[Ben]

Mike,

after having added a couple of songs to the library MS was unresponsive and I closed it. A message said something like "failed to load database" and now 0 songs instead of 1976 are shown in the library. This is my master library in Windows, MS 2.3.8
Can I restore the library with today's data (instead of taking an old backup?)

Thanks!
Ben

[Zubersoft]

Ben,

Go to Settings->Backup and Restore->Restore Automatic Database Backup and see if there is a backup from yesterday or a few days ago. That would at least restore you to that state. If you don't see an automatic backup available, you'll have to restore an old backup unless you happen to have a copy of mobilesheets.db with your latest changes.

Mike

[Ben]

Thank you Mike.
The automatic db backup restore option shows one file, it was probably created just after the "crash", considering the "successfully restored" db shows 0 songs in the library as well. This restored mobilesheets.db is 444 KB (I copied it before following your suggestion), an integer if older db on a second device is 2.7MB.
Any idea what can cause the library or db to be "wiped out" all of a sudden? This never happened before luckily.

Ben

[BRX]

I've been always a bit anxious about a situation where because of clumsiness or other circumstances the autobackup is overwritten with a new autobackup of the damaged db.

Is there a securtiy check that might prevent such overwriting (for example if the new autobackup is more than 200k smaller than the previous one) so there is no unintended data loss?

If not I'd like to suggest something like that.

[sciurius]

Two easy ways:

• do not save/update/overwrite database if there are 0 songs, at least not with a strong warning
  
• maintain multiple copies of the recovery db
  

[BRX]

This was advice for me, yes?

Well I'm a backup fanatic having put hours and hours into building my database. My database is spread over 5 devices with multiple manual backups and also in the cloud.
I even copied the autobackups before opening MSP when there was a MS hangup with actual or potential data loss in the current database (there were a few).

So of course I can deal with it. It was a suggestion for a safety feature for users with less paranoia or experience with MSP.

[itsme]

To me it sounds more like a proposal for Mike.

[Zubersoft]

Yes, it was definitely a suggestion for me. I'll revisit some of the logic for creating the automatic database backups, but I don't want a huge list of backups being created, as those are really only supposed to be used as a last ditch effort when the database can't be recovered. There is merit to the suggestion of not overwriting an automatic backup if there are 0 songs in the library though, as there are few scenarios where that would occur other than a complete loss of the database. I definitely don't want to add a lot of complexity for creating the backup where I try to compare sizes though, as a user may just have cleared a lot of songs out of their library.  

Mike