Send/Receive from hard drive from crashed computer?

Question

Is it possible, if a computer has crashed but the hard drive is still accessible (via a USB adapter or something), to do a send/receive from that hard drive using the Shared Network Folder option?

This could help recover some data that was not shared via Send/Receive before the crash.

Thank you,

Answer 1

If the entire My Paratext Projects folder from the crashed machine is still accessible, you could do the following:

1. Rename a computer’s My Paratext Projects folder
2. Copy the crashed computer’s entire My Paratext Projects directory to that computer
3. Start Paratext (ideally as the user from the crashed machine, but it only needs to be someone with access to the project(s) that need to be S/R’d)
4. Do a S/R from that computer for the project(s) (note that the changes from the crashed computer will show up as having been done by the user currently Paratext)
5. Shut down Paratext
6. Delete (or rename) the My Paratext Projects folder (which contains the crashed computer’s data)
7. Rename the old folder from step #1 back
8. Start Paratext as the normal user for that machine
9. Do a S/R on the project(s)

EDIT: Note that this can be simplified if the user of the crashed machine is just getting a new machine (i.e. no need to delete the crashed data off the machine or change users).

Comments

Thank you @anon291708. This is essentially the process I recommended. Instead of copying, I just suggested they temporarily point Paratext to the My Paratext Projects folder on the hard drive from the crashed computer (connected through a USB adapter or something). But the same principle.

Answer 2

The folder for a project inside the “Shared Paratext 8 Projects” folder (PT 9 still uses that folder name) is not the same as the ordinary project folder. The repository in the shared projects only contains the .hg folder and one send/receive settings file.
I tried making changes in one computer, then marking a point in history, then copying the .hg folder from this computer into a folder inside “Shared Paratext 8 Projects” like a send/receive would do, then sent/recieved from another computer to that network folder. The test failed, none of the changes or the marked point in project history were picked up by Paratext in the second computer.

What might work is to create a new Paratext project, import the book files from the crashed computer’s project folder, then do a comparison between the new project and the shared projects text so you can introduce into the shared project new work you saw in the new project. Or if the user of the crashed computer had made new notes in the project, you could likely copy their notes file from the crashed computer project folder into the shared project folder (replacing that user’s note file that was there). If there was new work in Biblical Terms, or in interlinear data, it might be possible to do a compare of the appropriate files from the crashed computers project folder and the shared project folder, but it might not be simple to identify what was different.

Comments

Another option might be to install TortoiseHG and use it to look at the changes made to files between the last S/R and the crash. As with @sewhite’s suggestion, this would still require manually moving the changes over to a working computer, but it would probably be quicker since it would identify recent changes and you wouldn’t have to compare multiple files which may or may not have been changed.