A) Back up snag and B) Dropbox tip

[Oscar Romeo]

I have just had e-mail correspondence with George because my BG Pro backup procedure failed.  The thread of the our exchange follows.  It explains the problem and gives the solution plus a Dropbox tip.


Oscarromeo to George
I have this evening come up with a little snag which has interrupted my backup process.
 The error message that came up while a good way through back up was the following. "ERR.DBF file has become corrupted.  Cancel, Ignor or Help." What have I done and can I recover?  I would be grateful for your advice.  When I tried a second time and hit the ignore button the following message appeared.  "Alias ERR file missing".
 
George to Oscarromeo
That’s a new one on me!
Under file tab, try the program Reindex Files Does it work?

3 Oscarromeo to George
I tried the Reindex procedure and have the following flag. "ERR file error 2091"
 
4 George to Oscarromeo
I’m not sure why.  ERRFILE is not a critical file. Its where the system writes error messages when a problem arises.
I expect the system is still working OK. Is that correct?
Find one of your backup folders.
Explore, and you will find two files: errfile.cdx and errfile.dbf.
Copy them both.
Then go to the BG Pro CORE folder on your computer.
Copy the two files in there (and overwrite the existing ones).
Start BG.
Do a backup.
See if all OK.

5 Oscarromeo to George
Solved!! Huge thanks again. 
 I try and back up weekly and it was a shock when it failed yesterday.  Do you still recommend to use Dropbox?
[George] Yes
I have not had any problems with it but I do take care to check the toolbar icon has completed updating and that I wait to see the green tick before I close BG and switch off.
[George] Now that is wise, and a very good tip!

[ideasguy]

Gosh! That's a full documentation of events Richard

The part I was particularly interested in sharing on the forum was the bit about your Dropbox tip
That is very good advice.

I'd like to add one word of warning on our Backup correspondence.
It was OK to replace the ERRFILE data file in the core, as it is not a live data file.
It is NOT (definitely NOT) OK to replace individual data files.
The only correct method is to restore the full database from a backup, using the program found under the File tab:
File> Restore-BS493

This, in ALL cases, please contact us at ask@bankgenie.net for support (freely available).
We will advise the correct course of action.
 

[barryl]

Could you (or George) please clarify what you are using dropbox for.

[Oscar Romeo]

Apologies for delayed response.  I started using Dropbox to store all my Bank Genie details when I went overseas to South America for a two year consultancy visit.  The problem was that my wife stayed behind and we both wanted record transactions and  to have access to our Bank Genie records.  The only way to do that was to have remote storing of the data files.  Since returning home I have continued to use Dropbox for recording all our transaction details.  I also back up to a flash drive.  I find these two locations to be very secure though I do not record in detail my account sort code and number details in the BS403 programme (Set up - My Accounts) just in case somebody could take a peek (which I doubt) and  I also set password protection on in Security BS 424.

[barryl]

I asked because (for different reasons) I got into serious trouble at one point with clashing edits to the same dataset (at which point George invented the "re-index" feature).

I think it is intrinsically dangerous for two people to simultaneously edit a dataset stored in dropbox as I think things like the indexes can get out of step with the datafiles (George can correct me if I am wrong).

I think you have to schedule things so that two people are never accessing the same dataset at the same time and also that enough time elapses after person A stops using it for the dropbox of person B to be updated.