Mysterious Lost Data - *EDITED*

[Jacob]

[color:"red"]OLD Question: ***We are running FMS 5.5 off of Mac OS9 for a small in house databse. Last week the server crashed unexpectedly. When everything got restarted, FM seemed to be working fine, but now we are discovering that some data is missing. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the lost data just some fields on some records. Any hope at recovering lost files? If not, any suggestions for a more stable setup to avoid future problems?***

[color:"red"]New Question: I bought an external drive to back up my data off of the server (something about closing the door after the cow has already left) but when I try to set an automatic schedule I keep getting an "out of memory or not enough disk space" error. I already have one schedule to automatically back up the database to the machine, but seem to be unable to back it up to any external drives. Suggestions?

[BrentHedden]

So, it's either certain fields in a particular record, or some records altogether that are missing, correct? You certainly can try to 'recover' the files, using FM's in-program recovery utility. From experience, it doesn't recover data that isn't there, but it certainly is worth the time trying it.

A good solution to prevent this in the future is to have an off-site backup plan. External hard drives are fairly inexpensive, and work great without the expense and hassle of tape drives. This is, of course supposing that you don't have a HUGE anount of data to backup. I've seen IDE drives as large as 400 Gig, while some tape systems can handle far more capacity per tape. How I have mine set up - server backs up (copies) certain files to external drive every night. Each Friday, I swap the external drive with another identical one, then take it home with me until next Friday. Rinse, lather, repeat.

[BrentHedden]

For the new and improved question -

I'm not very familiar with MACs, but here goes - Most hard drives you buy are pre-formatted for PC (IBM) standards. MAC uses something a totally different file system, much like UNIX if I'm not mistaken. Can you access the harddrive any other way, like a different program or the likes? If not, you might have to format that drive first.

[Ted S]

I may be wrong about this but I remember a posting (FM Forums?) where the conclusion was that FM Server 7 couldn't schedule a backup with a destination drive anywhere other than the local machine.

As a workaround you could backup to the local drive and then create another schedule for a few minutes later that would copy the files from the local drive to your external drive.

[LiveOak]

Oops! I went back and read the original post. There is NO KNOWN PROBLEM with automatic backup corrupting files under OS 9. We have 20 server years experience with this approach and have never had a problem. I'd look at the general integrity of the machine by running Disk Warrior first then Norton Utilities (7 or 8).

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I'll post the following relative to question about automatic backup file corruption under OS X.......

I'll qualify this response with the comment that I'm not sure how much of this applies to Server 7, but this is a post with credit to MacInTouch and Peter Trist on the situation with FM Server 5.5 and OS X.

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Apr. 12, 2005

Data Loss And Corruption

Peter Trist

In your followup Kim Kohen mentioned experiencing problems with FMS 5.5 under OS X. As a FileMaker developer who shares responsibility for the smooth and reliable running of ~20 FMS [5.5] units around the country (Australia) we have found the following to be the best an most reliable setup.

The Filemaker Server folder / application should 'live' in the default 'Application' Folder - no where else. Regardless of this, its priviledges must be set to drwxrwxrwx (777) or in layman's terms read/write/execute for Owner/ & Group & Others.

The 'data' folder can 'live' in the FMS Folder or anywhere on the SAME computer. If not in the FMS folder place an alias to the data files [NOT a symbolic link] in the FMS folder. Again, privledges are very important for this folder - they should be the same as those detailed above for the server folder.

The 1st level 'backup' folder should live on the SAME computer, preferably on a 2nd hard drive, but at the very least on a different partition to that of the OS and or data folder. Privledges on this folder MUST be set as above or you WILL get intermittent FMS server run auto-backup results.

From this 1st level backup folder make additional backups anywhere else you like using the backup software of your choice.

Notes:

I don't know why not doing it this way sometimes 'breaks' the backups, but it does, sooner or later. If for some reason you have to reset the backups;

DELETE them ALL from within the FileMaker Server Schedule window.

Quit FileMaker Server.

Remove & Delete the file

~/Library/Preferences/com.filemaker.filemakerpro.plist

Restart FileMaker Server

Recreate the backup schedule

Once again I am not sure why, or even if, ALL these steps are required, but I do know that if they are followed I have yet to fail to have reliable backups via FMS.

Hope this is of help to others - we spent a LOT of hours of trial & error working this out.

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I've alway believed that the problem is at the interface between FMS and OS X, so a lot of the above makes sense.

-bd