Sending/backup data to another harddrive easily

Former Member over 11 years ago

I would like to backup my data to another harddrive. e.g. tracks, waypoints and Bird'sEye etc. After selecting the data in Basecamp (left pane) and choosing "Send to" the only options are other destinations also in the left pane. I can create new folders there but I would like to just add the folder on my backup HD to the list. It shows individual SD cards but not other harddrives. I backup the users/apps/roaming/blah/blah/blah folder but it is impossible to pull individual tracks, jnx etc out because of the naming scheme. (e.g., 0e40386f-94ca-4820-b76c-f6b5232711a5). The only work-around I've found is to transfer the data to the gps and then use WinExplorer or use "Export". Really slow and tedious with maps and jnx files. The jnx files really slow things down and they are on an SSD!

It would sure be nice to just be able to drag-and-drop to the folder in Basecamp.

There has got to be an easier way...

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

Are you actually try to make a backup (on an external HD) of the BaseCamp database or are you trying to move the database to another location (e.g. on a HD vs SSD)?

BaseCamp has a built-in backup/restore mechanism (on the File menu). There's no need to drag'n'drop anything.

If you want to move the database to another (working) location you can do that through Options.

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

BaseCamp is a (single at any time) database orientated application. That database consists of many files logically connected together. A file based program, such as MapSource, keeps everything in files (GDB files in the case of MapSource).

Now it is possible to export data from BaseCamp into one or more GPX files. One issue is that the GPX format does not support folder/lists as per BaseCamp so it only makes sense to export a single list at a time.

As for JNX files the best you can do with those is manually (re)name and save them (what I do). The problem there is to figure out what (JNX) file are associated with what regions. In my case I did this at the time of download from Garmin. Another way would be to put a single JNX on a device at a time and figure out what region it covers. You can then copy and rename the file.

Now I keep all JNX files on an SD card in my device. That said they're in sub-folders named by geographical region with each file also named to indicate what it covers. As for BaseCamp I don't care what filenames it uses.

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

A time consuming PITA.

No argument from me there.

BaseCamp doesn't display it's internal database filenames in "properties" although the data exists in the AllData.gdb file. In theory you could also dump that file to determine the relationship between the user given name (in BaseCamp) and the internal filename.

Here an example from part of a AllData.gdb file.

00000000h: 00 01 4A 6E 78 46 69 6C 65 73 2F 37 35 35 32 38 ; ..JnxFiles/75528
00000010h: 34 62 62 2D 64 37 39 37 2D 34 64 65 32 2D 39 33 ; 4bb-d797-4de2-93
00000020h: 62 36 2D 34 38 64 36 38 31 61 36 39 64 62 63 2E ; b6-48d681a69dbc.
00000030h: 6A 6E 78 00 E0 0F 00 00 E0 0F 00 00 00 00 00 00 ; jnx.à...à.......
00000040h: 1E 00 00 00 C9 04 00 00 4A 4D 79 20 4E 61 6D 65 ; ....É...JMy Name
00000050h: 20 41 72 65 61 00 00 00 00 00 00 37 31 66 39 39 ;  Area......71f99

In this case the region "My Name Area" corresponds to the file

755284bb-d797-4de2-93b6-48d681a69dbc.jnx

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

I did it in about 5 mins yesterday as an experiment but then I have the tools and knowledge.

Firstly I copied AllData.gdb to a temporary folder. I then used the Sysinternals Strings utility, in a DOS (console) window, to extract all the stings (text) in the file.

strings -q AllData.gdb >AllData.txt

I then opened the AllData.txt file in a text editor (Windows NotePad will work), found the strings containing ".jnx" along with the user given names, and put it all in an Excel spreadsheet for future reference.