My Digital Life

SQL Server 2005 or Express database file portability

In my rush to migrate over to my Dell XPS 720, I neglected to perform an application level backup of the SQL data I use with Microsoft's Office Accounting 2007 and Outlook Business Contact Manager. However. I am happy to report that after a little research, database file portability does work with SQL Server 2005 and Express.

The process involves, creating and attaching the database. I did this by restoring a previous application level backup using the data tools in Office Accounting 2007 matching my previous database name. I then shut down the SQL Server services, copied my database's Master Data File (.MDF) and Log Data File (.LDF) from for my Acronis backup. Restarted the SQL services and accessed my current using Office Accounting.

This is a great feature of SQL server...Although the configuration method is different Exchange 2007 also allows for database portability of its mailboxes.

I am pretty much back up and running on my new XPS 720, so far I am very impressed with its performance...I did have to upgrade the BIOS and update the nvidia drivers but so far the Dell support has been very good.

The week of December 31st in My Digital Life

Last week I went on hiatus. I hope that everyone who celebrates Christmas, had a good holiday.

I finally figured out what I was doing wrong with my Acronis backup scheme. My scheme involves two tasks; one full backup I run on Friday nights and an incremental task I run every other day. During one of my upgrades to the latest version, the tasks were modified. A 1 was added to the end of the full backup file name, however the incremental task's backup file name was not altered. When the incremental task ran it could not find the base backup (because of the extra 1) and tried to create another full backup which would not fit on the drive thus creating the out of space error. Acronis needs to simplify their logs to easily point out such discrenpencies.

I missed Directv's latest beta build the 21st and there was no build on the 28th. I am still running Ox1D9 and some of the posts on dbstalk.com pointing to issues with the transmission of mpeg4 channels were clearly on the right track. The stability of the image during playback has improved dramatically over the last 2 weeks (no dropouts). The smoothness of fast forward and rewind have reverted back to the pre November 19th national release. Directv has also fixed the permission issues when recording pay per views before purchasing. The lip sync issues on local channels is much less noticeable. They did however create an HD extra pack which includes HDNet, MGMHD, MHD, UHD, and SmithsomianHD. They did a very poor job of advertising this (probably by design). This in essence amounts to a price increase. They are offering it free for three months. I will just have to see if it is worth keeping. But in the end Directv provides an excellent value and the picture quality via HDMI on my Sony KDL46XBR2 is outstanding. All I need now is for them to turn on web based scheduling, especially on mobile devices...

Last week I received an email from Sony regarding a software upgrade for my KDL46XBR2 "which may further improve picture uniformity when receiving very dark image sources under dim lighting conditions". I ordered the kit, it will be interesting to see how you update the firmware. I have to commend Sony on providing this software upgrade. If you own an XBR2 or XBR3 and did not receive the email you can go to this page.

I received my unlocked AT&T Tilt (TynTn II/Kaiser) and after applying an xda-developer ROM, I am impressed with its performance and usefulness (more to come seperately).  I feel like a broken record, but every generation of Windows Mobile device gets better other then the HP hw6315 which was a piece of junk.

I am T - 6 days from leaving for CES. This is going to be an exciting three days and I will hopefully report on some great gadgets.

This week: 

• Finish my summary review of the tabletkiosk Sahara Slate PC i440D for pocketnow.com.
• Complete my review of Ilium Software's eWallet 6.
• Post more thoughts on the AT&T Tilt

The week of December 17th in My Digital Life

I installed the latest release of Acronis True Image Home 11 last week (build 8053), unfortunately it did not solve my problem running separate tasks for full and incremental backups, I mentioned last week, where the incremental tasks claims to run out of disk space after the full task has been run.

I missed Directv's latest beta build this weekend for my HR20-700 and now I can't access some of my HD channels (error 721). This is really weird, however the build I am running (Ox1D9) provides much better fast forward/reverse functionality and the audio dropouts are now almost non existent. There is still some lip syncing issues, mostly on local broadcasts. They are bearable...

