How to Back Up Actinic

[linnet27]

Hi

I am concerned that my entire Actinic database is stored on my computer and if the hard drive dies or my machine is stolen, I will lose everything.

My Actinic Folder is 1.70GB and, as far as I am aware, contains everything. Am I correct in thinking that if I back up this folder onto a removable drive, I will have a copy of everything to enable the business (and website) to continue.

I am relatively new to Actinic and not very technical, so simple instructions would be appreciated!!

Thanks
Lynne

[fergusw]

Hi Lynne,

Standard advice is to create an Actinic snapshot backup file (from File | Snapshot | Export Site) and then store this on some removable media (USB,CD,Spare drive etc).
The Actinic snapshot file contains everything needed to upload the website again in the event of a disaster.
It should be part of a regular backup process you should have anyway.

Also, have a look at

http://kb.actinic.com/activekb/categories/Application+Issues/Backup+and+Recovery/

for more info on backups and recovery with Actinic

[AndyBorrett]

The normal way is to export a snapshot of your site - this will include everything in one big file with the extension acd. You can then copy this file to your removable disk. You can also set actinic to do a database backup everytime you exit the program.

[NormanRouxel]

Hi, Lynne

As long as all the images you use for your site are within the Site folder, that's 99.9% of it. The only other bit you should do is to go to Housekeeping / Security and copy / paste everything you see there into a textfile. Save that in your Site folder and include it with the backup. You only need to do this once as this info never changes.

Saving regular Snapshots (off the File Menu) to an external drive is also a good idea. These will also contain everything you need to rebuild a site and also include any images that you may have used from outside your Site folder (which the Site folder backup won't include). This is the Actinic reccomended way but the Site backup is also useful just in case the Snapshot contains a gremlin.

Do both of these and you're double secure.

Full marks for considering this. About every 10-20 days, someone posts here about their system being stolen / burnt / drowned / disk died / etc and how can they get their data back from nowhere. Answer - they can't.

[Paul Bulpit]

There you go, three answers in 9 minutes.

May I add that for anyone using Business Plus (Multi-User) completely close the program on all client machines before running the Snapshot, otherwise it may fail and usually does.

Don't just 'Logout' - click 'Cancel' as well to exit the program.

[linnet27]

Thanks to you all for your understandable comments!

I will now try to implement them.

Lynne

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

I also use GFI BackUp software to automatically backup the site1 folder and snapshots to another PC on the network, so I still have backups if my harddrive dies and I have not remembered to backup onto removeable media, although I would recommended keeping a backup offsite where possible in case of fire which could destroy all PC's and removeable media in your office.

[chris ashdown]

There you go, three answers in 9 minutes.

May I had that for anyone using Business Plus (Multi-User) completely close the program on all client machines before running the Snapshot, otherwise it may fail and usually does.

Don't just 'Logout' - click 'Cancel' as well to exit the program.

I have found that other users can be other sites without causing it to fail, but if admin and one other user in then it will fail

Also with link to sage v11 if tha link actinic to sage is open it fails to snapshot untill you close the link

Long live the weekends, the main frustrations go away after friday 17:00

[guccij]

There's some very good software out there which will automatically back up your snapshots to an external disk or online.
Handy Backup, Carbonite, Zen Vault Express, Memeo are just a few possibilities.
I'd also recommend you download Jan's free Easy Orders Backup software which will save your .mdb to a location of your choice automatically. Not the full .acd by any means but an essential part of our backup routine.

[Paul Bulpit]

I have found that other users can be other sites without causing it to fail, but if admin and one other user in then it will fail

Thanks for your support and agreement, Chris - glad it's not just me. Although we have MU, we currently only run one active site - but for months, we couldn't get it to back up successfully.

Something that the Towers need to address.

[Sean Williams]

Full marks to Norman yet again for the tip about the contents of Housekeeping / Security - I didn't know about this.
Our standard procedure is to always have three copies of all our important data - the 'original', a real-time backup to a NAS on the network and a backup at the end of the day to a portable disc drive which is taken off-site.
As a point of interest (or maybe not!) we have two hard drives on the main computer - one for system and programmes and the other for data only. We also have a cloned disc of the system/programme drive so we can make a near-instant recovery from a hard drive failure.
This is also really useful for when the (Windows XP) computer's performance starts dropping off in the usual Windows way - we just copy the clone and off we go again with a 'brand new' system.

Regarding Actinic, we make snapshots whenever a change is made to the design or products, otherwise we just backup the actinic.mdb.
The .mdb can be backed up in seconds, whereas a snapshot can take an hour, which is why we do it this way.

In the light of others' comments here - is this secure enough, or should it always be a snapshot?

[chris ashdown]

We just backup jans MDB every 2 hours on the server 24/7, if no change it just checks , and do a full snapshot each day before we go home, mostly the snapshot is just a luxury as we have not changed the site for a few days, but good practise anyway

I also do a full backup of my computer evry week using Acronis for workstations, and the server is also backed up by Raid and every night to a portable drive