Hey Carl, One more opinion. Clif is right, there are many long-time FMP developers who don't trust the consistency check or recover very much. And given that FMI won't say exactly what either of these will and will not catch/fix, I'm not inclined to discount them. I too have seen very mysterious corruption creep into a file that hadn't crashed (at least not recently...)
I use the following guidelines for my own work. If I'm doing DEVELOPMENT work (i.e. changing the structure of a database, writing scripts, making layouts, etc.) I go back to backup after any crash, even if consistency check passes. (I backup frequently.) My hunch is that there's probably nothing wrong, but due to the non-modular nature of FMP development, if I'm wrong that could mean that all work after that point could be corrupted. If I'm just USING a database, and there's a backed up clone somewhere (or other archived copy of the full structure including all customizations) then I keep using it if consistency check passes. Data loss is a less unforgiving problem than corruption of the structure. This is what I advise my clients as well. I usually also advise them to: check the last record you were working on, spot check some other records, if you find any problems go back to backup. Also: even if you keep using it, archive your most recent backup BEFORE the crash, compress it and label it as BeforeCrash10-1-01 or some such, and keep it around for a while just in case. I also sometimes run Recover as just a check, to see if it reports any errors found. There's two more cents for you. Matthew Matthew Scholtz Database and Non-Profit Technology Consultant Bellingham, WA Also associated with NPower, Seattle www.npower.org ------------------ Reminder to each recipient: To change your list account preferences, go to http://email.sparklist.com/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=support and enter the email address you used to subscribe to the ebase support list:: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- ebase - Relationship Management for Nonprofits, http://www.ebase.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------
