I'll address this question to Karen scince I used her instructions to back up the forum but all replies are welcome.

I attempted to back up the forum yesterday, after nearly 14 hours of downloading (56k modem)I have a file named Countryside Top Level. A 122 mb. file(I asked for 2 links deep) that wont run from the hard drive.I have tried clicking on Favorites and clicking on the file name, nothing happens.Click on Favorites, right click on the file, click open, nothing.I have not found a way to open this file!

Will I have to burn this file to cd before it will run or am I doing somthing wrong? If it wont run from the hard drive I dont see how it could run from cd back up. The 122 mb. file size is also smaller than I expected. I think I read that Chuck estimated that there was 600 mbs of information on the forum.

Is there another way to open the file or should I just burn a cd and try it. I use IE 5.01.

Also is there a way to update this file or will I have to start a new download to update.

-- Brian (brilas@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002

Answers

I've had several people email me with similar questions. I don't know what exactly is wrong, but I suspect it has to do with the format that LUSENET uses for storing data, it's database creates files with the extension .tcl.

I made a few coasters trying to get it into a readable format myself. Whether you put it on a hard drive or burn it to a CD won't make any difference.

I wish I could help more, but I'm not exactly sure what I did to make it work. I found that using the httrack software made it easier, perhaps you should try downloading that and using it to try a backup.

-- Chuck (reply@mission4me.com), March 17, 2002.

Chuck, is there a reason you prefer httrack? Webcopier also looks like a capable program.

Anybody have a favorite web capture program? Why?

-- Brian (brilas@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002.

Brian, what you want to look for (at least if you use Httrak as Chuck suggested) is an HTML file named index.htm - click on it and it will bring up the main page of the forum just like you see it online. If you only went two levels deep, you will get the top level (where all the new posts are seen) and the next level down (the actual posts and replies.) That's fine for the posts that haven't expired, but when you go to the bottom of the page where everything is in a catagory (that's level 1) and click on a topic (that's level 2) you can see the titles of the threads, but you can't get to them because they are on level 3.

So first of all you have to at least backup 3 levels - and maybe 4 or 5 if you want pictures stored on other servers somewhere else. Also, just for your information, when you back up the catagorized section at the bottom of the forum page, you get everything (including today's posts) because every post is in one of those catagories at the bottom, even if it's in the "Uncatagorized" catagory. It doesn't really save a lot of time to eliminate backing up the current threads, but just thought I would pass that on to you.

So ... if you're intent on backing the forum up using a 56K dialup connection, back up at least three levels (and that's all you need if all you want is the text questions/answers) and be prepared to wait a LONG time! Also, in case you weren't aware, Chuck has backups burnt on CD already.

I'm also in the process (a lengthy process) of converting all the posts to HTML and placing a search engine in the CD. Not sure how long that's going to take, but it'll be worth it to me if I can search on "rabbit feed" and find all the individual posts dealing with rabbit feed and not have to sift through everything looking for what I want. I'll let everyone know when I get that done, though it looks like it will be some time yet before it's complete.

Hope all this ramblin has helped some. Oh! I forgot to mention ... if you use Httrack (http://www.httrack.com/) you can select to continue inturrupted downloads, choose to download only what's changed, and a lot of other nice choices. If you're going to try to keep a current backup, I highly recommend Httrack!

-- Phil in KS (pemccoy@yahoo.com), March 17, 2002.

Thanks Phil, I will likely download httrack tomorrow.Is it a large download taking an hour or more?

Can I open my current download with it or do I delete and start over? I have kept Chucks email in case the forum moves before I get this done.

Last question, do you know if httrack will do a clean (reasonably) uninstall or is it A program that you have to reformat the hard drive to get rid of?

-- Brian (brilas@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002.

Wait a minute.........14 hours downloading and Im not in the archives yet? I assume then it may take 3 days to completly backup the forum if my math is correct?

Its the challenge that drives me now.

-- Brian (brilas@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002.

I didn't have any problems and I just followed what Karen said to do and it opened, no problem

-- laura (lauramleek@yahoo.com), March 18, 2002.

Laura, Which version of what browser did you use?

-- Brian (brilas@hotmail.com), March 18, 2002.