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Johnwilde11's avatar
Johnwilde11
Copper Contributor
Jul 05, 2021

From End to End to Stand Aalone

I’m a trustee of a small charity and I look after our access database which has a front and back ends. How do I create a stand alone version as a backup for emergencies?
  • George_Hepworth's avatar
    George_Hepworth
    Jul 10, 2021

    Johnwilde11 That's definitely a potential problem, and one that now makes sense in the context of the original question. The issue is that backups may or may not be readily available.

    I actually have a relevant story which can be somewhat illustrative.

    A friend of mine hired me to assist in a data migration from an accdb be to SQL Server be for one of his clients. We did, advised him to institute a rigorous backup program and went on our way. A few months later, my friend got a panicked call from the client. He'd been attacked by ransomware and the server where his SQL Server db was installed was locked up. He formatted the hard drive and then called my friend for assistance. It turned out that his only backup of the SQL Server database was ALSO ON THAT SAME COMPUTER. He had to hire temps to reenter about 5 months of day from paper invoices.

     

    The moral of the story is that it doesn't matter so much how often or in what format your back up as it does WHERE your backup is, and perhaps how many redundant backups you have on- and off-premises. To the later point, I had another client who used two external hard drives. He used one throughout the day to keep his office computers backed up; he kept the second at home. He brought the home one in every morning and swapped it with the one from the day before so he always had two copies, one on-premises and one off-premises.

     

    So, I definitely get the reason for wanting a back up, or back ups, in an accessible location.

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