I’m at the point that I am going to completely reset some items in my Trakt Account and start from scratch and reimport all my Library items as the count in Trakt is massively off from what I have.
But I wanted to make sure that I if necessary can restore my saved JSON backups from here.
In order to test I downloaded them, and then tried to see if it would let me restore them if needed. Immediately I ran into a problem that anything in the “collection” subset can’t be uploaded as it doesn’t meet the required formatting. How is this possible?
I can understand the size limitation (something easily overcome by breaking the JSON into smaller files) but even with one well under the 10MB limit it won\t import.
Is this a bug or is this the planned outcome?
I even tried importing any of the other JSON files, same result: rejected because it doesn’t meet the necessary structure.
How is this even considered a backup if you can’t import it?
There are no restore/import capabilities for automatic backups or the GDPR exports at this time.
You’ll need to change the format of the files before you can import them back.
This is something we are looking at.
To be full transparent here: the automatic backup has been created after an incident that happened a couple of years ago with our database. Since then, our infra has been improved a lot in terms of resilience and redundancy. We have backups every 6 hours that can be restored. We are just not ready to restore individual user data yet.
So if I convert those files to a CSV they’d be able to be imported?
That is completely contradictory. You just said they can’t be restored and then say they can and then deny that again.
Nothing added by the Plex Webhook has metadata in it. And that was precisely one of the reasons I had exported all the items because I need to fix the eff ups created by Plex Sync. But besides that NONE of the JSON files exported are able to be imported. Not a single one that you get is in a format able to be used. So you get a backup that then needs you to manually re-enter everything…
Wow, that’s enlightening! The primary reason I became VIP is because of the angst caused by that downtime. Now I learn that I’ve essentially wasted my money? It’s nice that backups are now unnecessary. Maybe backups are now needed only for importing into the competition.
Please look at the Guidelines of the importer. What I’m saying is, if you want to export and import, it is currently not possible. You will need to follow the Guidelines of the importer to be able to import, no matter how you exported the data.
Let me rephrase: Automatic Backup exists because we had an incident in the past. The goal was to have a backup so people could go through it if we had another incident. Since then, our infrastructure changed quite a bit. Automatic Backups are not needed anymore. We have backups of the whole database system every 6 hours that are restorable. Automatic Backups are individual and were never intended to be restorable, just copies.
Hope this clarifies.
Seriously? The generally accepted definition of a backup file is:
a duplicate copy of digital data (documents, photos, system files) stored separately from the original, used to restore information in case of loss, corruption, deletion, or hardware failure.
If the primary reason you became VIP was the angst caused by that downtime, and your subscription helped fund infrastructure improvements to the point where Automatic Backups are no longer necessary, I’m not sure how that translates into wasted money.
The original risk has been addressed at the root. That’s the outcome we were aiming for.
You could always export your data manually, even as a free user. Your data belongs to you.
If you want to move it to a competitor, you’re free to do so. That has absolutely nothing to do with Automatic Backups, importing, or VIP.
Okay, so when I said restorable there, I meant automatically or self serviceable, if you want. In the definition you sent, an important distinction with this subject is it’s “in case of loss, corruption, deletion, or hardware failure”. In those cases, and if we can’t restore your data ourselves, you can send us your Automatic Backup and we’ll do our best to restore them, of course.
Your definition says nothing about being able to export, delete and re-import without data manipulation in case you want to start fresh.