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-   -   How to Backup Properly? (https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com//showthread.php?t=308309)

Eugene Church 11-14-2019 05:49 PM

How to Backup Properly?
 
2 Attachment(s)
I'm going to expand my dynasty league.
Want to make sure I have proper backup just in case, I screw up the league.

I copied the league from the saved games to an external hard drive.
Posted a screenshot of the league file folder I copied to the external hard drive.

Will this give me a reliable backup?

Also used the game database backup and saved all files (see screenshot).

Will this enable me to restore the database backup if I damage the league files in expanding my league?

Sorry, I'm not good with computers and tech procedures.

Would appreciate your help and expertise.

actionjackson 11-14-2019 06:18 PM

Here's what I do. In the saved games folder I take my league.lg folder, and copy it to a .zip folder. Then cut/paste the .zip folder over to the external hard drive in a folder called "OOTP saved games" or whatever you want to call it. If you want to update the backup at the end of your playing day, copy your .lg folder to a .zip folder. Cut/paste it to the "OOTP saved games" folder. I think it asks you if you want to overwrite it, and you say yes, and then the league is up to date on the external drive.

When you need to use the .zip folder of your game on your external drive, you can change the name of the game, that you (I assume) need to go back in because something got messed up, to my league (1).lg, and then you won't overwrite it to make sure you don't delete it until you're sure you want to. Then extract the .zip folder from the external drive to your Documents > Out of the Park Developments > OOTP Baseball 20 > saved_games folder, and you're all set up with your game back to the date you want it to be at. :) Any questions? Fire away.

Eugene Church 11-14-2019 06:34 PM

Sorry, actionjackson, but you are dealing with a tech dunce.
I'm sure your method is the best way to do it.

But you lost me with zip folder... I have no idea what that is... or how to do it... and I don't expect you to teach me how to do it.

Would my method in post #1 backup the league?... I can do what I posted.
(screenshot #1)

Will the Game Backup do the job? (screenshot #2)

eriqjaffe 11-14-2019 06:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eugene Church (Post 4560346)
Would my method in post #1 backup the league?... I can do what I posted.
(screenshot #1)

Will the Game Backup do the job? (screenshot #2)

The answer to both questions is yes.

The first method and second method basically do the same thing - make a copy of the saved game somewhere else. There's absolutely no reason why you can't do both - redundancy is a good thing. If you need to quickly go back you can use the in-game functionality. If a catastrophe occurs and the hard drive in your computer becomes unreadable, you have the copy on the external drive.

Eugene Church 11-14-2019 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eriqjaffe (Post 4560349)
The answer to both questions is yes.

The first method and second method basically do the same thing - make a copy of the saved game somewhere else. There's absolutely no reason why you can't do both - redundancy is a good thing. If you need to quickly go back you can use the in-game functionality. If a catastrophe occurs and the hard drive in your computer becomes unreadable, you have the copy on the external drive.

Much appreciate your reply.

Thank you.

Appreciate actionjackson, too.... sorry I'm just not too smart with computers.

mitchkenn 11-14-2019 07:27 PM

RCHW made a great post a couple years back .... thhe real stuff starts at post 5, with pictures ....

hope it helps...

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...97#post4084018

Wingedlion14 11-14-2019 07:49 PM

Slightly OT but still relevant - I see a lot about having zipped folders and stuff for backups. I have a backup of my save that doesn't have any of that - it was a straight copy/paste from my computer to my external hard drive when I was backing up my computer. Does that change anything when restoring a backup from that hard drive?

DirkGildun 11-14-2019 08:51 PM

Zipping the backup league file just compresses the file to save space. You don't need to do that (and then you don't have to unzip the backup file before restoring it).

actionjackson 11-14-2019 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DirkGildun (Post 4560390)
Zipping the backup league file just compresses the file to save space. You don't need to do that (and then you don't have to unzip the backup file before restoring it).

Compresses to save space, and makes the transfer to the external drive almost instant. Not necessary. I just find it easier.

Eugene Church 11-15-2019 10:39 AM

A special thanks to all of you fine folks.
OOTPB Community is a special place because of wonderful people like you who are willing to help people like me.

I had no major trouble expanding my North Island Dynasty League.

Still have a few things to work out... the playoffs didn't work well... it is a six-team league... an Association with three other leagues... I wanted to have the first place teams play for the overall championship, but the custom playoffs did not give me that choice.

It required the use of wildcards, which I don't want to include.
If I unchecked "wildcards", it would not allow me to do that.

I'm going back over the whole setup and see if I missed something somewhere.

If I have to, I can use the wildcards... give a bye to the pennant winner and have the 2nd and 3rd place teams play in the first round.

Much appreciate all of you.

actionjackson 11-15-2019 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eugene Church (Post 4560542)
A special thanks to all of you fine folks.
OOTPB Community is a special place because of wonderful people like you who are willing to help people like me.

