Damaged Homebase Database

Archive: Used Bookdealer

The power went out one night. We leave Homebase open and the computer crash - I guess it took the UPS past the battery's limit - put some microscope dent in the Homebase data file.

I don't have a copy of Access or know a thing about repairing an Access database.

Searching Google for the error message I found an ABE help page that said they'd try to repair damaged database files.

So I uploaded ours and sent ABE a message.

The next day I got a canned message saying I could download our listings from ABE. No mention of the uploaded file. I sent a note but got no reply. (ABE stripped out the location field - understandably leaving their file not as useful as it might be … to put it mildly.)

I followed up in the Homebase forum on ABE. A lady replied that they still repair damaged Homebase files. Still didn't hear from tech support.

I did get a short survey from ABE asking how satisfied the response to my support ticked. And a couple of days after that I got an apologetic note from ABE saying they'd work on it.

About twelve days later and ABE hasn't been heard from again.

You be saying to yourself Richard sure is a fool to not have a backup of such important data.

No kidding.

I'd been planning to mention the issue to Gordon just before the file was munged.

But …

I had setup an automatic backup using some old software by the folks who originally produced Partition magic. But it had been so long that I forgot about it.

So we were able to restore out data.