Batch file backup for .enc files.

This is a batch file for those who have offsite backups. Generally, when you do an offsite backup, the encrypted file containing the databases of AC, are also stored on your hard drive in your AC folder. I recommend doing the offsite backup on a DIFFERENT computer than the "server computer" so that this file is on another computer for more redundancy.

While you can always copy and paste these files to another location, I have written a simple batch file to allow you to move this file to a flash drive or any other drive you wish to move it to. The code is as follows:

____________________________

xcopy "C:\Program Files\Amazing Charts\*.enc" "H:\AC Backups\" /D /V /G /H /R /K /Y
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where "C:\Program Files\Amazing Charts\ is the source location of your encrypted files, and "H:\AC Backups\" is the destination. It is likely that "H" will not be the drive letter of your Flash drive/Thumbdrive so substitue as needed. It can also be any other location.

Copy the two lines of code into a text file and save it with whatever name you wish. Save it to your desktop. Now, rename the file, Example.txt, wherer example = name given by you, to Example.bat. After this, you will have a batch file. Clicking on this the first time will copy ALL .enc files to the source location. Each time after, it will only copy the latest file.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you very much, Bert.

Let me repeat this back to you to see if I understand correctly. Sometimes I am dense about these kinds of things.

Open Notepad. Copy and paste the following text into Notepad:

xcopy "C:\Program Files\Amazing Charts\*.enc" "H:\AC Backups\" /D /V /G /H /R /K /Y

Change "H" to whichever drive I want to copy my encrypted files to each night.

Save the text file to my desktop, with a name to help me remember its function, such as "ACCRYPTO.txt" (leave off the quotes).

Close notepad, and rename the text file to "ACCRYPTO.bat" (leave off the quotes).

Then, each night, after I finish performing Amazing Charts Offsite Backup, I insert my flash drive, and double click on ACCRYPTO.bat.

A compressed and encrypted copy of my database will then be saved to my flash drive (or other drive of my choosing).

Have I got it right?

Yes, perfect.

You can go to a command prompt "Click Run, then type cmd and enter" and type

xcopy /? and it will give you a list of what the /D /V etc. do, in case you want to mix and match.

This tip has now been beta tested, and it is working like a charm, thanks to Bert!

I told Bert that I would write a new, comprehensive step-by-step list, to help people successfully utilize this very handy tip.

Open Notepad. Copy and paste the following text into Notepad:

xcopy "C:\Program Files\Amazing Charts\*.enc" "H:\AC Backups\" /D /V /G /H /R /K /Y

Change "H" to whichever drive you want to copy your encrypted files to.

Save the text file to your desktop as a "batch file". Just hit "save", and call the file CRYPTO.bat, or FLASHBACKUP.bat (or WHATEVER.bat). If you do this step properly, an icon is created with a little gear in the middle.

If you double-click on this icon, any ".enc" (encrypted) file in the Amazing Charts folder will be copied onto your flash drive (or other drive of your choosing).

If you click on the icon and nothing is saved to the flash drive, you may not have a ".enc" file in the Amazing Charts folder! Just look in the folder.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

If you don't see an ".enc" file in the Amazing Charts folder, your Off-Site Backup may be saving the encrypted file to the wrong location. This is no problem. There is a little check-box in the main Off-Site Backup dialog box which says:

"Can't browse to the correct .enc file? Check this box to save the file in your Amazing Charts folder."

Check that box before you click "Upload," and your encrypted files will be saved in the Amazing Charts folder, where the batch file you have created can find them and copy them to your flash drive.

Our practice ended up doing something similar to what Bert describes above where we move the Amazing Chart files from our Network attached storage (NAS) device over to another computer hard drive on the local network. But we chose SyncBack SE rather than xcopy since we wanted a few more features

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/syncbackse.html

With this software, we set up a scheduled job to run nightly. The product can be setup to provide an email notification that a successful file copy has occurred which ensures it works every night (which we use of course). It also lets you select exactly how to copy the files using logic of which side to keep, when to do it, etc. It was about $30

From the resultant copy on the other machine, we then use that copy to backup remotely over to a MozyPro account. We do this every night for now but may scale this down in the future.

http://mozy.com/pro

MozyPro also provides email confirmation that files have been successfully backed up. It was about $60 to setup.

Eric,

I like that. And, I know what you mean about scaling back sometimes. It's kind of like treating asthma. You put them on Flovent, Singulair, Albuterol, Flonase, Prevacid (for a moderate to severe asthmatic with an exacerbation), then you take one or two away after a couple of weeks.

We are using idrive online back up. The program backs up every day. It is free upto 12 giga bytes. So far we are happy with that.
http://www.idrive.com, check it out.
Divak

Divak,

Is that 12 or 2 GBs?

