I'm a Win2000 Admin that's new at the FileMaker game. At our college we've used FMPro for some time on a Mac, but I'm the first to implement it on PC.

The installation looked fine, and we copied a single file database over from our production system. Before we go live, I went to set up and test the built-in FM backup system, after which I was then going to backup the resulting file with our central backup system (Veritas BackupExec backing up over the network to tape).

When I setup the backup in FM using the FM admin tool, it all looks fine. When I use "run now" to test it (or wait and look the next day at a scheduled backup) the "last run" line in the admin screen shows the time it ran (not an error, as it did when I didn't point it at the right folder containing our test DB-which makes me think it *is* seeing a valid FM database). The problem is: There isn't any backup file in the directory I pointed FMbackup to. Or anywhere else, that I can tell.

-the events log shows that a backup ran.

-I don't see this issue anywhere else in the forum, but with this being such a generic setup, I have a hard time believing I'm the first to run into it!?

So...any help appreciated.

-This is on Windows 2000 standard server, Service Pack 4 and running FMPro Server 5.5

FileMaker Version: Server 5

Platform: Windows 2000

The file has to be open in FMS, and the FMS service running I think.

I just had an issue with Mac Os X where backups failed because the backup folder did not have write privileges. This was FMS 7 but it may pay to check.

Are you logged in at the console overnight when the backup runs? There are situations where scheduled tasks don't run correctly if someone is logged in. You could test by changing the backup time in the FM admin tool, log off the console long enough to let it run, and log back in to see if it ran correctly.

Also, you could try scheduling an automatic backup using the built in Windows command "AT" just to see what happens since filemaker may be depending on that command or something similar - open a command prompt and type at /? for the paramaters. As you mentioned you already know not to backup an open FileMaker database so maybe you could remove the database temporarily and just try backing up a text file from your database folder to your destination folder to rule out any possible permission problems like Vaughn mentioned.

At this point I'm more concerned with the built-in FileMaker backup not creating a backup file when I use the "run now" option in FileMaker Admin screen.

The situation: I'm logged into the console, not trying anything with external backup systems, just trying to run a FM backup to a local directory (that's an important part, I see from other postings) and no backup file is created. Weird. The FMS is running, the database is live (we can see it from clients) and yet nothing happens. FMpro thinks it ran OK, there is a new 'last run" entry (not an error), but nothing shows up. I know that the FM backup app sees the database, because if I point it incorrectly I get an error. Scheduled Backups do the same thing.

Thanks for your replies, guys...I think I may have to burn up our free FM support call today. I'll let the thread know if I find anything interesting (or not?) -tm

Are you on the latest version of FMS? At least on the Mac, I've seen a similar problem solved by going to the latest updater. Maybe a similar patch exists for your version?

Where are you trying to back it up to? There have been issues reported with long paths causing problems -- typically tring to save to the desktop, which tturns out to be a long path. Try saving to a folder in the root directory of the c: drive, like c:backup