COR15–The conclusion.
The Palm stays at home! Might take the card reader, in case I get that camera.
I don’t now why this makes me feel naked when I have never in fact travelled with a PDA before.
On a final note, I’ve just taken the batteries out of that shitbox in order to retire it when it occured to me that I might as well format the remaining card. I stuck the batteries back in and there was no ‘welcome’ screen—it had kept hold of its settings. Changing the batteries one at a time (as recommended by Palm) certainly doesn’t help matters—it’s a lottery either way. Still, I’m quite teary as I pack the thing away. If at least the file formatting had worked, I might have taken my chances with it.
Here’s my final exchange with the nice people at BlueNomad:
[Their reply and my query below]
Well, thanks. I never thought the Palm file system was very easy to manage, either 😉
I guess I do a minimal backup from the desktop restore with no files at all (just the programs) and then just work with files on the card. Or perhaps I leave the thing at home. Might do the latter.
Anyway, full marks for trying, guys. One day I’ll get a PDA which can run really advanced software to make up for my sad ignorance.
Blue Nomad Support wrote:
D-
What version of BBVFS are the backups created with and what
version are you using to restore them? Maybe a newer version will help?
It’s also possible there is a corrupted file in the backup directory causing a problem.
If you are having a crash or problem after a restore, one or more
of your applications or files could be crashing your device or unable to
be restored by BBVFS.. it can be a bit tricky to figure out – you can try
holding down the “scroll up” button during the reset after the restore,
which may allow you to get past this.
You could also try a demo version of “crash-pro” by www.79bmedia.de.
It has a log-functionality and can show which program is causing a crash.
If you experience a crash, your organizer may tell you the name of the
application causing the crash. If you can tell the name of the problem
file, you could use a file manager like “Filez” to go into the backup
directory on your card and remove the file.. then try a new restore.
Another thing you can try is if you are using the full bbvfs version,
you can do an advanced restore and only choose to restore some of
your files. Restore in small groups and soft reset after each group
of files is restored.. see if you are able to narrow down where the problem
is this way.
After each group is installed, see if you can run the device. If you get a
crash, you know it is one of those files and you can isolate and remove
the bad file. You can install a new copy of the application and this
should solve the problem.
Using “Filez” or other file manager, look in your Palm/Backup directory on the
memory card. If you have an OS 5 device any files with a68k in the filename should be deletedfrom your backup directory …
Filez is a free application and available here:
http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=software.showsoftware&prodid=9992
Also be sure you are using the latest version of BBVFS on your handheld.
http://www.bluenomad.com/bbvfs/bbvfspro.zip
You could also try using “Filez” to manually restore any files BBVFS is having trouble with. You can copy backup files from the Palm/backup folder on the card to the device to manually restore files.
Sincerely,
Bobby
Blue Nomad Support
support@bluenomad.com
Please note that you may subscribe to the Blue Nomad BLOG for
important product news and updates by pointing your news reader here:
http://www.bluenomad.com/rss/atom.xml
—–Original Message—–
From: Denni Schnapp
Reply-To: Denni Schnapp
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:49:19 +0000 (GMT)
To: Blue Nomad Support
Subject: Re: BackupBuddy VFS
>I’ve been in touch before; I work with large files (travel writing) and it is not something that seems to be do-able on the Palm (m125). I use Wordsmith and have encountered numerous problems with it. The keyboard shortcuts (italic, bold etc.) don’t work which doesn’t matter because I lose all my formatting upon conversion to RTF anyway. (Why can’t WS safe as RTF in the first place?) But that doesn’t bother me–I’m prepared to work in text only format, even though it riles having paid for all the features on WS. However, I have to work with large files.
>
> For restoring the thing on the road, after the data are predictably lost during battery change, I rely on BackupBuddyVFS. I have tested it with a couple of hard-resets and it seemed fine. But today, five days before the start of a 3 month trip, it was time to change the batteries. Following that, backup stalled on one of my documents (not even 1000 words long).
>
> I took the card out of the drive *ouch* and reformated it.
>
> Enter my second card. I checked it to see that there was no other file with the same name on it anywhere else, just to be sure .
>
>The same thing happened. I now have to try and restore this mess and run a minimal backup without any files just to protect WS and the drive for my Logitech keyboard. Apparently, my files can only exist on the SD card and not be backed up from RAM. Restoring this thing isn’t straightforward either, hotsynching has to happen from my husband’s computer because I used LINUX until recently and my present machine doesn’t have the programs on it. It is a lot of hassle, but I shudder to think that I almost relied on BBVFS and took the thing traveling where there will be no hotsynching at all.
>
> The thing has been frozen now for over 10 minutes. It cannot be cancelled, it cannot be switched off. Luckily soft-resetting has worked. But I’m having way to much trouble with this. It shouldn’t happen. What is wrong with this software??
>
>
>
>D. Schnapp
[sig]
Denni