Home Forums Discussions General Discussion What are the .bak files in my backup folder?

I have several .bak files from a few (distant) past dates in the backup folder. Are they required for potential future restores? Why and when are they created? Names are "Preutilities" and "Prerestore". Can I safely delete them (so they will not be repeated as part of backups of the folder)?

Jon,
Preutilites is a backup done just prior to the installation of AC prerequisites.
Prerestore is a backup done prior to a restore which you must have done at some point in past.

They are really just old backups. If you don't feel the need for backups on the dates those were done, I think you can safely delete them.

Without actually poking the files you never know *for sure*, but I suspect that Donna is bang-on.

The difference in file postfix would indicate that they are just backup files that have not been encrypted.

Of course, you have backups of your backups right?

To quote my boy, "You feel lucky John, well, do you?" *grin* .... back to work ...

Thanks, Donna and Indy.
I have backups of my backups of my backups. Which explains why I want to cut 2 gigs from the original backup. Gotta keep those back-ups from getting too big, right, Donna?

Well they are gone now, so I guess I must.
And does Clint know you refer to him as "my boy"?

I regularly clean out the .bak files, "Pre-" files and even most of the .enc files in the AC Backup folder. Never had any problems by deleting them.

AC has a routine for "Emergency restore from .bak file". So, it seems to make these files before you do something major as above. I really learned a lot from all the time I spent struggling with installs!

And, yes, Jon, size matters. That's my story and I am sticking to it!

We never really got a definitive answer about whether II opens more slowly as it enlarges.

Well, I hate to beat a dead horse, and Donna has taken care of this one, but just to add a few thoughts. After all, it is I, and when have I not? Easy Jon, I know you have something very witty to say there, but the author of a thread is not allowed?

I am too tired and can't recall, but the .bak files (being named from BAcKups is always a backup file and is automatically made by Amazing Charts whenever anything major is done that could possibly cause a catastrophe such as running the database tuner or doing a restore. It isn't used by us but can be used by AC, whenever a user calls to say the database tuner or whatever deleted all of his/her data, and they have no backups. It is good insurance for AC.

As far as the backup folder there is ABSOLUTELY nothing in it that you could ever delete that would hurt AC. In fact, I frequently just delete the whole folder. You can move it also if you want to keep the contents. AC will make a new backup folder the next time you do a backup or a .bak file is created.

Backups of Amazing Charts whether the .enc files or the .bak files are useless very quickly compared to other backups where having literally months of them can be helpful. While it certainly isn't beneficial to restore a complete backup made by Acronis or Microsoft or Backup Assist or whatever from three months ago, it may contain an important file that was deleted accidentally that you didn't know about. A good example would be someone deletes three patients' imported items. All the backups in the world that post date that will not contain the imported items. But, you have the luxury of possibly obtaining that file by going back a month or however. I keep one year or all files of my data including, of course, AC.

But, an .enc file is a self contained, zipped and encrypted file containing your databases and other folders, which, after two to three days will restore a database missing many progress notes, hence I rarely keep more than five. There are programs that will auto delete the files for you based on size or number or whatever.

The .bak files are mainly for users who do not have a good method of doing certain types of backups. It is obvious that one should make two or three .enc backups before doing a new install, etc. It is also a good idea to do a backup of the AC folder and user databases as well as possible backup of the server/main computer. Sounds like a lot, but computers are weird and the last thing you want is to be looking at the computer screen with all of your data gone.

Lastly, I don't recall which new version changed the offsite backups where you can no longer restore them yourself. Which is why I don't use them. AC has to do it for you. I guess that is OK as we all know that in a crisis, it only takes minutes to get ahold of them. That is why I use a company such as Jungle Disk so I see the data and restore it if I need to.

I apologize for the long post.

I started using Amazing Charts in Feb. 2011. I had immediately setup the the AC Backup to do the backups every night, as well as to save to an external HD. No problems since installation. When I upgraded to V 6.0.9 I started having low disk space errors, to the point where i couldn't do anything in AC. I found that AC was backing up about 9 GB of data in my main server's hard disk at night, and the same amount in the external hard drive. Further exploration also shows that I have my imported PDF files in the back up folder My questions are:
1)is there any way so that AC will only back up what has changed so that i don't get these humongous backups?
2) can it get rid of the imported PDF files and not lose them in the patient record/chart itself?
Hope y'all can help me. I'm at my wits' end.

To change the way that your back-ups are set up, go to
Administrative options
Amazing Charts Onsite Backup
Advanced options
And check the box "Exclude Imported Items".

This will not affect all of the files you have imported, but will stop backing them up.

You will want to come up with another way to back up your imported items, but your AC backups will be far smaller.

The problem is likely that you have 6 - 7 GB of backup files in the "Backup" folder in the Amazing Charts program folder. Every time that you have made a backup, Amazing Charts has added another .enc file to the Backup folder (why it has this behavior, who knows).

I suggest use Amazing Utilities to delete the older .enc backup files. Start Amazing Utilities on your main computer, then use the "Advanced Options" menu at the top left to "cleanup & delete outdated backups". This will delete backups older than 1 month.

This should reduce your the size of your backups substantially.

Support seems to know. They told me once that it automatically places a backup in the AC folder, because "some people wouldn't know how to set up a backup." But, at least a window should pop up.

Both Jon and John are correct. You can change the settings also directly from the backup icon within the AC folder, which of course, ends up being identical to Jon's method.

If you do not want a month's worth, which I consider at least 25 more than you need, you can manually delete them.

By the way, one of the best software programs out there is called TreeSize Free or TreeSize Pro. It allows one to find where large files are that should not be there.

Thanks Jon, John, and Bert. Will try your suggestions.