On this thread why are people backing up their whole system? You don't need to back up apps and stuff, you have the disks or ways to get the programs again. Just back up data. back up your AC backup files, not the AC program folder every night. You don't need to back up MS word or excel, just the documents, pictures, pdf's etc. This will save you time and headaches!
Ketan, here we go again, lol. But, this is more about best practices. Your method works great for a personal computer, but it far short-sighted in a business environment. Some people on here have over 7 years worth of data on their servers. I don't know how to say it any clearer, but this is Mission Critical data and I am not going to trust it to a company who can't get the mixed cases spell check to work.
It has always amazed me that everyone on here (well maybe not everyone) seems to have one program. Amazing Charts. No one has Medisoft or Lytec. No one has Imported Items separate from their .enc file. No one has an intranet. No one has in house email. No one seems to have at least 100 or more important documents.
When you back up your entire server or pseudo-server, you know that EVERYTHING that is important to your practice is backed up. You can restore it or you can go into and get it or whatever. Anything else is gravy. I call them modular backups.
For instance, my server gets backed up twice, not once to an external drive. The following day same thing but to a different drive. What good is a backup if the drive you backed up to died. Also, every day all data (which includes all of the above because it backs up the data drive) is backed up to Jungle Disk.
Now, everything I need as far as AC is backed up three times for one year. Now, I do what you call the non-headache backups. I decide it is time to go home. I click on AC backup, I click on eMedware backup and I click on the F.A.P. (all of my Imported Items) backup. Ten minutes later my big three are backed up. Of course, if my billing software becomes corrupted, I will restore from the modular backup. 30 seconds. Restored. But, human nature being what it is, I get tired or busy and forget to back up the actual eMedware (modular backup) for two days. Now I am three days behind. But, no fears, I have at least three other backups.
Now here is what else is important. It is called granularity. My eMedware (billing) backup is similar to AC's. It is condensed and encrypted into one file. It is only restoreable. I can't open it and look at it. But, my other backups, allow me to actually open the folder. To actually go in and grab the file I need.
Here is a great example of how you would lose sleep over not having good backups. As you know, being in the post about spell check, Avery is trying to incorporate his 10,000 medical words into spell check. I have tried to show him a "possible" way to put them in userdic.tlx. That may take a lot of time to do. This file would be in the AC folder but not backed up by AC backup (I don't thin -- apologies if it is).
I think some of this as John sort of alludes to is the culture of the server. You won't find one IT person out there that will not recommend an entire server backup or at least the data portion every night. It's just what those with servers do. We think of it that way.
Now, you are correct about applications. That is exactly why I just said what I did. Whole server vs data. As long as I am backing up my data and Jungle Disk is backing up the data, I can always reinstall the OS and all my applications and then my data. But, that is not only an all day job. It means completely redoing Active Directory. Completely setting up the domain. Every setting is lost. To me, spending two days redoing my server vs going to SBS Console, clicking on backups, clicking on restore, choosing backup from 11/14/2010, clicking restore, going to Burger King and then coming back and seeing my patient by doing a Bare Metal Restore has a lot few headaches.
I just reposted my slide presentation on backups. I spent hours doing it. It's not a bad read and neither are Wendell's backups.
You are right about the backup going to the folder. Very dumb. But, AC doesn't know everyone's computer. That file won't help in a crash. But, at bare minimum, it will help if someone moves the AmazingCharts.mdf file by mistake and corrupts it.
I once had a script that would remove every tenth backup. I must admit I could never get the date to work correctly. But, I am sure with a little work, you could Google scripts or script writers and find someone who could write a script that would reside in AC's folder and delete each new file.
For your sake, please back AC up off the computer. Please have at least five days worth. Please back them up to two different places. I need a sports doctor I can consult with.
