Question: ninjatrader7 / db / tick / "instrument"

[pstrusi]

I'm recovering a database and want to merge "a new healthy data" with some healthy parts of the old faulty one.

The "cleanest" method that I'm thinking would be:
- Backup the new and healthy short database.
- Restore old backup with the faulty database to save all raw data ( .ntd files ) to a secure location.
- Uninstall NT and do a fresh install
- Restore the last "healthy short new database"from the recent backup
- Copy old raw ( .ntd files ) from old database to corresponding instruments in the new one, so I merge them as one.

Question: In theory, if I had all .ntd files and copy them to an actual database, I'd have available that old data as well ? I imagine it wouldn't be a problem cause I'm not dealing with .sdf main files.

Thanks!!

[NinjaTrader_PatrickG]

A restore from a backup will overwrite, not append, NinjaTrader's files. First, I'd like to clarify some terminology and locations of files.

Historical data is stored in the Documents > NinjaTrader 7 > db > tick, minute, and day sub-folders. I would not consider this the 'database'. The database would be the 'NinjaTrader.sdf' file you see within the db folder. This file contains critical information, however, doesn't have anything to do with historical data. From this point forward I'll be switching to 'historical data' terminology.

If you copy/move the tick sub-folder to a new NinjaTrader db folder, you're effectively transferring that historical tick data.

If you drill into these folders further, you'll fine data is listed by instrument and then files named by date. If you wanted to manually append data, you would need to make sure to manually transfer over the desired dates into the 'new' data folders.

I am not sure that I follow why backups are involved at all in your steps at this point. It sounds like you could skip that step and just manually copy the desired data folders into your new NinjaTrader installation. If you're not replacing all data, you'll need to be very careful that you insert files in the right locations for their respective data type and instrument.

Depending on your data provider and how far back the data is you're trying to transfer you may not need to do any of this manually. Many data providers supply several months or up to a year of tick data. You may want to first test on your new installation with your data provider connection is you can simply request the data on a chart or through the Historical Data Manager.