Home Forums Discussions General Discussion SMARTSYNC PRO

Upon return from the ACUC, I decided I needed to review my back up systems. Adam's talk provoked this. I am using SmartSync Pro to copy my AC, PM program (Visionary), Quicken and some other data from my newer server, to my older server, which I am using as a back-up hard drive. When I look at the Visionary back-up log, it says files are skipped. In fact, it looks like most of the program's files are not copying because they are "in use". I backup first thing in the mornings before anybody is using the program so I am a bit confused. This program does run on a Sequel data base. Could this be the problem? Could SmartSync be interpreting the "running in the background" database as one which is always in use?
Any help would be appreciated.
Just for the record, I also have a daily tape back-up and I back-up off-site daily to Mozy Pro. I will be checking these for accuracy too. I want to make sure my back-ups are accurate before I take the giant leap to being fully paperless!

Leslie

I use this same program, so Leslie you are not the only one now wondering about this.

Leslie, SQL database server files are always "in use" as long as the "server" is running. There are a few options:

1) If you are running MS SQL Server, and you want to do this manually, you have to turn off the "Server" process in SQL Server Configuration Manager.

2) Use a BACKUP program which backs up "open files".

Backup - Don't Synch! Synchronizing simply ensures the files are the same in both locations, backup goes a step further, and has many advantages for example:

If there is a damaged or corrupt database, and you synchronize, you overwrite the last synced file with the damaged or corrupt file. Backup on the other hand can be of three varieties:
1) a full back up - which copies the entire set each time to a different file. This means you can get the file from 3 days ago or one week ago

2) a differential backup - will backup only the files that have changed since the last full backup.

3) Incremental backup - only backs up whatever files have changed since your last back up.

There are a couple of very good back up programs out there:

1) Acronis
2) GenieBackup

Alas, you want a program that "backs up open files"

I have been using Cobian backup. it's free and works well. I backup both to local computers as well as to the opposite office through hamachi which is like a VPN through the Logmein folks.

I usually set backups to run at night, they seem to copy all the files.

Seems to back up everything well, except...

I discovered that it was skipping the main amazingcharts.mdb. I went to copy it and discovered the file was corrupted (it still worked though). Called customer support, they were unable to correct the problem. I amazingly recovered the program with a program called JFileRecovery which found 2 bits of data in 54M and smoothed them out. I could copy and work with it from there.

The moral of the story is check your backup status regularly.