The Amazing Vanishing Data

[McGoo]

Hi All

I am having a problem with my system, it is currently set up to store student data, subjects studying etc. I have designed a script to allow a member of staff to create a new subject for a student, which works a new subject form is generated with the new subject on, a timetable is generated with the new subject on and then for some reason over night some subjects are vanishing. I am the only person with deletion rights and there does not appear to be any blank records and records are vanishing even when created individually.

They system crashed and I had to recover the relevant file last month and since then data has been vanishing, I have re-recovered the file since and this has not made any real difference. IS there something else that i can do that could repair this file or should I start re-developing it.

Please help as this is causing a lot of problems.

[awcase3rd]

McGoo,

Atleast to me it sounds like you need to go to a backup, prior to the crashing or start redeveloping the file. It is a tough go to start again. At my current job my boss seems to think he should be allowed to keep the system up 24x7. I told him I need to stop the server and then backup the files inorder for him not to loose data. When the IT manager did the backups he copied the files while the were in use. This caused the backups to be corupt. My solution right now is to do backups the right way. I have also thought about going back and recreating the largest file (most problematic too) and starting scratch so that I always have a blank tempate. I know this does not help you much but by the sounds of it, it is a lost cause. Hopefully someone else has a better solution for yah.

[QuinTech]

Hi McGoo, usually when you see data just disappearing it is an indication that there are multiple files available with the same name. Monday you might enter data into C:McGootheDatabase.fp5 and Tuesday you might enter data into C:McGooBackupstheDatabase.fp5, and it can be difficult to predict which one will open by default. Search your system for files with the same name.

Jerry

[gdurniak]

1. which filemaker version are you using?

2. check to see if any of your relationships are set to delete related records

3. the file could be corrupted. You may need to go back to a backup copy from before the crash. See http://masdevelopment.com:3455/1/57?view=print

4. Very often, "missing" data means that FileMaker somehow found, and opened, a duplicate copy of a file, and that the current data was entered there

Search all of your drives (client & host) for any extra file copies, in other folders. In OS 9 & 10, FileMaker even has access to files in the trash

[McGoo]

Thanks Guys I will look at this and let you know