Lost ALL Session Data

[addict007]

Hi,

I'm a long-time customer of RaceRender and TrackAddict. I've been very happy with both products and appreciate all the improvements over the years.

That said, last night I encountered a very unfortunate bug in TrackAddict. As a result of this, I lost data dating back over two years and probably hundreds of HPDE/TT sessions. I usually email myself the data after an event, so I do thankfully still have some of it on my PC. However, that doesn't help me when I'm at the track and want to look back at previous times, etc. Unforutunately, I've lost complete confidence in the app.

I don't know what specifically went wrong, but but here's what I did.

1. Clicked on sessions
2. Chose a recent session
3. Got brief pinwheel followed by a screen saying something to the effect of no data
4. Went back to all sessions and nothing was there

Hopefully my data can be recovered, but at this point I can only assume it's lost as I found no backup of the app to icloud that I'm aware of.

[Weston@HPTuners]

I haven't gotten any reports of anything like this before, and the good news is that there is no code in the app that would simply delete all user files in one shot, so it's unlikely that any bug in the app could have erased your stuff.

The first thing to try is to reboot your phone, and then try going to the Sessions screen again. On an iOS device, just hold the Power and Home buttons together for several seconds until the screen goes black and the Apple logo appears.

Users do have the ability to remove multiple files when connected to a computer via iTunes File Sharing, but that's a deliberate action you would take. The other possibility is that you deleting and reinstalling the app could do it, but I don't expect that happened here.

If they actually are gone without explanation, then something would have apparently gone wrong in the operating system or the device itself, although I haven't seen or heard of that happening before.

[addict007]

Nope, reboot didn't fix it. Just 'No recorded sessions'. I just realized that I forgot a step in what i did. Once i had the session pulled up it said something like no lap data. I hit delete, which should have deleted just that session. After that all sessions had been deleted.

I'm not sure if it was this specific session, but I do recall one odd session. If I recall correctly I hit 'record' -> 'record now'. It sat with the 'waiting on gps data' the whole session. Obviously I couldn't fool with it at speed. At the end of the session I unfortunately don't recall exactly what I did (hit home, locked screen, etc).

Now that I think about it there was another session in the recorded session screen that wouldn't even pull up. It just sat there with a pinwheel. I think this may have been an interrupted session. During one session the phone came loose from the mount and ended up at my feet. After retrieving it I recall hoping the recording would have continued but it didn't for some reason. I can't remember what exactly was on the screen.

So basically two sessions with some anomaly during recording (I can't say whether these match the ones that had problems in the app). In any event, I would expect interruptions to be handled under all scenarios and at the very least when deleting one session only one actual session should get deleted.

[chevypower101]

ive been seeing a lot of people complaining about stuff going haywire on the 2.24 patch they came out with loads of people are mad about stuff not saving or issues with tunes. maybe you can uninstall program without deleting files and reinstall and see if your logs come back. Im thinking thats about the only chance you got depending what kind of computer you got and who knows if this will happen again maybe best if you have a floppy disk or one of those file storage usb devices for those just incase o shit moments. Sucks dude I feel for ya

[Weston@HPTuners]

Nope, reboot didn't fix it. Just 'No recorded sessions'. I just realized that I forgot a step in what i did. Once i had the session pulled up it said something like no lap data. I hit delete, which should have deleted just that session. After that all sessions had been deleted.

I'm not sure if it was this specific session, but I do recall one odd session. If I recall correctly I hit 'record' -> 'record now'. It sat with the 'waiting on gps data' the whole session. Obviously I couldn't fool with it at speed. At the end of the session I unfortunately don't recall exactly what I did (hit home, locked screen, etc).

Now that I think about it there was another session in the recorded session screen that wouldn't even pull up. It just sat there with a pinwheel. I think this may have been an interrupted session. During one session the phone came loose from the mount and ended up at my feet. After retrieving it I recall hoping the recording would have continued but it didn't for some reason. I can't remember what exactly was on the screen.

So basically two sessions with some anomaly during recording (I can't say whether these match the ones that had problems in the app). In any event, I would expect interruptions to be handled under all scenarios and at the very least when deleting one session only one actual session should get deleted.

Thank you for the update and additional information. Unfortunately, it would appear that the files are indeed gone.

Considering the severity of what you experienced, I am still looking into this deeper to see if there's any way that this behavior could be replicated within the app... But regardless, I am adding additional safeguards in a few places, and more for the delete functionality specifically, just to make sure we're covering all the bases. That stuff should never come into play, but it can help keep things sane if the app somehow gets into a bad state, due to outside factors or not.

As for the couple of recording anomalies, one of those may be related, because some weird things can happen if opening an invalid file or especially a blank file name, but that also shouldn't ever be occurring in the first place... Even with no GPS, it would still create a file and then log at least the accelerometer data. It should also be continuing to record if interrupted, and it will even receive GPS data from iOS in the background (video would stop, but data should continue). The usual exceptions to this stuff would be if the app were terminated, if the device powered off entirely, if the device ran out of available memory (RAM) or storage, or if you navigated the app to a screen other than "Record".

Can you tell me which iPhone model and version of iOS you are using?

