[GNC] Recovering

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 9/14/2023 8:25 PM, Rogier F. van Vlissingen wrote:
> I had a disastrous disk crash, and on top of that a backup that appeared to
> have holes in it, so I was up a creek without the infamous paddle.
>
> Now recovering, and I feel like a stranger in my own house. Just looking at
> my GNUCash files (I have one company for three years in Gnucash, I simply
> do not know by which file to open GNUCash and could not find guidance in
> the Help file.
>
> Any ideas?

But you presumably have a much larger problem than recovering just 
gnucash. I am assuming that you did other things with this computer than 
just gnucash. As a retired professional who once had to attempt recovery 
after a house fire when backups be in the same building and the data 
recovery lab couldn't recover everything I do have some suggestions.

a) File by file recovery should be your last resort. What directories 
(file folders) appear to be intact on the back-up media? If you can, you 
should.....

b) You FIRST check if your user data directory is intact. If so, you 
restore that and should be done. If that has holes....

c) You look for directories within it that are still good. It's only 
after restoring those and finding stuff you need not restored that you 
go down to lower levels.

Now this assumes that you do have FULL data back-ups. If you were using 
some "file by file" back-up software for day to day recovery (I messed 
up a file, give me back the previous version) you need to remember that 
this sort of back-up is not really intended for recovery from a fatal 
disk crash, house fire, etc. You should in addition be doing at least 
periodic full data back-ups.

That, of course might be closing the barn door advice. But keep in mind 
for future.

Michael D Novack