Backup

[mfdental]

How come whenever I backup my open dental data files, it creates a new directory, such as Opendentalbackup_01, OPendentalbackup_02, etc etc...
I thought ideally it just scans the open dental directory for changes, and just over-writes the files that were changed? I didn't remember the backups doing this before version 12 came out...

[jordansparks]

I would need to research to give a definitive answer. It might possibly be that overwriting is too dangerous. I seem to remember that people who got confused with the paths in that window could potentially delete good data. So the way you describe its current behavior does seem safer. We are always striving to never delete data if at all possible.

[mfdental]

I wouldnt mind it, but its just taking up a lot of space in my hard drive. I have about 75 folders, all labeled from opendentalbackup_01 to opendentalbackup_75. Each about 35 megabytes in size. Even if I click on the backup twice, it will create two new directories, even though there were no changes in place. If this continues, I will run out of space soon..

Also, since there are 75 directories of opendentalbackup, when I need to restore my data, which ones do I use?

[jordansparks]

Seems very easy to delete most of them. You know how to drag to select multiple folders, right? Or maybe get another hard drive if that makes you uneasy.

[B.Thomas]

I just noticed that recently and thought that it was a good feature add on. Since it's just the MySQL files, the space uptake is not too bad.

[mfdental]

I know you can delete the extra files. I have no issues with that. However, no one answered my question...
Since I have 75 open dental backup directories, all labeled OpenDental, opendentalbackup_1, opendentalbackup_2, opendentalbackup_3, opendentalbackup_4, etc, up to opendentalbackup_75....
If I ever need to restore my system, which of the folders contain the most recent files? Is it Opendental? or is it opendentalbackup_75?

[JimZ]

The most recent files are in the opendental folder. We rotate 4 thumb drives for a daily backup in addition to having SugarSync and I've been deleting the "opendentalbackup_xx" files from the thumb drives. When I restore to the home computer, all the data is at the most current condition from the office. Not sure if that answers your question, but it appears safe to me to delete these.

Jim

[mfdental]

Thanks, this does solve my confusion. I guess the when you run the backup, it renames the opendental directory to Open_dental XX, and then copies the newer files to the main opendental directory.

[Hersheydmd]

Also, in the MySQL\Data folder you should have backup from every time you did an update, in the format opendentalbackup_dd_mm_yyyy.

[SpeedGP]

The main reason I can think why the backup is the way it is because multiple versions of your backups are good in case something odd happens in your database; you can go back through multiple backups (multiple dates) and find out when this happened and why.

Example, If a patient's info got deleted 5 days ago, and I didn't notice it until today, I could go back 5 backups and find it instead of it also being gone on yesterday's backup.

Flash drives are pretty cheap these days, and online storage companies like Google or IDrive will give you 5 Gigabytes for free. For 35 megabytes (1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte) backups you could get A TON of backups on there!

My only concern is you are only backing up your MySQL database and not the image files in the A-Z folders, this is something you may want to consider also.