Assistance needed: Patching together and restoring histories

[lakedog]

Background: I had/have an older Macbook Pro running WC at a "weekend" mountain cabin. The disk drive started flaking out, so I brought it home to replace the drive. I managed to salvage the WC data file, covering nearly 3 years. For the interim, i returned to using an old windows laptop, running Weather Link now. until I return the MBP to service. I have old LWC files, imported from the old Weather Link for 4 or 5 years before the MBP was originally put in service.  I installed WC on the new drive, and it auto imported the LWC files. These run into September 23, 2012. The salvaged WC files that contain actual data pick up within a few hours later and run into nearly the end of 2013. The salvaged file directory for 2012 contain files for May through August that contain no data, and which overlap with the imported LWC files for those dates that do contain data. Finally, the LWC files that WC auto imported after auto finding them on the computer, are in the WC data files directory in Library, but they do not come up when I start Data Viewer in WC.

So,
 
1) I need to figure out why the imported LWC files do not show up in Data Viewer. Any ideas?

2) understand how to patch together the LWC files that are now imported into WC with the salvaged WC files, while dealing with the overlapping files. What is the best way to patch and get in the overlap files with valid data?

3) then I need to import the recent Weather Link files (using an old copy of LWC, then WC LWC file importer) and tack them onto the WC files. Any key points to look out for in that process?

4) Then I would like to import the settings files from the salvaged WC installation to the new installation to save having to manually enter it all in. Can I do this and what files need to come from what old directory to what directory on the new install?

Thanks for any help anyone can give!

[elagache]

Dear LakeDog and WeatherCat fans,

Alas, you have opened up a can of worms for yourself.  There is no easy way to do what you are attempting to do.

1) I need to figure out why the imported LWC files do not show up in Data Viewer. Any ideas?

2) understand how to patch together the LWC files that are now imported into WC with the salvaged WC files, while dealing with the overlapping files. What is the best way to patch and get in the overlap files with valid data?

The best way to approach this problem is to familiarize yourself with current WeatherCat data format.  To do this, make a copy of one of the current WeatherCat files.  For example the April file looks like this:

4_WeatherCatData.cat

and it can be found in the following directory:

~/Library/WeatherCatData/Location1/2014

Where the '~' represents your Mac user home directory.  There are headers that explain the various fields at the top of every data file and you can familiarize yourself with the format from that.  I recommend that you download the free text editor TextWangler that you can get from the Mac Applications store.  It is more convenient than say TextEdit.

Once you are familiar with what a correct WeatherCat data file should look like, you can then take a look at the old LWC imported files to see what might be the problem.  Also, if you are bold, you could cut and paste data between files so long as you match up the time-stamps at the beginning of each line.

4) Then I would like to import the settings files from the salvaged WC installation to the new installation to save having to manually enter it all in. Can I do this and what files need to come from what old directory to what directory on the new install?

There are instructions on how to move a WeatherCat installation from one computer to another that you can find on the WeatherCat Wiki:

http://wiki.trixology.com/index.php/Moving_a_WeatherCat_installation_from_one_computer_to_another

The settings are contained in the file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.trixology.weathercat.plist

If you look over the other files, you might find other things you wish to save as well.

Hopefully that is enough to get you started.

Cheers, Edouard

[lakedog]

Thank you very much, Edouard!

So, looking at the May-August files from the salvaged WC installation that have no data, I assume I can just delete them. So, presumably, the only cutting and pasting will need to be the partial September files from each set?

Any ideas why the LWC files imported during install do not show up in the data viewer?

[elagache]

Dear LakeDog and WeatherCat fans,

Fortunately, WeatherCat is one tough cookies so rarely are there data loss problems.  Alas, that means we don't have much experience with recovering data from WeatherCat installations.

So, looking at the May-August files from the salvaged WC installation that have no data, I assume I can just delete them. So, presumably, the only cutting and pasting will need to be the partial September files from each set?

Honestly I don't know.  You can delete files from the beginning of the your data collection.  WeatherCat assumes that you started collecting from the first data file, so that makes sense.  I don't know what WeatherCat will do if some data files are missing.  I think you may need to ask Stu what to do in this case.

Any ideas why the LWC files imported during install do not show up in the data viewer?

Not sure what to tell you about this either.  I was one of the private beta testers for WeatherCat and it imported my LWC data without any issues.  So I never had to fuss with that data.  Have you opened the imported files with a text editor to see if they look okay or corrupted?  You may need to get a little help from Stu on this issue as well.  I don't think anyone on the forum has ever been in the predicament you find yourself in.

Good luck, you may have a bit of a struggle on your hands.

Cheers, Edouard

[WCDev]

Take a look at those files that aren't showing up - if they're empty or not there you can probably just copy across the LWC files and rename the extension to .cat; when it boots it should sort them out (unless the files are somehow corrupt).