Solid way to back up SonicStage media?

[theblueraja]

I'm running Sonic Stage 4.3 I believe, and I recently bought a 500gb "My Book" so I can back up my music. I have discovered, however, that if I reinstall Sonic Stage and re-import all of my media (albums in the Packages section) that more than half of the album art ends up MISSING. When I search the folder that contains all of the art (I forget what its called but it starts with an "F" I believe), the art is actually THERE, but in the import process the connection (or link) is lost. Is there a more sure way of backing up my ATRAC library and retain the assigned artwork??

I also find it annoying that it somehow doesn't keep all the manual tag changes I've made... for instance, if an artist has a few tracks where the artist name is theirs, but "featuring Joe Smith" etc, I manually deleted the "featuring" part so in my Artist search there won't be so many entries, etc... but when re-importing, it goes back to the original tags that came when the CD was first ripped to Sonic Stage.

Can anyone help? I thought of just duplicating the entire Sonic Stage directory, or even installing Sonic Stage ON to the back up hard drive, but I have a feeling Sony has a lot of tag/ID info stuff for copyright issues, plus Windows issues, etc...

[giki]

What are you doing here TBR????!!!!! :wave:

Thought you would never come here

Kompressor from Tboard.

[theblueraja]

What are you doing here TBR????!!!!! :wave:

Thought you would never come here

Kompressor from Tboard.

I'm a little tired of the "left minidisc behind" guilt on my shoulders, so I thought since I love ATRAC, I'd try out this spot.

So.. can anyone answer my question?

[Richard]

This is something of a pain indeed - most of the reasons for these anomalies are due to the fact SS stores most of it's meta-data in an Access database in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Sony Corporation\SonicStage\Packages

Also in there is the LocalCDInfo folder which contains corrections you may have made to info found by CDDB (this is remembered in case you insert the same cd again)

I haven't tried backup and restore of this file, but this is where all the links about which tracks have which jacket art are held, how many times a track has been transferred etc..

If you are just moving the library between external hard drives, I would suggest manually copying across the folder that contains the music files to the new HDD taking care to recreate the same folder structure. If you then assign the new drive letter the same as the old one via Disk Management you shouldn't have to re-install SS.

As you also say when adding a cover art in most cases SS creates a "jacket.jpg" in the folder that contains the music tracks. In case it doesn't I also have a seperate folder (called "Cover Art Import") from which I can always re-import.

Edited June 7, 2007 by richyhu

[dura_]

Well, there's the backup utility, or am I missing something?

[atown8605]

I dont use the SS backup utility. I go to the file in MY COMPUTER and copy it to the destination hard drive.

[theblueraja]

I dont use the SS backup utility. I go to the file in MY COMPUTER and copy it to the destination hard drive.

Do you mean the same thing that Richyu said?

This is something of a pain indeed - most of the reasons for these anomalies are due to the fact SS stores most of it's meta-data in an Access database in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Sony Corporation\SonicStage\Packages

Also in there is the LocalCDInfo folder which contains corrections you may have made to info found by CDDB (this is remembered in case you insert the same cd again)

I haven't tried backup and restore of this file, but this is where all the links about which tracks have which jacket art are held, how many times a track has been transferred etc..

If you are just moving the library between external hard drives, I would suggest manually copying across the folder that contains the music files to the new HDD taking care to recreate the same folder structure. If you then assign the new drive letter the same as the old one via Disk Management you shouldn't have to re-install SS.

As you also say when adding a cover art in most cases SS creates a "jacket.jpg" in the folder that contains the music tracks. In case it doesn't I also have a seperate folder (called "Cover Art Import") from which I can always re-import.

When you say your cover import folder "which I can always re-import"... do you mean manually import one cover at a time, or is there a way to mass-import all the cover data??

And as far as the SS backup utility... hmm.. anyone know if that works?

[Ishiyoshi]

And as far as the SS backup utility... hmm.. anyone know if that works?

Welcome TBR. For your reference, we have a short FAQ regarding SonicStage's Backup Tool --> click here for more info.

Like Rich, I also employ a large external HDD to archive my ATRAC tunes. If you have a large library, a manual backup of your entire ATRAC library (to an external HDD) would be the most efficient method. For such a setup, you will need to assign a "permanent" drive letter (via Disk Management) for your ATRAC library HDD; and make sure to update SonicStage's "location to save imported files" accordingly with the new drive letter.

If you have previously assigned an art cover to a given album, the coverart.jpg will be located within the same file folder of the album created by SonicStage. As for a "mass-import" of cover art to its corresponding albums, I don't think it's possible to do that with SonicStage.

[atown8605]

ISHIYOSHI SAIS IT BEST!

[theblueraja]

Welcome TBR. For your reference, we have a short FAQ regarding SonicStage's Backup Tool --> click here for more info.

Like Rich, I also employ a large external HDD to archive my ATRAC tunes. If you have a large library, a manual backup of your entire ATRAC library (to an external HDD) would be the most efficient method. For such a setup, you will need to assign a "permanent" drive letter (via Disk Management) for your ATRAC library HDD; and make sure to update SonicStage's "location to save imported files" accordingly with the new drive letter.

If you have previously assigned an art cover to a given album, the coverart.jpg will be located within the same file folder of the album created by SonicStage. As for a "mass-import" of cover art to its corresponding albums, I don't think it's possible to do that with SonicStage.

This seems very helpful... I'll check out that FAQ link, and give this procedure a shot. Thanks!

[theblueraja]

Well I did the backup procedure from Sonic Stage to my MyBook external HD successfully. I see it created/saved some additional files than a typcal copy+paste backup of the Sonic Stage folders (what I did in the past). However I'm just a bit nervous to do the real TEST. In other words, deleting all of my media, or uninstalling & reinstalling SS after all the reorganizing I had to do with some artist names, the artwork replacements, etc.... what should I do? Try it on my second computer or will that mess up my licenses somehow? I'm not TOO concerned about the stuff I have purchased via Connect (not very much at all), so maybe that won't be an issue... but I don't want to ruin any computer authority issues by trying it on the other machine.

Thoughts?