How To Backing Up - Version 12 We cannot stress enough how important it is to back up your data files. Backup whenever you have entered more transactions than you want to re-enter. Things happen, and you don't want to spend time trying to recreate days, weeks, or months of data. Always make sure that you are doing FULL backups of the files that are important to you. DO NOT USE “MODIFIED FILES ONLY” BACKUPS. The directory that contains your data should be backed up regularly. Click on Help, About to get the location of the Working and Data folder referenced below. In the case of PROMAS Landlord, you need to backup: • your Data folder (usually RPROMAS\DATA\LL12_Database). • Supporting folders: ◊ the files in the Working folder (usually RPROMAS\LL12_License) that contain your license and registration files ◊ if you attach documents to your profiles, those documents are in RPROMAS\Data\Documents ◊ the folder containing your documents to upload: RPROMAS\DATA\Upload How you backup is up to you. You can copy the files to a external hard drive, burn a CD/DVD, use a tape backup, a removable hard drive or a flash drive. If you are on a network you can copy the files to another computer’s hard drive. With internet access you can backup to an internet provider site. If you backup using a backup program to compress the files, then you must have that same backup program available on the machine when you are restoring. Using the backup program that comes with the Windows operating system will limit your ability to restore on a machine with a different Windows operating system. Using readily available compression programs like WinZip to compress your data prior to copying to the backup media is recommended if your database is large. PROMAS Landlord Software Center 311D Maple Avenue West Vienna, VA 22180 10/2012 [email protected] [email protected] website: promas.com Backup - 1 Sales 888-591-5179 Support 800-397-1499 FAX 703-255-9172 #230 WAYS TO BACKUP in PROMAS The methods described below backup the Data folder but do not back up the Supporting folders: Documents, License or Upload. Setup, Database Settings This is a new function under Setup involving automatic backups of the folder containing the data. You have several choices which will affect making automatic backups. Backup on Logon – When the first person logs on each day the database files will be backed up and placed into a Backups folder under the Data folder. There are 3 options. Never – Automatic backups are disabled. Daily Dated – the backup file is named “Backup of LL12_Database for YYYY-MM-DD.bkp” Daily Rotation – the backup files are named “Backup of LL12_Database for Day 1 Monday.bkp”, …Day 2 Tuesday, …Day 4 Thursday, …Day 5 Friday. They are overwritten each week. On the third Wednesday the backup is named “Backup of LL12_Database for Month.bkp”. It is overwritten each month. On all other Wednesdays the file is named Week1, Week2, etc. These are overwritten each month. One named Yearly is done on the third Wednesday of January. These backups can be copied to a CD, DVD, external hard drive, etc. and given a date if you choose. They can be used to restore your data if the need arises (see Restore Database). Help, About In Help, About there are 2 backup options. Daily Backup creates a backup of your database in the Data\Backups folder named “LL12_Database for YYYY-MM-DD.bkp (same as the one in Setup, Database Settings - Daily Dated). Support Backup creates a backup of your database in the RPROMAS\Support folder named “LL12_Database for YYYY-MM-DD.bkp. File, Backup Database This function will create a backup of your database in the Data\Backups folder on the same level as your LL12_Database folder. The backup file is named “Backup of LL12_Database for YYYY-MM-DD.bkp” (same as Help, About - Daily Backup). Often, the only time you realize that a file is damaged or missing is when the program that created it attempts to read it. The backup program has no way of telling whether the information it is backing up is valid or not, it can only verify that it reads the information correctly from the hard drive. Consider the example of a word processing file that contains a lease that took half a day to type in and a few hours of very careful scrutiny to make sure there were no mistakes (in other words an important file that is time consuming to reproduce). Assume you used this file last on January 25th. If this file became damaged because of an operating system error on March 5 and you didn’t need to print the lease again until June 20th, you will not know about the damage until that time. You will need to find a backup that was made before the file was damaged. PROMAS Landlord Software Center 311D Maple Avenue West Vienna, VA 22180 10/2012 [email protected] [email protected] website: promas.com Backuup - 2 Sales 888-591-5179 Support 800-397-1499 FAX 703-255-9172 #230 DO’s and DON’T’s DO * Backup every workday. * Take the backup offsite. * Use a new CD each time. * Verify that you can restore at least monthly. * Do secondary backups to other media. * Make sure the backups are being done. * Retain end of year backups for at least 5 years. DON’T * Copy over a previous backup. * Trust someone else completely. * Leave all backups in one place. * Have a limited number of backups. * Forget to backup. * Forget to verify that you can restore. Restore Database If your database was backed up automatically using one of the options above, the backup file will be in the RPROMAS\DATA\Backups folder with a name of *.bkp. To restore that file: 1.Rename the LL12_Database folder that contains your data to LL12_Database-OldYYYY-MM-DD. 2.Create a new folder under the DATA folder named LL12_Database. 3.Copy the backup file into that folder. 4.When you log into PROMAS, you will get a message that your data is being restored. 10/2012 Backup - 3 #230