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Hey does anyone know how to archive patients that are inactive so that you can free up space for AC? Our practice is quite large and we are looking for solutions to displace data in order to allow our server to have more space and operate at a faster speed.

The patients actually take up very little space.

Import items and backups are the biggest issues.

There is little that can be done with import items. I suppose you could sort the folders and remove those that are more than 5 years old but this would be tedious and I'm not sure how much you would save

Backups are a completely different matter. You can move a few older ones just for reference and delete everything except the last few days.

That being said, you can inactivate patients but it doesn't save space.

If your desire is to improve performance, there are three areas to focus on.

1> SQL Server Express 64bit - if you have installed fresh recently, this is already in place. If you have been upgrading for a few years, you may be on the 32bit SQL Express. The next step beyond this is SQL Server Standard

2> More RAM on your server

3> More processing power on your AC server - this means newer, more expensive hardware

Storage is typically not the issue.

Well, as I alluded to, knowing the reason you are trying to archive patients would be helpful in answering your other similar question. So, you can disregard my answer to that one. I think the other question is really related or even "in" this question. You can't archive patients. You can inactivate them.

As Wendell said, the patients and everything in your AC database takes up very little space. I am a rather small practice (2000 patients), but I have been using AC for nearly 15 years, and my entire AC folder is less than 8.5 GB. That is about 500 MB/year.

Indy is completely right. RAM and non-express SQL and a better processor. More space won't help unless you are down to a really low amount of space.

There used to be a time when people would say RAM is cheap and is the most inexpensive way to increase performance. While it still is, storage is now also inexpensive. If you are having issues with space and performance and the way you are trying to fix it is by finding a way to get a 15 GB database down to a 10 GB database, then I think you may be looking at it wrong.

It may be that this is the time to completely upgrade. Purchase a server and significantly increase your overall experience. At the same time, this would allow you to take advantage of today's technology which has increased by leaps and bounds. Even SSD drives are rather affordable. Drives could be so large, concern over enough space for AC would not be an issue, no matter how many patients you and your partners see.

And as Wendell says, AC has the very unique way of storing backups in the AC folder by default. These can add up quickly. There is no reason to have more than three stored at any time. Of course, you should have AC backups stored elsewhere as well. Many people run scripts as simple as one line of code in a text file, which will clean up your \\AmazingCharts\Backup\ folder from X amount of backups to two backups with one click. You can even schedule this. These backups, can be quite large, especially if they contain your imported items (which is never really a great idea in my opinion). You can always back up the II separately.

The above about backups does not necessarily apply if one is using the latest AC off-site backups. Only if you are running the backup program which auto-stores the backup in the root AC folder. I would recommend going to the above folder in the path shown to see if you are accumulating backups. They have become the infamous .enc files.

I made a mistake with the settings on my scanner and all my scanned items for the first year in practice were unnecessary high quality. My import folder was close to 20GB. As you could imagine it took a long time to do backups. So I created a folder on my C drive, called OLDIMPORT.I sent all old and deactivated patients to this folder. Once in a great while, some very old patient shows up after 5 years of absence. All I have to do is to find this folder in OLDIMPORT and send it back to Imports in AC directory.

I'm on 32-bit SQL express due to legacy upgrades. Guess I should've had them do the 64 bit install before they charged for it. Or maybe they'd do the upgrade under support?

Otherwise, how do I DIY the 32 to 64 bit sql express upgrade?

Backup, uninstall ac and then reinstall for 64 bit sql? Any tips/tricks?

Running vm server on hyper-v 2012 r2. 1 vm running both AC and domain controller.

I'd be interested in hearing about this as well.

Clone/snapshot/image the entire VM.

Pull off a fresh enc backup. Sync off all of your imported items, Data01, Lab directories, etc.

UN-install AC.

UN-install SQL express.

Restart.

Run a fresh install of the version AC you want to use - (assuming it is one of the more recent versions that installs SQL Express by default)

That is the lowest drama approach to what you desire. YMMV

I would like to point out that Indy's first step is to CLONE/IMAGE/SNAPSHOT your Virtual Machine.

Those of you who are on bare metal installs will have a much tougher time recovering if something were to go wrong whereas the virtualized guys have to merely click a button.

Go virtual. Save yourself a lot of grief.

JamesNT

James; Talk more about this

To clarify, are you asking me to talk more about virtualization? If so, I'll make a separate thread about it.

JamesNT

Hi James,

Your perspective and suggestions on virtualization would be most appreciated and helpful.

Thanks

Gene

yes agree especially if virtualization is anything like what happened to Woody Allen in Sleeper