[Weston@HPTuners]

ive been seeing a lot of people complaining about stuff going haywire on the 2.24 patch they came out with loads of people are mad about stuff not saving or issues with tunes. maybe you can uninstall program without deleting files and reinstall and see if your logs come back. Im thinking thats about the only chance you got depending what kind of computer you got and who knows if this will happen again maybe best if you have a floppy disk or one of those file storage usb devices for those just incase o shit moments. Sucks dude I feel for ya

This thread is relating to our iPhone and Android motorsports app, rather than the VCM Suite products.

[addict007]

Thank you for the update and additional information. Unfortunately, it would appear that the files are indeed gone.

Considering the severity of what you experienced, I am still looking into this deeper to see if there's any way that this behavior could be replicated within the app... But regardless, I am adding additional safeguards in a few places, and more for the delete functionality specifically, just to make sure we're covering all the bases. That stuff should never come into play, but it can help keep things sane if the app somehow gets into a bad state, due to outside factors or not.

As for the couple of recording anomalies, one of those may be related, because some weird things can happen if opening an invalid file or especially a blank file name, but that also shouldn't ever be occurring in the first place... Even with no GPS, it would still create a file and then log at least the accelerometer data. It should also be continuing to record if interrupted, and it will even receive GPS data from iOS in the background (video would stop, but data should continue). The usual exceptions to this stuff would be if the app were terminated, if the device powered off entirely, if the device ran out of available memory (RAM) or storage, or if you navigated the app to a screen other than "Record".

Can you tell me which iPhone model and version of iOS you are using?

Thanks. It's an iphone5 running 7.1.1. Plenty of space. In fact I recorded additional sessions after the ones that had issues.

You said an error can happen if you navigate to any other screen than "Record". Maybe I'm blind, but I don't see a 'stop recording' or the like button when recording. I usually just hit sessions so it will stop. If this is not OK, can you add add some recording controls when recording or maybe make them a little bigger if they are already there? Keep in mind a lot of us wear gloves on track.

[Weston@HPTuners]

Thanks for the info. I did not find a way to reproduce the problem from within the app as a user, but have added more safeguards for the next update anyway, just to be sure.

The correct way to stop the recording is to simply navigate to any screen other than "Record", so you're ok there. Sorry if my previous post was unclear on that... I had intended it to mean that it would no longer be recording (in the background or otherwise) if you navigated away from "Record", or if the other conditions I listed were to happen.

[truthdweller]

I uninstalled and reinstalled trackaddict and lost all past and current sessions. Is this expected behavior or, is there a way to recover them?

[Weston@HPTuners]

I uninstalled and reinstalled trackaddict and lost all past and current sessions. Is this expected behavior or, is there a way to recover them?

That is expected behavior in that case... Uninstalling the app will typically remove all of your user data. If you're on iOS, you *might* find a backup in iTunes, depending on when and if you backed up it, but that's not too hopeful.

The main exception to this is if you are using the Android version and have opted to store or move your session data onto an SD card... In that case, it may retain your data if you unmount your SD card *before* you uninstall the app, and then remount it later after reinstalling the app. I don't know of any reason that a user would want to do that, but it's a trick I use during development to fully reinstall the app without losing my test data. But if the SD card was mounted (or somehow became re-mounted) when you uninstall the app, then that data will most likely be deleted.

[truthdweller]

That is expected behavior in that case... Uninstalling the app will typically remove all of your user data. If you're on iOS, you *might* find a backup in iTunes, depending on when and if you backed up it, but that's not too hopeful.

The main exception to this is if you are using the Android version and have opted to store or move your session data onto an SD card... In that case, it may retain your data if you unmount your SD card *before* you uninstall the app, and then remount it later after reinstalling the app. I don't know of any reason that a user would want to do that, but it's a trick I use during development to fully reinstall the app without losing my test data. But if the SD card was mounted (or somehow became re-mounted) when you uninstall the app, then that data will most likely be deleted.

I'm using Android on a Galaxy S5 and set the app to use "internal storage" hence, the sessions are lost.

The reason for uninstalling the app was that I logged sessions today, viewed the videos, but at some point after, when I went back to view the videos again, there was no check boxes to the left of the laps, and no "Play Video" tab to click on, only "Share" and "File."

Question: Is a SIM card considered external storage, and if so, when I select "external storage" will the app store sessions on it so I can remove it prior to uninstalling the app next time?

[truthdweller]

Question: Is a SIM card considered external storage, and if so, when I select "external storage" will the app store sessions on it so I can remove it prior to uninstalling the app next time?

I answered my own question and found that the phone has an SD card slot on top of the SIM card slot...

[Weston@HPTuners]

The SIM card can't be used for any storage, so it would only be the SD card and the phone's own memory that's available for your use.

The terms "Internal" and "External" storage come from official Android terminology, which unfortunately can be a bit misleading... Essentially, "External" only refers to the file access permissions and means that it's externally-accessible by other apps or USB, without referring to its actual physical storage location. In modern practice, the "External" storage is typically part of the phone's built-in storage space, but that's not actually guaranteed by Android, so it could vary by device.

Internal = Your phone's internal memory, and typically no other apps can access it. It also should not be available to USB file sharing.

External = Typically stored on your phone's internal memory, but some devices (mostly older ones) may use an SD Card storage here instead. Either way, this should at least be readable by other apps and be available to USB file sharing.

SD Card = Stored on a removable SD Card, which is both externally-accessible (ie readable by other apps and USB file sharing) and externally located.