Topic: Vantage Pro 2 database - lost data.

[craigowl]

Hi, folks,

Common story, have admired the great knowledge on here from afar and have now come on to seek help.

Since a relocation and faffing about, I see from the browsing of txt files, a considerable amount of data has disappeared.

1st question - do you have to have the WeatherLink WLK monthly files apparent in your C:/WeatherLink folder?
I do have plenty of txt files in there for the times of the missing data but they are not visible in the browse lists.

2nd question - my data - what is the proper way of naming the wordpad files?  Is it, say, "2020-11.txt"?

Thanks for listening.

[tshattuck]

craigowl:

The WLK files should all appear in the sub directory (Your Weather Station name) in Weatherlink.

I don't know about the 2nd question.

I hope this helps.

Regards

[craigowl]

Thanks, Tom, nice to hear from and kind of you to reply,
you early riser!

So the WLK file is crucial for the data you have? - without a WLK file you cannot have a notepad text file showing your observations when you click on the browse/notepad icon?
WLK is key to providing you with a readable format?

I read elsewhere, regarding q 2 that the txt data should take the form, say, 2020-11.Lin, where, Lin are the first three letters of your current station.  Anyone?

[johnd]

The wlk files will always be your primary data store. for a complete data record accessible to WL for Windows you need to have a complete set of wlk files.

Any text files will be created (effectively from the wlk files) if you have, for example, exported them to text from WLfW (Weatherlink for Windows) via the Browse screen.

[craigowl]

Thanks, John.  What is WLfW, tho'?

(Thanks for coming on. I know your company site well.  Excellent info.)

[craigowl]

Further to my initial topic.
I note that my .wlk files for older years and for, even 2020 come up using Windows explore, search, in,
C:/users/me/appdata..............

Should they not be in
C:/WeatherLink?  (My version is updated to 6.0.5.)

Sorry to keep on about this, but I was collecting my data for a project being carried out by a student at Newcastle upon Tyne university.

[johnd]

They should all be in the subfolder within eg C:\Weatherlink named after whatever you called your station. Just move them there - the files are just individual monthly files that each stand by themselves.

[craigowl]

Thought so - will do that if they are not in station folder in Weatherlink.

Thanks again.

[johnd]

Actually, let me just expand a bit on locations:

The recommended install folder for Weatherlink for the past several years (it was something different some years back) is C:\Weatherlink. And if you create a new station then the default for that station subfolder will also be inside C:\Weatherlink.

BUT: You don't have to accept the defaults. So if you started out with an older version of WL that used C:\Weatherlink\Program Files as the install folder or if you changed away from the defaults then your PC might be different.

Also, people sometimes try to copy a WL installation from one drive or PC to another one and end up in a tangle because that approach typically doesn't work well. You need to do a fresh install of WL on the new PC; create a new station; and then copy the wlk files across to the new station folder.

[craigowl]

Ha! ha! - Brilliant, John,
I have read the info on your company site so often that I think some of it is now engraved on my old brain!
All of what you have said in that post sounded so so familiar.
Thanks again.

[craigowl]

I have now done extensive housekeeping and backing up of my Davis files 2003-20.   

I find I have plenty of monthly and annual data .TXT files (WITHOUT corresponding/related .WLK files) but not all of these .txt files are on the new station I created.

Is it possible to add these (orphaned?) txt files to the others, somehow?

I have put most of the txt data on XL sheets, too.

Thanks for reading.
Iain

[johnd]

Is it possible to add these (orphaned?) txt files to the others, somehow?

I think the answer is no, not easily. For a txt file to exist at all there must have been a wlk file originally for the text file to have been derived from, but it sounds like the relevant wlk files have gone missing somewhere.

The more general answer is that if you have data in one format then it's always feasible in principle to convert it into a different format. But the wlk files are binary files and so need some detailed programming knowledge to write a program to go from txt ==> wlk. You could potentially take a look at wlkreaderwriter - see https://www.narsters.com/#/WLKReaderWriter but not sure how well it can create wlk files from scratch.

[craigowl]

Thanks for that, John.
Excellent info as always.
Had a look at Narsters but left it aside.

Binary?  That must be the class you move up into after Primary?

Here, when I was 22 and on a forecast course in 1967, we all had to sit a "computer aptitude test".  All the rage at the time.
I remember thinking "sh!t - I didn't join to think about this stuff!"

Geoff, the guy who became top in that test was a pleasant, quiet man who blushed easily and was criticised a lot about technicalities in his met briefings.
The form of test was familiar to him and he went on to work in the appropriate department - as did I (eventually) and most of the rest of us.
Horses for courses, right enough.