Backing Up Files
You add vital information to your system files every day: new pick tickets, new invoices, purchase orders, and on and on. To protect this information, you need to back up these files every day. Make it a policy to back up:
As part of your day-end procedures
Before you make a mass change to one of your databases.
Performing regular backups ensures that you have an accurate and complete audit trail of your business activity. This lets you review or recover information at a later date without having to recreate it manually.
To help you protect your data:
It's ultimately your responsibility to determine how much protection you want to have for your backups. However, we recommend the following:
Have one backup tape for each day of the business week. Rotate these every week: every Monday you back up on the Monday tape, for example.
Once a month, make a backup that you keep. (We recommend you keep this backup for one year.)
Make a tape when you do your year-end procedures that you keep.
Keep a few spare tapes at all times. Tapes can break or develop bad spots at inconvenient times.
Make a policy for retiring old tapes. (Tapes have a definite shelf life.)
Make a policy for verifying tapes — verify once a week, for example. (We explain how to verify in the instructions for backing up and verifying.)
You should also consider off-site storage for your tapes. You do not want to lose all of your backups if your building burns or floods.
To make sure that your backups work, you must consider tape life. Every time you use a tape, you wear away some of the magnetic media that holds your data. Opinions vary on how many backups you can reliably make on a tape, but the documented life for QIC tapes is about 5000 backups.
Tapes also degrade with time, whether you use them or not. Their shelf life varies widely, depending on care, temperature, humidity and many other factors. Published opinions on shelf life range from one to 30 years.
You should check with the manufacturer of the tapes you use, and follow their recommendations regarding the number of backups and shelf life. Create a company policy for retiring tapes at appropriate intervals.
Some dealers retire their daily tapes, which see the most use, by periodically turning them into monthly tapes. After a few months of use, for example, you might use the old Monday tape as your month-end tape for January, the Tuesday tape for February, and so forth.
Even if you retire your tapes regularly, they can be unreliable if you mistreat them. To care for your tapes, follow these rules:
Keep tapes in an environment that’s reasonably free from dirt, dust, fingerprints, food, cigarette smoke and ash, and airborne pollutants.
Do not drop tapes.
Keep tapes out of strong sunlight, and avoid contact with liquids or extreme heat.
Do not store tapes on radiators, window sills, televisions, electronic equipment, or machinery.
Put tapes back on their storage shelf when they’re not in use. Do not store them flat, like plates; place them on edge, like books.
Before backing up, re-boot your system to reset inodes. To back up files on your server:
Insert a backup tape into your drive. Make sure that you quit any programs that are currently running, including the TBL Server. The system does not back up any file that is open. To close the TBL Server:
Click the TBL Server icon in the lower taskbar.
When the TBL Server window appears, choose File and select Exit.
At the Warning message, click OK.
Click Start, point to Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and select Backup.
The first time you back up, the Import Media Present dialog box appears. Check Allocate all compatible import media to Backup.
Click the Backup tab.
Click the C: and/or D: boxes to back up either one or both drives.
To back up specific files, instead of selecting the C: and D: drives, navigate to the folder that contains these files. Then select all three files that begin with the same name. These three files have different extensions: .cdx, .dbf, and .key. You must include all three to obtain the complete file. To back up the !DES file, for example, select the !DES.CDX, !DES.DBF, and !DES.KEY files.
In the Backup Destination box, select QIC or DAT, depending on the type of tape drive you have. If you're not sure, select QIC.
Click the Start Backup button. If this is your first backup:
When the Backup Job Information dialog box appears, click the Advanced button.
In the Advanced Backup Options dialog box, select If possible, compress the backup data to save space.
Click OK.
To verify this backup:
When the Backup Job Information dialog box appears, click the Advanced button.
In the Advanced Backup Options dialog box, select Verify data after backup.
Click OK.
In the Backup Dialog Information dialog box, click Start Backup. The backup begins. If you're verifying this backup, Windows creates a log file that describes the backup.
To view the log, return to the Backup program, click the Tools menu, and select Reports.
Select the backup date, click View or Print, and review the log to make sure the backup was successful.
When the backup is completed, restart TBL.
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