Bert,
It is free 12 GB if you send a message about i-drive to contacts in your address book. Otherwise 2 GB.
Divak

ok, so it you refer 5 people via email (regardless of whether they get idrive) you get an extra 10 gb. not bad.

The main thing to remember, whether you use Mozy, idrive or Carbonite, is to test the actual restore of your files.

If you use these services to back up your amazing charts db and imported items, be sure to restore the files to another location, reset the path in amazing charts, use those files to confirm that it worked (preferably once per month).

If you really wanted to see a lengthly discussion about pros/cons, see this website. careful though on checking dates of the posts as some of these are older comments based on past versions

http://lifehacker.com/software/lifehacke...nite-302597.php

We do something very similar at our practice, but we backup the database files every half day onto a flash drive using the following text BATCH file I wrote for my staff to use:

@ECHO OFF
CD\PROGRA~1\AMAZIN~1\
ECHO Make sure flash drive is in USB port on front of your computer.
ECHO Back-up process takes approximately 2 minutes to back-up 6 files.
PAUSE
CLS
ECHO Thank you.
ECHO BACKING UP AMAZING CHARTS DATABASE FILES...
ECHO 6 files to copy
ECHO Copying files... Please do NOT remove the flash drive device in drive E
ECHO Please wait
COPY AmazingCharts.mdb F:\BACKUP\
COPY AmazingMeds.mdb F:\BACKUP\
COPY billing.mdb F:\BACKUP\
COPY codes.mdb F:\BACKUP\
COPY import.mdb F:\BACKUP\
COPY schedule.mdb F:\BACKUP\
CLS
ECHO BACKUP COMPLETE
ECHO Thank you for taking the time to back-up Amazing Charts
ECHO It is now safe to remove the flash drive device in drive F
PAUSE

Hey! Cool .bat. I tried it. Don't you love batch files? Sometimes it's easier to use 3rd party windows-based programs, but batch files seem more programmish (sp?).

I wanted to bring this post to the top of the forum because it came up in Adam's talk at Branson and people were asking about it.

Thanks again to Bert and Santos for coming up with these useful batch files.

If anybody has any problems using these, just post your concerns.

Yes, I purposely asked Adam not to do batch files in his talk on the off chance I could make it as it would as to my talk. It is but one more way of backing up similar to SyncToy or many of the other sync programs users have been kind enough to post on here. What I thought would be cool would be to do all your other backups whether it be to a flash drive, CD, external hard drive or whatever but also do a batch drive or sync drive to another computer on your network. Then if your server or pseudoserver went down, you could quickly share out the other files and you would only be missing a half day's work or you could copy the ones from the server if you could access it. See next post.

Adam was at a FP conference down state and called me about his talk. He basically did it while on the phone. When he sent me the slides, I was completel in awe of its simplicity yet thoroughness. It should be on the Internet. Adam is the backup god. Well, after me and Vinny, of course.

Riddle: And a stupid one at that:

What's the hardest part of restoring from Adam's backups if his server goes down?
Deciding which backup to restore.

Adam,
I met you at the cnference and you showed me hoe to save the batch file on your desk top. Thanks for your help. I don't know what I am doing wrong. I have tried this on my server and on my desktop(different from my server) but the problem I am having is that once I save it as a .txt document the name on the desktop does not say ---.txt. it -only says---. So when I change it to .bat it still is a text document and I do not see the gear. Should I be changing something on my computer, the way I save files etc. I am using Windows XP on my computers.

siri,

The problem is you have Windows set to hide file extensions. You cannot make a batch file without extensions.

To correct this do the following:

Open My Computer or Windows Explorer
Click on Tools on the toolbar
Chooes Folder Options from the dropdown menu
Choose the View tab from the Folder Options window
Uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types"

FYI: I generally select "Show hidden files and folders" by default as well.

Now, save your notepad as a text file, and you will see Example.txt which you can then rename to Example.bat and see the icon with the gear on it.

So, were you able to get it to work, Siri?

Bert, sorry for not getting back right away. We are getting ready to go on a long vacation and I have been really busy. I tried what you suggested and it worked well to turn the icon to a wheel. When I actually tried to back it up nothing happened. So i troubleshot it and sure enough I did not have an encryptred file in AC. So i checked the box that said save a copy in my AC. the I did the back up again and now I had an enc. file. But the icon still does not do a back up for me. HELppppppp!

siri,

The best thing to do is copy and paste the code you are using in your notepad here. Then tell me what it is you are trying to copy, i.e. \\Server\Amazing Charts\xxxxxxx.enc to C:\Backup\

With this information, I should be able to see if your batch file's syntax is correct.

I copied and pasted the code from this thread above. i am pasting it here for you again.
xcopy "C:\Program Files\Amazing Charts\*.enc" "H:\AC Backups\" /D /V /G /H /R /K /Y
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instead of H , I used E which is the drive that my back up disk is connected to.

Is "E" an external USB drive?

Moved to PM.