If you lose your main cabinet, but had backed up with a Shadow Copy, you can recover it exactly as it was saved! This is because the Shadow Copy is a backup version that mirrors the cabinet/vault you created in Historian™. Follow these steps if you need to rescue your memories and continue working in your Media Library.
Step 1: Open Historian
- Open Historian and log in if prompted
- On the Welcome page, click “Recover Cabinet” (in Historian 4 this will be labeled “Recover Vault”).
- You will get a pop-up window that requires a 2-step process before it will let you click OK and continue with the recover process.
Step 2: Choose the New Cabinet Location
- In the section labeled “New location for the recovered cabinet”, click the three dots ( … ).
- Browse to and select an empty folder where you want the recovered cabinet to go.
Step 3: Select the Shadow Copy
- Click the button to "Use a shadow copy" to recover from.
- Browse to where the Shadow Copy folder.
- Make sure to select the entire Shadow Copy folder, NOT inside the folder.
NOTE: If you get an error that "The selected folder does not contain a shadow copy cabinet" this means you either went too far into the folder, or this folder does not have any content to recover as a Shadow Copy - if the latter then either this is a Full/Incremental Backup or a manual Export of the cabinet. In either case you will need to follow alternative steps to be able to recover them.
Step 4: Recover
- Once both areas (new cabinet location and current shadow copy folder) are correctly selected, the OK button will become active.
- Click OK to begin recovery!
⚠️ Important Tips During Recovery
- Do NOT let the computer go to sleep or shut down during recovery, as it will interrupt the process and you will need to start over.
- Once done, the new cabinet will appear in the folder you selected for Step 2.
- It will automatically back up to the original Shadow Copy you used from Step 3.
Looking for other ways to back up your Historian cabinet? You can read this article for other ways to keep your memories safe!