Possible corruption/Backups best practice - Want to make sure I proceed correctly

[TravisB]

My database is starting to act strange, some users are experiencing random crashes, I’ve had records that seem to just disappear, records make relationships with other records they shouldn’t be and I’m suspecting potential corruption and this is going to be the first time I make use of my backups and try to A) Identify if I have corruption and B)) potentially fix it. I have a few different questions in regards to best practices and next steps.

I am running FMS 15. Most users are on FMP 16, a few users are on FMPA 17. About 10 users total. All users are on Windows 10. Server has Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard.

1)      I have backups saved on the host machine, on another machine at the same location, and off site (in the cloud). I accomplished this by using FMS backup schedule, I then have a .bat script that FMS runs which copies the latest backup over to an external hard drive (every night), that hard drive is then backed up into the cloud via Carbonite. I also have two clean clones from initial development on my local machine as well as in the cloud (also backed up via Carbonite)

2)      From reading around – my first step is to recover a backup to check for corruption. I periodically do this with my .bat backup (though I admit it has been a while), and it has never come back as corrupt. If it comes back as corrupt – can I trust that it is truly corrupted, or is there possibility that it is corrupt due to the .bat copy, and then copied from the external HD (which is part of my LAN, not connected to my personal machine)? In other words, it will be copied twice – once from the host to an external hard drive on our LAN, and then again from that HD to my laptop – can this potentially cause corruption in itself, meaning the hosted file isn’t necessarily guaranteed to be corrupt?

3)      If my file comes back clean with no corruption – what next?

4)      I have never Save a Compacted Copy – if it comes back clean – should I save a Compacted Copy and host that file?

5)      If I am in fact corrupt - I can simply import my data from my latest backup into a verified non-corrupt clone of the file?

Edited November 5, 2018 by TravisB

[TravisB]

I can in this morning after recovering over night, and am a little surprised to see that it came back with no issues.

At this point, should I try saving a compacted file and host that? From my research I've seen mixed reviews - with the majority recommending compacting periodically, and some people saying to never host a compacted clone.