A few years ago after suffering the frustration of having to setup my series recordings after a clean build I decided to create a tool that would backup my schedules and enable me to import that back in to Windows Media Center. Version 1 was designed for XP Media Center and I updated v2 for Windows Vista but with TV Pack and Windows 7 Microsoft changed the way the scheduled recordings was stored and this broke my app so it was about time that I updated the app to work with Windows 7.

mcBackup 3.0 is designed for Windows 7 (it should also work with Windows Vista TV Pack) and using a service will backup your series recordings on a schedule and enables easy restoring of this data. The channel lineup is also backed up and can be restored but you have to be careful when restoring this on a configured system as it merges the channel lineup with existing lineup

The app also includes the facility to backup recorded TV to another location like a Windows Home Server or a UNC share, there is also an option to backup an additional folder such as a pictures.

As the backup engine works as a service there is no need to keep the client UI open and it works even without a user logged on. In a future build I am going to include the facility to download your apps from MadeforMediaCenter.com so on a clean build you can have the app setup the channels, series records and download your 3rd party apps making it really easy to setup a new box

You can download the app from MadeforMediaCenter.com and I want to thanks Jason Coombes (@databasejase) for his fantastic testing efforts, without his help I wouldn’t have been able to get this version out

Here are some screenshots

Download from MadeforMediaCenter.com (requires Microsoft .net framework 3.5)