G
Gil
I'm having a problem with loss of shared borders and possible file name
corruption after restoring some Front Page webs from backup and I'm hoping
someone can help me. Here's a detailed description of the problem.
I was using FP 2000 under Windows 2000 to edit some web sites. All software
was fully patched with the most recent service packs and updates. Windows
2000 was running on an NTFS partition, and the FP webs were on a separate
FAT32 data partition. I was backing up the data partition both using
Windows file copy to an external USB drive, and by using Powerquest Drive
Image, which backs up whole partitions at a time, supposedly preserving
every last thing. I never had any problems with any of these webs.
The trouble began when the my hard drive crashed. No problem, I had loads
of backups. I put in a new drive, did a surface scan just to be sure it was
OK, and then restored all my files from backup. I then went to open one of
my webs to make some updates, and I found that most, but not all of the
directory and files name had been changed upper case, and I found that my
shared borders were no longer there. As far as I can tell, none of the
other files that I restored were affected by this change to upper case
problem, only the files in my FP webs, and not every one of them, only most.
Here's what I then conjectured the problem could be, and what I did.
1. Maybe when I restored the files from backup, there was some problem which
caused the FP files to be copied with upper case file names, resulting in FP
not looking in the right place for the shared borders. I went back to the
USB drive to see the case of the file names there, and they're also upper
case there, so that's not it.
2. Maybe on my failed drive there was some kind of file system corruption
that caused the file names to change to upper case before my last backup and
I didn't notice it. I went to older backups going back several months, and
those files are also in upper case. I know the files did not appear as upper
case on the old data drive before the crash.
3. Maybe there's some kind of strangeness affecting some files changing
their names to upper case when copied to the USB drive, which would explain
why all my backups on the USB drive had the same problem. So, I tried
restoring the whole data volume from the Drive Image backups, which would
not be vulnerable to any file system issues since Drive Image restores the
whole volume without even caring about the file system. No luck, when I
restored the volume I got exactly the same problem with most FP web files in
upper case, and shared borders gone.
4. I checked on the web server to which I published these webs just to make
sure I wasn't imagining things, and sure enough every single file on the web
server is in lower case. I then tried creating a new FP web and importing a
web from the server, but FP insists on throwing away the theme and shared
borders of the imported site.
5. I tried using FTP to manually copy the files from the server to my hard
drive, and using FP to import the files directly from my hard drive. Now FP
shows the files all in lower case, but still doesn't correctly display
shared borders or themes.
The only conclusion I can reach is that maybe FP stores some information
about its webs in a location outside the web directory, and maybe even
Windows Explorer uses that information when displaying files. Why it would
do that I have no idea, and I know I've made webs before and copied them to
Zip files or CDs to move them to other computers and they worked fine on the
other computers, so I assumed that meant all the information about the state
of the web is in the FP web directory. However, what I'm observing is that
at least in this case when the FP webs were separated from the computer on
which they were originally created some information about them was lost.
Fortunately, it doesn't appear that the text and graphics of the sites were
lost. I could start over and rebuild each site by hand, but it would
probably take me a day or two to get them all back in working order. I'm
hoping there's an explanation for what happened that will make it easier.
Also, I'd like to understand what happened so I can keep it from happening
again. If I'm going to use Front Page, there has to be a reliable way to
back up a FP web and know that it will be recoverable in the event of a
crash. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
corruption after restoring some Front Page webs from backup and I'm hoping
someone can help me. Here's a detailed description of the problem.
I was using FP 2000 under Windows 2000 to edit some web sites. All software
was fully patched with the most recent service packs and updates. Windows
2000 was running on an NTFS partition, and the FP webs were on a separate
FAT32 data partition. I was backing up the data partition both using
Windows file copy to an external USB drive, and by using Powerquest Drive
Image, which backs up whole partitions at a time, supposedly preserving
every last thing. I never had any problems with any of these webs.
The trouble began when the my hard drive crashed. No problem, I had loads
of backups. I put in a new drive, did a surface scan just to be sure it was
OK, and then restored all my files from backup. I then went to open one of
my webs to make some updates, and I found that most, but not all of the
directory and files name had been changed upper case, and I found that my
shared borders were no longer there. As far as I can tell, none of the
other files that I restored were affected by this change to upper case
problem, only the files in my FP webs, and not every one of them, only most.
Here's what I then conjectured the problem could be, and what I did.
1. Maybe when I restored the files from backup, there was some problem which
caused the FP files to be copied with upper case file names, resulting in FP
not looking in the right place for the shared borders. I went back to the
USB drive to see the case of the file names there, and they're also upper
case there, so that's not it.
2. Maybe on my failed drive there was some kind of file system corruption
that caused the file names to change to upper case before my last backup and
I didn't notice it. I went to older backups going back several months, and
those files are also in upper case. I know the files did not appear as upper
case on the old data drive before the crash.
3. Maybe there's some kind of strangeness affecting some files changing
their names to upper case when copied to the USB drive, which would explain
why all my backups on the USB drive had the same problem. So, I tried
restoring the whole data volume from the Drive Image backups, which would
not be vulnerable to any file system issues since Drive Image restores the
whole volume without even caring about the file system. No luck, when I
restored the volume I got exactly the same problem with most FP web files in
upper case, and shared borders gone.
4. I checked on the web server to which I published these webs just to make
sure I wasn't imagining things, and sure enough every single file on the web
server is in lower case. I then tried creating a new FP web and importing a
web from the server, but FP insists on throwing away the theme and shared
borders of the imported site.
5. I tried using FTP to manually copy the files from the server to my hard
drive, and using FP to import the files directly from my hard drive. Now FP
shows the files all in lower case, but still doesn't correctly display
shared borders or themes.
The only conclusion I can reach is that maybe FP stores some information
about its webs in a location outside the web directory, and maybe even
Windows Explorer uses that information when displaying files. Why it would
do that I have no idea, and I know I've made webs before and copied them to
Zip files or CDs to move them to other computers and they worked fine on the
other computers, so I assumed that meant all the information about the state
of the web is in the FP web directory. However, what I'm observing is that
at least in this case when the FP webs were separated from the computer on
which they were originally created some information about them was lost.
Fortunately, it doesn't appear that the text and graphics of the sites were
lost. I could start over and rebuild each site by hand, but it would
probably take me a day or two to get them all back in working order. I'm
hoping there's an explanation for what happened that will make it easier.
Also, I'd like to understand what happened so I can keep it from happening
again. If I'm going to use Front Page, there has to be a reliable way to
back up a FP web and know that it will be recoverable in the event of a
crash. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!