I had no major trouble expanding my North Island Dynasty League.

Still have a few things to work out... the playoffs didn't work well... it is a six-team league... an Association with three other leagues... I wanted to have the first place teams play for the overall championship, but the custom playoffs did not give me that choice.

It required the use of wildcards, which I don't want to include.
If I unchecked "wildcards", it would not allow me to do that.

I'm going back over the whole setup and see if I missed something somewhere.

If I have to, I can use the wildcards... give a bye to the pennant winner and have the 2nd and 3rd place teams play in the first round.

Much appreciate all of you.

You're a huge part of that "Wonderful People" group. Don't you forget that.

Wish I could help with the playoffs thing, but I pretty much stay within the confines of an MLB setup, so I don't know much about four sub-league setups. I do send the top two teams from the AL and the NL to the postseason if I'm playing anywhere from 1901 through 1992. I don't use divisions either. I just take the top two teams up to 1992, and the top four teams thereafter, so I'm familiar with using the Custom Playoffs feature, just not with the way you're trying to use it. I never go above 8 teams total making the playoffs, and I never go to two 15 team subleagues, because as far as I'm concerned Interleague games can die in a fire any day now.

The non-1st place teams will be called "wild cards" by the game, even though I don't like to call them that because I put them on an even footing with the 1st place teams, have them duke it out, and may the best team win. I seed them all by Win%, and then have them re-seeded at the start of each subsequent round, so that the best team always gets home field in series' that are always best of seven regardless of the length of those series IRL. Sorry I can't be of more help, but maybe something in there will jog something for you that you'll be able to carry into your game to make it work.

Eugene Church 11-15-2019 01:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by actionjackson (Post 4560627)
You're a huge part of that "Wonderful People" group. Don't you forget that.

Wish I could help with the playoffs thing, but I pretty much stay within the confines of an MLB setup, so I don't know much about four sub-league setups. I do send the top two teams from the AL and the NL to the postseason if I'm playing anywhere from 1901 through 1992. I don't use divisions either. I just take the top two teams up to 1992, and the top four teams thereafter, so I'm familiar with using the Custom Playoffs feature, just not with the way you're trying to use it. I never go above 8 teams total making the playoffs, and I never go to two 15 team subleagues, because as far as I'm concerned Interleague games can die in a fire any day now.

The non-1st place teams will be called "wild cards" by the game, even though I don't like to call them that because I put them on an even footing with the 1st place teams, have them duke it out, and may the best team win. I seed them all by Win%, and then have them re-seeded at the start of each subsequent round, so that the best team always gets home field in series' that are always best of seven regardless of the length of those series IRL. Sorry I can't be of more help, but maybe something in there will jog something for you that you'll be able to carry into your game to make it work.

This is a big help... thank you.

I think you and I play the game a lot alike... I love 8-team leagues... can't stand modern baseball with its 5-team divisions... don't like wildcards, either.

Just give me the good old days before free agency and the AL champ against the NL champ... money has ruined baseball... "you can't tell the players without a scorecard anymore"... they change teams too often.

Eugene Church 11-15-2019 01:31 PM

Since I'm having trouble setting up the playoffs in my league expansion, I'm going to schedule a tournament at the end of the seasons between my four league winners.

I got some great advice in another thread about this.

Here's the link:

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=308329

actionjackson 11-15-2019 02:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eugene Church (Post 4560639)
This is a big help... thank you.

I think you and I play the game a lot alike... I love 8-team leagues... can't stand modern baseball with its 5-team divisions... don't like wildcards, either.

Just give me the good old days before free agency and the AL champ against the NL champ... money has ruined baseball... "you can't tell the players without a scorecard anymore"... they change teams too often.

I allow my leagues to expand and use free agency, as I don't mind a little turbulence. That gives me up to 16 teams in a sub-league (from 1998 forward) with zero divisions, and when there are that many, I'll take the top four teams to the postseason, while the rest hit the golf course. There's nothing I hate more IRL baseball than watching an 82-80 (or worse) team make it to the dance because they won a ridiculously weak division. I doubt that'll ever happen with this setup, so that's why I use it.

We disagree on free agency (which is fine), as my philosophy is that I don't go to the games/watch them on TV to see the owners. I want to see the players. With $10+ Billion (and climbing every season) coming into the game (an average of $333,333,333.33 per team), I think the players deserve around 50% of that as they're the ones putting their bodies on the line. Without free agency, they wouldn't come close to 50%, and I don't find that fair. To suppress player salaries would mean the owners would be making money hand over fist at the expense of the players. That ain't right to me. If there weren't sooo much money coming in, maybe the reserve clause would make sense, but I'd still see that as quite restrictive when it comes to players' rights. The players are the game after all. :)

Eugene Church 11-15-2019 04:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by actionjackson (Post 4560675)
I allow my leagues to expand and use free agency, as I don't mind a little turbulence. That gives me up to 16 teams in a sub-league (from 1998 forward) with zero divisions, and when there are that many, I'll take the top four teams to the postseason, while the rest hit the golf course. There's nothing I hate more IRL baseball than watching an 82-80 (or worse) team make it to the dance because they won a ridiculously weak division. I doubt that'll ever happen with this setup, so that's why I use it.

