand I don’t want to risk instead syncing the empty library onto my phone replacing what is maybe my only good version i have left. Any suggestions? What is most likely to happen?

I should mention my old computer was an iMac running i think OSX 10.12 Sierra (?) with what was perhaps a late version 4 of DVDpedia. New computer is a Macbook Pro with OSX 10.13 Sierra and also i downloaded latest version 4 of DVDpedia since i thought it would be better to have same. If it helps of course I’m willing to updrage to a new v5 release either to make it work, or after everything is fixed if that is better.

Hopefully someone can give me some pointers on what to do. Would be greatly appreciated.

[Conor]

Sorry to hear about the computer crash and losing all your files. Congratulations on the new computer.

Since you still have access to the old computer, do look in ~/Library/Application Support again for the DVDpedia folder, as there are two Library folders and you might have been in the wrong one. It has to be the Library folder that is in your home user folder.

Since you are on the 10 year old version 4 of the program, it makes recovering from Pocketpedia complicated. As it uses a different database and syncs differently to Pocketpedia.

Version 5 will sync back from Pocketpedia to an empty database. But I have never tried it from a sync that was done from the old version 4. Not sure what will happen. So I recommend on the first step to backup your iPhone to iTunes, so that you can restore Pocketpedia if need be. You can also pull the data out of a backup from iTunes.

If you need to go the Pocketpedia route as you can't ind the original data folder, do try the beta of version 5 (no need to purchase it for trying the restore).

http://beta.bruji.com/dvdpedia.zip

0. Make a backup of your iOS device to the computer via iTunes (will let us restore from a backup if things go wrong).

1. Launch DVDpedia it should be empty, brand new data folder created at ~/Library/Application Support/DVDpedia

2. a. Hold down the option key and click on the "Help" menu select "Pocketpedia".
b. Clcik "Backup" and press "sync" in Pocketpedia. (This is a backup file, that might not use).

3. Make sure you add/edit any entry in Pocketpedia so that it has to send the database.

4. Sync and give it sometime. It should bring all the info from Pocketpedia. (Sometimes the covers are missing but worry not about those).

5. If it did not work, do not sync twice. Quit DVDpedia and in the above new "CDpedia" folder found in "Application Support" from step 2. Look for "Pocketpedia.dvdpd". Delete "Database.dvdpd" and rename "Pocketpedia.dvdpd" to "Database.dvdpd". (You can do the replace to Database.dvdpd from the file in step 2 as well.) Launch DVDpedia.

6. To add covers (if needed). Select all and use "Movie -> Update from -> Doghouse (or original search site)". It will use the UPC or title and go and get the covers again for all the items. You can also run it in smaller selections if you have a lot of movies.

The second method is to extract your database directly from the backup done to your computer. But you should not need these, just here for thoroughness.

To pull the data directly from a backup use Super Crazy Awesome Backup Extractor.

Although another user had better luck with app iBackup Viewer.

Launch it and press the "Read Backups" and select the device in question and then look for "com.bruji.pocketpedia3". Select it and use extract to your desktop, the file you are looking for will be in Private Documents

You can then replace the one in your ~/Library/Application Support/DVDpedia with this one called "Database.dvdpd".

Hope that helps get the data back.

[FineWine]

i suppose the moral of this story is; BACKUP - BackUp - backup.

I have my macOS Time Machine backup program running a 2Tb Apple Airport Time Capsule 24/7 and believe you me it has saved my arse many a time. I also run a GrandFather backup using Carbon Copy Cloner which I backup to about once a month and store off site at my sister in-laws house. I have only needed to use it once in 15 years.

Going back to Conor mentioning iTunes backups, Conor when you connect your iPhone to iTunes, within iTunes in the left Sidebar there is a File Sharing entry which for Pocketpedia just shows a Folder called Covers which has zero bytes. In another program I use called Shopping List it shows a large sqlite file which contains ALL user data. Could you not make use of this File Sharing facility to store ALL of Pockpedias data, "com.bruji.pocketpedia3" including Covers ?

[Conor]

Exposing the files via the file sharing was my original thought. But it's discouraged by Apple for files that are not user saved files. Apple wants everything to be magical and the user not worry about it. The covers folder exposed there is for covers captured on the iPhone that have never been backed up, so the user can grab them.

I agree with Apple here, everything that has a backup, be it on iTunes, iCloud, or a Pedia I do not expose. As you mention it's much better and simpler to have backup of the data from the computer. Of course there a few edge cases where it would be useful, when all backups are lost. But it does downgrade the experience for other users as well as take up drive space to start making so many copies for those few cases.