Restoring old data

[Pilch]

I've been away from poker for years but making a return. I have a HM2 licence and have just downloaded the HM3 trial, for now, with a view to purchasing a licence.
I've reinstalled HM2, having uninstalled it all years ago. I have a file called backup.hembk but when I try the restore option in HM2, it doesn't appear to be the correct file type.

Can I get my data back in from this single file somehow, so I can then move from HM2 to HM3?

Thank you.

[fozzy71]

I believe that is most likely an HM1 backup file. HM2 backups have a name similar to 'HEM BACKUP 01-27-2024_12-06-37.pghembk' with a different file extension.

If you do not have any .pghembk files to restore to HM2 the only thing I can suggest is to manually import your original HM2 archived hand history files to HM3 if you have them, or you can try emailing your poker site support and see if they can send your old hands for importing.

All original hands that are auto-imported by HM2 get moved to an archive for performance reasons. Your \HM2Archive is in C:\HM2Archive by default, but you may have put it anywhere. The archive should be organized by \Month\DayOfMonth (example: D:\HM2Archive\2009\07\31) or if it was auto-imported with 7283+ it would be in \HM2Archive\SiteName\YYYY\MM\DD. It is configured in the Site Setup - Auto Import Folders menu.

If you play a site like Stars/FTP, Party, or WPN you can email their support and ask for all your old hand histories and tourney histories/results. PokerStars/FTP and other sites like Ignition/Bovada, and GG Poker (and Natural8) have menus in their software that allow you to download the 'Last X' number of hands/tournaments or number of weeks/months of hands to import for review.

[Pilch]

Thank you. Any merit in installing HM1, importing that database and then moving it all across from there?

[fozzy71]

Thank you. Any merit in installing HM1, importing that database and then moving it all across from there?

No, unfortunately not. You can try, but I wouldn't really bother wasting time with such old data as it will not apply to current games. I still have some original HM1 archives that I manually imported to my HM3 DB, but none of my 10+ year old hands from pre-UIGEA days apply to my current ring-fenced games. I only look at that data in the reports to reminisce, it is of no use in the HUD. We also still have open issues with some HM2 DB's not importing well to HM3, so a HM1 backup that was restored to HM1, then imported to HM2, then imported to HM3, will likely not be very complete or accurate.

The quickest and most accurate way to get going is to install HM3 and import any original hand history files from C:\HMArchive or C:HM2Archive you might have, or email your sites and see if they can send you hands that will import to HM3. If you don't have any of the HM1 or HM2 archives to import then I would just start playing fresh with an empty database on your current stakes down a stake or two to start building a new database and learning the software.