Keith’s Personal Weblog

Woohoo!

July 9th, 2007

My “Backup and Restore” problem:

So, I decided to create a new backup with its new MediaID.bin and then use a hex viewer/editor to look at the contents of that file and then search for the same hex sequence in the backup catalog files.  I found it, both in the global catalog file and the individual catalog files.  I first tried to find the equivalent sequence in my old global catalog file, create the old MediaID.bin file, and then try to restore.  For some reason, possibly an error on my part in identifying the correct sequence, it didn’t work.  Then I did the same thing with one of the individual catalog files, using the ASCII sequence “Volume” as a marker.  (That’s not actually the sequence, it’s in a 32-bit format and so there’s a 00 hex between each.)  Comparing one of the new individual catalog files I had just created with an old one, and using the sequence from the new MediaID.bin as a guide, I identified what seemed to be the proper sequence from the old catalog file and recreated the old Media.Bin file—which was different from the one I had already tried.  Then I tried a restore.  It’s working!  Yay!  You have no idea how big of a relief this is for me.  I was going to lost a lot of important data if I couldn’t figure this out.  Unfortunately, however, I’m just guessing based upon file comparison and so there’s no programmatic way for me to automate this for other people’s use.

Entry Filed under: Windows