I found a really nasty one:

I recently deleted a profile by accident, no problemo I thought, that's what the backup is there for. So I start to restore, and see "restoring cast database..." progress bar fills up, "restoring crew database..." progress bar fills up, and then:
Restore aborted
The following error occured during the restore: data error

Well, i got the profile in question back from an older backup file, but after that I got really curious and did a little digging. What I came up with, as you can see at the topic, is that this problem only occurs when I choose "include reports, layouts and translation files" in the backup. Those backups are totally worthless for me, even unchecking the "include reports, layouts and translation files" in the restoring dialog does no good, Profiler seems still to be reading the invalid data and throws the error.

I guess that either a report, a layout or a translation file on my system contains an error that makes it impossible for DVD Profiler to read it. Before I go hunting it down though I would like to give Ken the chance to ask the right questions if he needs informations to narrowing this problem down.

I have two backups of one DVD Profile, and the one with reports etc absolutely reproducibly brings the error message. I will send a download link to anyone interested, no open URL, the risk is to high that someone accidentally shreds his collection.

cya, Mithi


PS Most likely I'm not the first one who encountered this problem: Lost two titles and can't get them back. and
Cannot restore from dpb file

Thanks for the heads up Mithi. I back up using the "full" option, almost daily, so it is good to know that might not be working. I will back up without the reports etc option as a duplicate also, just to be safe.

I'm also unable to reproduce this. Restoring selected profiles and covers from a "Full" backup works fine for me as does a complete restore of the backup on a different machine.

Quoting Ken Cole:

Quote:
I'm unable to reproduce this.

Actually, that's good!
This supports my suspicion that something is wrong on my end.

Quote:
Any additional information you can give would be helpful.  What exact options are selected during the backup?

If I use "Full Backup" it's toast, if I use "Custom Backup" and uncheck "include reports, layouts and translation files" everything is fine. All the other option have no influence.
I'll send you the download link via pm.

As goblinsdoitall wrote that he has the same problem I momentarily thought the german translation-file might be the culprit, but goodguy is from Germany too and his backup is doing fine.

cya, Mithi

I have no problems restoring, though my OS and DVDP are english and I have no special reports or something like that.

That is the closest a smiley can get to what I feel right now.
I found a "Favorites.lst" in my Reports-folder, funny thing is: it's size is 0 Bytes.

And as long as this file is present a backup including reports leads to a non-restoreable backup file.
As soon as I either delete this file or edit it to contain even a single character everything is fine.

I have not the slightest idea where this effing files comes from, and I'm even more flabberghasted that it was also present on my virtual system.

cya, Mithi

Found the culprit for this malaise:

Under Tools - Reports you can mark your installed reports as favorites. If you do so, the file Favorites.lst is created. No problem there, because the file has a size > 0 bytes as long as at least one report is marked.

If you however remove all of those favorite markers, the file is set so size 0 bytes thus causing the problem.

Solution: If no report is marked as favorite, the file should be deleted completely and everything is fine.

cya, Mithi