We disagree on free agency (which is fine), as my philosophy is that I don't go to the games/watch them on TV to see the owners. I want to see the players. With $10+ Billion (and climbing every season) coming into the game (an average of $333,333,333.33 per team), I think the players deserve around 50% of that as they're the ones putting their bodies on the line. Without free agency, they wouldn't come close to 50%, and I don't find that fair. To suppress player salaries would mean the owners would be making money hand over fist at the expense of the players. That ain't right to me. If there weren't sooo much money coming in, maybe the reserve clause would make sense, but I'd still see that as quite restrictive when it comes to players' rights. The players are the game after all. :)

Got to say you are right about free agency... I'm just selfish and liked baseball better in the good old days.

actionjackson 11-15-2019 05:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eugene Church (Post 4560707)
Got to say you are right about free agency... I'm just selfish and liked baseball better in the good old days.

Ain't nothing selfish about loving the baseball you grew up with. I'm selfish with 1980s baseball for the same reason. Why do you think I use 1984 for my stats output? :p

RchW 11-15-2019 08:59 PM

The downside of OOTP's backup system is that incremental backups are stored using the default league file name, ie. myspecialleague.lg. What would be very nice of OOTP to do would be for them to extract the league date at the time of back up and offer to add it such that you would have the date added, say, myspecialleague_2104_4_30.lg as a choice. Then you could backup continuously with zero concern by date. I do this manually. After each incremental backup I go to the backup folder and add the date via file rename then go back into the game and do an all files backup that acts as the base for the next incremental one. Typically I do one per month but you could set any frequency you want depending on free disk space.

I delete most if not all of the incremental dated backups at seasons end but I do also use 7Zip to store multiple years of backups to a remote network drive. I save ST, opening day, Sep rosters, end of season, end of playoffs and Dec 31/Jan 1 each; where I delete thousands of files via a dos batch file to reduce the .lg file to a manageable size on Jan 1 xxxx. This for two long running saves!

I have several terabytes of such backups:o

7zip is easy to use. Maybe a tutorial using real OOTP leagues is in order in a separate thread.

actionjackson 11-15-2019 09:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RchW (Post 4560789)
The downside of OOTP's backup system is that incremental backups are stored using the default league file name, ie. myspecialleague.lg. What would be very nice of OOTP to do would be for them to extract the league date at the time of back up and offer to add it such that you would have the date added, say, myspecialleague_2104_4_30.lg as a choice. Then you could backup continuously with zero concern by date. I do this manually. After each incremental backup I go to the backup folder and add the date via file rename then go back into the game and do an all files backup that acts as the base for the next incremental one. Typically I do one per month but you could set any frequency you want depending on free disk space.

I delete most if not all of the incremental dated backups at seasons end but I do also use 7Zip to store multiple years of backups to a remote network drive. I save ST, opening day, Sep rosters, end of season, end of playoffs and Dec 31/Jan 1 each; where I delete thousands of files via a dos batch file to reduce the .lg file to a manageable size on Jan 1 xxxx. This for two long running saves!

I have several terabytes of such backups:o

7zip is easy to use. Maybe a tutorial using real OOTP leagues is in order in a separate thread.

Upvoted for "several terabytes of such backups".

Eugene Church 11-15-2019 09:12 PM

I remember several years ago, I tried to restore my game from the backup and it was up-to-date... couldn't use it... it wouldn't load up.

Luckily I had a backup on my external hard drive, but I lost 4 years of the league... went back to the 52nd year and just replayed them, the missing four seasons.

My Islandian Pro Alliance has almost 5 millions items in it covering 61 years of the 64-team league.

Tried to back it up recently on an external hard drive... it took 15 hours to reach the 75% mark and then said there was an error and it wouldn't continue.

So I'm in trouble... don't have an up-to-date backup.

Hope the game backup works better than the last time I tried to use it... that all I have.

actionjackson 11-15-2019 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eugene Church (Post 4560793)
I remember several years ago, I tried to restore my game from the backup and it was up-to-date... couldn't use it... it wouldn't load up.

This happened to me recently too. I don't know if I'm not doing it right or the game's not doing it right. Since it happened, I've decided to exclusively use the external hard drive method.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eugene Church (Post 4560793)
Tried to back it up recently on an external hard drive... it took 15 hours to reach the 75% mark and then said there was an error and it wouldn't continue.

This is exactly why I use the .zip file method. Much faster, and I've never had the "time-out" issue. I'm hoping RchW will get a chance to set up a 7-zip tutorial in a different thread if he's not too busy.


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