Topic: Is there any benifit to backing up up datafiles in WL?

[anchorageweather]

Are there any datafiles that can be backed up within Weather-Link in case of a hard drive crash, etc.?  Which files should I backup?  How would you go about restoring them?  Thanks for any help.

[ocala]

WLK files. Just open up your WL file and you should see a WLK  file for each month you have saved data.
Not sure how you would restore them though. Try a test and copy one of the months to a CD. Then go back in and copy it to the WL file. If it works you should have 2 months exactly the same.

[Dragonfly]

I back backup the entire Weatherlink directory with SyncBack twice a day. Actually SyncBack only copies newer files or files that have been changed. Then the backedup directory is copied to another PC also twice a day. So if I need to restore the drive, the most I have lost is 12 hours and those twelve hours are stored on the VP data logger.

To restore Weatherlink I reinstalled Weatherlink then copied the most recent backup over the install, worked great.

I also do the same with the rest of my Weather apps including VirtualVP and StartWatch.

Once a month I write the backup to a CD, unfortunately it takes four CD's. Maybe it's time to get a DVD.

[anchorageweather]

Ok, I have the general picture.  One more question;  Does WL append info to the current month's .wlk file or resave the entire file?  Also, once a month is complete, does WL make any changes to the "OLD" .wlk files?

Finally, since my site only uses current calendar year info.  Can I remove "prior year" .wlk files from my hard drive - once they are backed up?

[Dragonfly]

Ok, I have the general picture.  One more question;  Does WL append info to the current month's .wlk file or resave the entire file?  Also, once a month is complete, does WL make any changes to the "OLD" .wlk files?

From what I can tell, WL appends to the current file and even though the date changes of files from previous months WL does not make changes to those files.

Finally, since my site only uses current calendar year info.  Can I remove "prior year" .wlk files from my hard drive - once they are backed up?

You can remove as many of the older WLK files as you wish, however it will restrict you from looking back at historical info.

Since I have a dedicated PC for the weather applications I also have a stripped down version of Weatherlink installed on my other PC that I use for accessing all the WL data and graphs.

[SlowModem]

WLK files. Just open up your WL file and you should see a WLK  file for each month you have saved data.
Not sure how you would restore them though. Try a test and copy one of the months to a CD. Then go back in and copy it to the WL file. If it works you should have 2 months exactly the same.

I know this is quoting an old post, but it showed up on my search and it is what I'm curious about.  

Am I correct to assume that 2010-11.wlk is november's file and 2010-12 is december?

[PaulMy]

Greg,
Yes, looking at my .wlk logs from when I started in July 2008 there is a 2008-07.wlk and one for every month thereafter such as 2008-08, 2008-09 to now 2010-12.wlk.  I had somehow converted one of the month files to Excel and that confirmed it was.

Paul

[SlowModem]

Greg,
Yes, looking at my .wlk logs from when I started in July 2008 there is a 2008-07.wlk and one for every month thereafter such as 2008-08, 2008-09 to now 2010-12.wlk.  I had somehow converted one of the month files to Excel and that confirmed it was.

Paul

OK, thanks! 

[dalecoy]

Notice, however that:

All of your .wlk files are likely to have fairly recent "modified on" dates.  I don't know what causes that, nor do I know if anything in the contents is actually changed.  Perhaps that happens when the computer is rebooted?

Two of the .wlk files will have extremely recent "modified on" date/time stamps.  The one for the current month, of course.  But also (observationally) the .wlk file for the earliest month you have saved.  Again, I don't have any idea what that means.

For that reason, and because the files are rather small, I don't delete them, and make good backups.

[SlowModem]

For that reason, and because the files are rather small, I don't delete them, and make good backups.

I run WUHU, so I don't run WL.  However, last month I figured, "What the heck?" and decided to launch WL and download the datalogger every week or so.  You're right, the files are really small.  So I figured I'd copy them to a CD for a backup, just in case.