Via Jason Langridge's blog, SlingMedia has posted an employee/affiliate special deal until 12/31/2007. They are selling the Slingbox Solo for $159.99 ($20 off) and are including a copy of the SlingPlayer mobile software ($29.99) for a total savings of $49.99.  This deal seems to be open to all US residents by going to this link.

I should be receiving an AT&T Tilt (HTC TyTNII) this week (courtesy of pocketnow.com). I am excited to see what it can do, given the mixed reviews out there.

This week: 

• Post my final video review of the tabletkiosk Sahara Slate PC i440D is continuing on pocketnow.com.

The week of November 5th in My Digital Life

Last week I installed my Sirius receiver in my BMW, it is a credit to BMW's I-Bus architecture that I can have factory integrated Bluetooth, Sirius and a DVD based navigation in a vehicle built in 2002. Off course BMW won't admit it or support it since they want to sell new vehicles with these capabilities. I can thank the folks on the x5forum and Tom at European Auto Source for the parts and support. The Sirius Terk antenna is tucked away in the X5's spoiler, no external antenna which keeps the clean exterior look. I have had no issues with reception, although I am missing channels 185 - 197 which is were the majority of the Canadian channels are. Even though I probably won't listen to those channels much, I am paying for them so I should receive them. Sirius has tried to send out a new activation/programming signal several times to no avail. I have read some forum posts that you need the latest Sirius chip set to get these channels. Since I bought the latest generation receiver (3rd) from BMW, I would expect those channels would work. I have emails out on this issue, but I will try to send the re-activation signal from the Sirius web site today to see if that works...

This weekend one my desktop Seagate hard drives failed (the system no longer sees the drive) and I did something stupid, I reset the BIOS (to see if the system would see the drive) and forgot the turn on the RAID option. Since my Intel D865 PERL RAID chipset does not officially support Vista, the RAID driver needs to load before Vista, which means it has to be part of the Master Boot Record (MBR) and is tied to the BIOS setting. Unfortunately when Vista boots, if it does not see the BIOS setting, it will automatically rebuilds the MBR and you loose any ability to boot the RAID driver which means you loose all RAID capabilities associated with the disks. The Vista repair function does not work. I had to reinstall Vista and restore from my Acronis backup. What a pain but everything is finally up and running this morning.

This week:

• Finish and post part 2 and 3 of my video review of the SCH-i760.
• My review of the iqua BHS-303 Bluetooth headset should post on pocketnow.com this week.  This is a very good headset for $35 (Internet price)

Managing your backups with Acronis True Image Home 10

Acronis True Image Home 10 works well with Windows Vista. It has a quota management system which allows you to specify the amount of space to use and the number of files you want keep. I run a daily incremental backup from my 160GB RAID 1 array to a 120GB USB drive. The USB drive tends to get filled up quickly, however I would like to keep 2 weeks worth of backups. In order to accomplish this I need to move backup files from the USB drive to another drive on my system. Acronis has a feature which allows the executions of commands in a .bat file before or after a backup.

I used the information in a post from Steve Bisel on the Acronis forum which was very useful as a basis for what I wanted to do.

I created a week - 1 directory on my other internal drive (E:) to move the current backup files from my USB drive (J:) to. Since I only want to perform this once a week, I need to create a task which will run once a week and perform a full backup. Before the full backup is run I will run a .bat file with commands to move the files. Here is the .bat file I ended up with:

@echo off
Rem Batch file for weekly Backup Mgt

Rem Delete the previous weeks backup

del /q "E:\Acronis backup\Week - 1\*.*"

Rem Move current week's backup to week -1

move /Y "J:\Acronis backup\MyBackup*" "E:\Acronis backup\week - 1\"

exit

I created two scheduled tasks. The first, a weekly full backup with the above commands in a .bat file created with notepad as the pre command making sure I checked the two boxes forcing completion before the backup starts and aborting the backup if the commands fail. The full backup runs on Friday. The second, a daily incremental which you have to setup to run as a weekly and check all of the days but Friday. This avoids running a full and an incremental on Fridays.

Make sure you test you .bat file before including it in your backup.