An idea for purging your TH55

[JulianL]

I just had an idea that I thought I'd share with you folks, it's nothing too dramatic but personally I think I'll find it quite useful.

I have always done a complete rebuild of my PDA every few months, just to clear out all the debris that gets left behind by evals. The way I do it is to take a copy of my entire hotsync directory on my PC. I then completely delete the contents of the live hotsync directories and then copy the files back from the backup one at a time for the stuff I want, including the date book and other directories of course. This way I know exactly what files are on my PDA. For me the final extra step of setting the various preferences and display options for my apps on the Palm is no big deal, about a 10 minute job (although for things like Hi-Launcher that has a complicated setup process I do copy back the previous config file as well as the program itself).

My very modest idea is to create myself a .BAT file (I use windows) that has the DOS copy commands to automatically do the copy of the files that I care about from my backup copy of the hotsync directories back to the live (but now totally empty) hotsync directory. This way the PC side of such a hard-reset and restore will be really quick, just run a single BAT file, plus as an added benefit the contents of the .BAT file, i.e. the list of copy commands, will effectively be a file listing of all the key files on my PDA. The only additional overhead is that whenever a new application is added to my PDA (one which I intend to keep) then I need to remember to update the .BAT file. If for some reason the .BAT file does have stuff missing then that isn't really a big problem because the missing files will still be in the backup copy of the hotsync directories that I made on my PC, it will just be that I forgot to include the commands in the BAT file to copy them back to the live hotsync directory, something that can be easily fixed at any time once the problem is detected.

What do people think of this idea? I think it will work really well for me and be quite a good discipline to try and list all the files I care about, and I've certainly used the manual method of this to purge and rebuild my PDAs for years now so I know the benefits of that.

- Julian

P.S. I do always do a memory stick backup of the RAM before any hard reset as well, just in case.

[enderenya]

That's what any good backup program (like BackupMan (http://www.bitsnbolts.com/backupman.html) which allows individual file restoring), Cleanup (http://www.northglide.com/cleanup.html) and a decent file-manager (McFile, Filez, or even ClieFiles) are for.

Why even deal with the computer side of it? I would never do that except in an emergency (e.g. memory stick destroyed?)

[m8rk]

Sounds like a good idea JulianL. Thanks for sharing too. I've never gone back to a "bare" system since I got my th-55, and your methods sound like something I could use.

[Wazowski]

Sounds interesting idea, Julian. Maybe this is answered in another thread, but one question I'd have is how do I know which files I want to restore? Some are obvious, but some of the file names are so cryptic that I'm not sure if I need the file or if it is some leftover artifact from a previous program that decided to delete.

[Graz]

I also performed a hard reset for the sole purpose of ridding old apps & accumulated stuff. After the purge, I emptied, but saved in another location, the MS backup in the the Username directory in the program directory in order to HotSync new installations without a total restore. NOW, I would like to restore few select freenotes located in the backup folder which was lost in the purge. How do I identify Freenote files in this saved backup folder? Many files there are unidentifiable. Thanks so much.
Kindest Regards
John

edit: Does anyone agree that a backed-up freenote would be titled 200404111544206HWMe

[Graz]

I also reinstalled via hotsync's syncronization, the "freenote catagory" backup file but this did not restore my 3 purged freenotes. Anyone?

[YeLLo]

I would suggest that, before hard-resetting the device, you should look up all your files with a file manager which can sort files by "Creator" - Then you know which files belong to which apps. Should be a useful method for finding out what files to back up.

(I will have to do a hard reset, too - my TH55 is so messed up, the camera app doesn't even start any more...)

Oh, and Graz, a freenote doesn't even have to be backed-up to have that filename! ;)

[philpalm]

Spring cleaning time! Maybe file z has to be manually copied? Every thing copied checked on the list against the list of what is left after reset.

original file ---->file before hard reset
backup file------>what things are readable, how large

I guess if I really work hard at checking, I would have quite a list that is easier to ignore. I believe this might be a two day job and will try to post all the weird information at my blog. For now I will try to do the preliminary work first, recording what my backup file says first....and manually checking it with file z file.

[philpalm]

Here is my blog:
http://www.xanga.com/PPhilip/559809333/sony-clie-tj-37-cleaning.html
First I purge the image files(all the photos) and now I have space on my memory stick to put the backup files into it.

It is a work in progress and I would like to hear more about file purging and the results.
Yes I am not using a TH55, which is the top of the line for Sony, but even the lowly TJ-37 is still referencable to its big brother....