At 09:50 03/29/2001, you wrote:
>What files do we need to back up in the database and where are they
>located?
>We will be backing up to network drive.
I won't answer this question directly, since it will almost certainly bring
on a flood of helpful suggestions. But this is a good opportunity to share
a particularly dangerous and embarrassing mistake that could happen to any
Windows user--and might well also apply to Macs, though that's just
speculation on my part.
Recently I organized my Ebase setup a little, moving all the data tables
into a separate directory from the programs, which I named " Membership
Current Data". Then I created another new directory called "Membership
Backup Data". It was then very simple to perform backups by selecting all
of the current files and dragging them to the backup directory.
Where the trouble came was when I held down the wrong mouse button during
this process, and inadvertantly *moved* the files instead of copying
them. That didn't seem serious, I saw it immediately, and copied the files
back where they belonged. Unbeknownst to me, however, MS Windows saw the
move take place, and helpfully adjusted the location data attached to my
desktop icon--but didn't see any need to reverse the process when I copied
the files back. So my next couple of updates went into the backup
files. I didn't realize this until the next backup, when a lot of
messages showed up about "Do you really want to overwrite a file with a
later creation date?" Naturally, I let a couple of them go by before
realizing that this just *wasn't* right.
Fortunately, we keep lots of levels of backup, and I was ultimately able to
recover all but a dozen or so updates. I've now written a couple of MSDOS
batch scripts to do these copies without involving my dubious thinking
processes. These are short--3 or 4 lines each--and available to anyone
interested.
The moral is, stay awake when you're doing backups. They can really spoil
your day.
Barry
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