- How do I know whether my collection file is in good health?
You can check the health of your collection file in MediaMan. Press Alt
in MediaMan and choose
Tools->Check Collection Integrity. It'll take
several seconds depending on the size of your file. After that, MediaMan
will tell you if any broken structures inside the collection file are
found. You don't have to check file integrity often. In typical
situations, a file should always be in good health. However, if MediaMan
starts malfunctioning, you can use this mechanism to check whether the
malfunctioning is due to the damaged file, or program bugs.
- How do I repair a MediaMan Collection File?
Click here to download the collection file repair tool. Unzip this package and you get MediaManCFR.exe . Run this program, read important notes on screen, and browse for your collection file, then click "Repair". Your "File.mmc" will be re-saved to "File_fixed.mmc". Double click the fixed file to check its content in MediaMan. Please note that certain content might be lost due to the corruption.
- What's causing the collection file to corrupt?
We discovered the following issues that cause the collection
file to be broken:
1. Sudden power-loss
2. Windows crash
3. Hard drive problems
4. Not using "Safe Hardware Removal" on USB flash drives*
(see technical explanation below)
To prevent data-loss, you should always make copies of your
collection file as backup.
* It is discovered during several technical support session
that, most collection file corrupt incidents are related to
putting the file on external drives and not using "Safe Hardware
Removal" before unplugging. This will damage the file because
Windows might not finished writing the file content when you
unplug.
In MediaMan 2.x, this can cause severe problems. Because
MediaMan 2.x creates a copy of your collection file as a
temporary file upon start to perform actual changes. It then
copies this temporary file back and overwrites your original
collection file to "save and commit the changes". Unplugging at
this point will cause you to lose everything that hasn't been
written, even if you only made a very small change or didn't
make any changes at all.
In MediaMan 3, this is no longer a severe problem. This is
because MediaMan 3 no longer rewrites the entire file for any
reason. If you unplug during the middle of work, it'll only
cause damages to the records you are actually changing, making
it possible to recover most of the content using the repair tool
mentioned above. In fact, MediaMan 3 cuts the number of disk
writing operations up to 60% so that the corruption is much much
less likely to happen. Even if a damage did occur, MediaMan 3
will try to use sqlite's built-in journal file mechanism to redo
the last operation without your attention and keep your file
healthy.