4CAT not recognizing old datasets after reinstallation

[dannamise]

Hi everyone,

Recently I had to reinstall 4CAT. Before doing so, I made sure to keep the 4cat_4cat_data volume, where my old datasets were stored.

After the reinstallation, 4CAT no longer recognizes or displays the old datasets, even though the volume still contains all the previous data. Interestingly, I created two new datasets yesterday, and they were saved correctly in the same volume.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Is there a way to make 4CAT re-index or recognize the datasets that are already in the volume?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[dale-wahl]

I recommend backing up your volume as 4cat may attempt to remove unrecognized datasets thinking the user requested them to be deleted.

It looks like you created a new database volume. 4car tracks database metadata, settings, etc. in the database. If there is no record there, it will not show any datasets (and, again, may delete datasets that have been removed though it waits 7 days before doing so).

If you have the database volume originally used, you can recreate 4CAT (via the docker commands down and then up) after ensuring the correct database volume is set in your .env file. Without that the datasets are missing all 4CAT metadata used by the program.

In addition to being able to store the 4CAT volumes, there is also a processor to export datasets as zip files. These can then be imported into other 4CATs (of the same version) as they have the necessary metadata from the database.