Hi Charles,

>Ok, I'll show some longstanding ignorance on this one. i was under the impression that DBFs that were open could not be correctly copied (something to do with caching and the end of file marker), hence, Foxpro data could not be backed up while in use.

>I take it from your and Chaim's messages that this isn't true, but aren't there problems with stuff that hasn't been written from the cache?

When on a network there should be no difference in this approach and the COPY to apprach. In this case, a networkclient does not hold (OS) writebuffers so changes are written in the table inmediately. When using stand-alone I supposed this can be true because the OS can buffer updates. However I'm not certain what will happen if the CopyFile API open the table for copying. It might force a flush before the files is actually written.

Another danger is that while copying the files, changes in the database can be made, which can lead to a inconsistent database copy (See my message to Ed Rauh).

However, though there are ways to prevent these kind of corruption, when wanting a reliable online database copy, you might be better of migrating to a server (R)DMBS,

Walter,