Hi Carl. This is one of those FileMaker vs. Urban Myth issues.  If you call
FileMaker with a problem they will as often as not, tell you to run Recover
even if the file isn't obviously dinged. But there is a whole undercurrent
of folks in the developer community who say Recover is hopelessly broken and
dangerous. Almost any kind of quirky issue has at one time or another been
blamed on a corrupted file or damage "caused" by using recover.

So what is the "consistency check"? My best guess is that FileMaker sets a
flag during shutdown which it checks for on startup. If the flag isn't set
FM runs a "consistency check".  In general this kind of check is simply a
check of a few calculations which should be self consistent, if they are not
FM tells you to run recover and won't let you into the file. This kind of
"check-sum" checking is often very reliable in detecting errors.

The official ebase position is that when a database fails the consistency
check, to be safe, you should always restore from backup rather than use the
FileMaker "Recover" process.  Should that be extended to any event that
triggers consistency checks? Your call.

Clif
--------------------------------------------
Clif Graves, Programmer
TechRocks
74 Narrows Pond Road
Winthrop ME 04364
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
eFax: 425.790.2058                   Web: http://www.techrocks.org
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carl Paulsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 4:22 PM
> To: TechRocks Support
> Subject: [support] Crashes and Filemaker Consistency Check
>
>
> I'm wondering if anyone has knowledge of how accurate the Filemaker
> consistency check is.  That is, when Filemaker runs a consistency check
> after a crash and finds no problems, is there reasonably strong
> assurance that the database is not corrupted?  Or is it a better
> practice to always restore from a backup whenever there is a crash?
>
> Care to share your approach to this?
>
> Thanks,
> Carl
> --
> Carl Paulsen
> New Hampshire Rivers Council
> 54 Portsmouth Street
> Concord, NH  03301
> 603-228-6472
> 603-228-0423 Fax
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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