>I created an app that our 24 hour data center runs at midnight to backup our VFP database. I'm just using File System Object to copy the data folder.
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>It appears that this folder copy works if users are active in the system. I know the backup is unreliable if created while dbf's are open. But, since there is not much the operators can do at 1:00am if users left their computer on, what is the worse case in terms of reliability of a backup created while users have left their pc on with an app open?
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>Thanks,
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>PF

There is no backup utility that I know of that can back up a VFP table or Database that is open. You will get a table or DBC on your back up media but if you try to use it, it will be corrupt.

To over come this problem for a client of mine, I wrote a VFP utility to looks into the data folders for files that have changed in the past week and does a copy structure with CDX to the backup folder. To populate the table, I just read and write one record at a time. It is slow but I get a complete backup of whether someone left their system logged in or not. the was an old system that did not use DBCs.

To use DBCs, you need to create the new DBC, add the table and then populate the data. You will also need to pull any triggers, SP, views and connections. You may want to look at using GenDBC to create a program file to recreate the DBC and table structure and then you can populate the data.

Hope this helps.