Backup nightmare in MD 2015
Just installed MD 2015, played around with a test file, seemed OK. So I loaded my accounts, and found everything OK again.
I decided to try the backup function. It took MD 7 hours to make it !!!!! In the meantime, MD could not be used. It was blocked in the foreground. It produced a 32GB backup file, while the contents of my SAFE folder is only 6,5 MB. The backup file is 5000 times greater than the data. This makes the backup function completely useless.
I cannot upload this file, it is larger than the 10MB limit.
Has any one else run into this problem? Is this bug known? What can i do about it?
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Support Staff 1 Posted by Ethan on Aug 14, 2015 @ 11:56 AM
That definitely shouldn't be happening. To clarify, by the "backup function," do you mean going to File -> Export Backup from the menu bar? Can you please go to Help -> Console Window and paste the output in your reply?
Ethan
Moneydance Support
2 Posted by Jean-Pierre on Aug 14, 2015 @ 02:50 PM
Yes, I used File | Export Backup.
The attached file console.txt has the contents of the console window, as
pasted in Notepad. I don't know why the carriage returns were deleted
when saving. I trust this will not preven this file from being useful.
Regards,
Jean-Pierre Kent
3 Posted by dwg on Aug 14, 2015 @ 10:04 PM
Where were you creating the backup file?
It wasn't by chance within the current Moneydance fileset?
4 Posted by Jean-Pierre on Aug 15, 2015 @ 11:36 AM
OK. I probably misunderstood the structure of the MD fileset. Seeing
that there was nothing else than a folder called "safe", I thought it
was safe to make another folder beside it.
So I tried to make a backup file, this time on another drive, to make
sure. After 45 minutes, the "money.moneydancearchive" file has already
reached 15 MB. I don't dare to kill MD, this might corrupt my data set,
which I have not had a chance to backup yet. So it will probably go on
for another 6 hours and create a new giant.
By the way, is it safe to make a copy of the contents of the "safe"
folder? Can this simply be copied back? I badly miss information on the
storage structure.
In my opinion (and by reading reactions of others, I see that I am not
alone!), a backup function is only useful if it meets the following
conditions:
* It must be a background process, allowing you to use the program
while the backup is running
* It must create unique file names reflecting the chronology of
backups (if I have to make up backup names myself, I am bound to
make a mistake now and then, and lose track of what was backed up when)
* It must be schedulable, so that I can set it, forget it and trust it
to do its job.
* It must be reloadable by the program itself. This is the main
drawback of generic backup programs: they reload files without
knowing what they mean and without letting the responsible programs
know what is happening. Generic backup is fine to recover from a
general crash. It is no good for restoring the data of a specific
format when the responsible program has crashed or when these data
have become corrupt. Earlier versions of MD had a superb backup and
restore function, which I often used. Dropping it, or reducing it to
an export, was based on a seriously flawed assumption that backing
up should be left over to backup programs that are ignorant of the
structure and meaning of the data they handle.
5 Posted by Jean-Pierre on Aug 15, 2015 @ 12:23 PM
Second reply, after the backup export had finished. It took 90 minutes,
and the resulting file is 32MB. Definitely better than when I stored it
within the MD fileset, but still unsatisfactory.
6 Posted by Ben Spencer on Aug 15, 2015 @ 01:05 PM
90 minutes still sounds very wrong. It should only take a few seconds to create a backup of even a fairly large dataset.
What is the exact location you are creating your backup in?
If you want to make a copy of something manually you should make a copy of the entire .moneydance folder. You should think of that entire folder as your dataset.
Ben Spencer
Infinite Kind Support
7 Posted by dwg on Aug 15, 2015 @ 09:43 PM
FWIW the only time you should be able to use a program while the data is being backed up is if the ability exists to create a snapshot of the data at a point in time and back this up, otherwise your data will not be in a consistent state through the entire backup i.e. there is a good chance for data corruption, because some files could be backed up before some data is written and other files after it has been written. Generally backup applications do not have this capability in themselves, in large commercial systems the applications use the ability of the storage arrays to create these snapshots.
8 Posted by sth on Aug 16, 2015 @ 05:11 PM
I agree, MD halts all operations until the backup is done.
Never make a backup internal to the files being backed up. This can cause loops where the data is changing as it is being backed up.
It is going to be bad to mess with the internal file structure of the MD data bundle. I would highly recommend against that.
One way to backup MD that I have found reliable, is to quit MD then drag a copy of the data file to a backup folder and date the file.
The backup function of the program lets you name the files and store them where you want. It merely creates a zip archive of the current data file, there isn't much compression since the data is already encrypted.
Scheduled backups of all your files to an off site backup is recommended and outside the scope of MD. But is should be fairly easy to write an extension that creates a backup archive every 2 days or so with a preference for where those backups go. But then you will fill up the disk and it needs pruning. Again, building a full backup system is more of a separate program that will do it right.
Personally, I have an offsite backup system that keeps incremental backups. I also have a directory where I keep an archive of MD files every few days. At the end of the year, I prune that directory and zip it up. But I may be overly paranoid.
9 Posted by Jean-Pierre on Aug 17, 2015 @ 10:37 AM
Most modern software has a grip on these issues. All text processors and
spreadsheets make regular snapshots (I set them to every ten minutes),
and older versions of MD used to make one every day. This is the kind of
stuff that happens within the program, and is more reliable than any
external dedicated backup software. Having often used MD daily backups
with a deep sigh of relief, I can't help being disappointed by IK
dropping this functionality!
10 Posted by Jean-Pierre on Aug 17, 2015 @ 10:39 AM
I made the latest backup (the 90 minutes one) in Documents\MD backup. My
MD data set is on another drive, in DropBox.
11 Posted by dwg on Aug 17, 2015 @ 10:11 PM
Word processors and spreadsheets are working with a single file and yes you can set them to perform a save periodically.
Your Moneydance data set is not a single file but is comprised of many files in a directory structure. In fact Moneydance is performing a save every few seconds, so it is doing what you have set the other programs to do but on a far more frequent basis, what it does not have is an ability to roll back to a particular point in time, this is what an external backup can provide as well as other capabilities. taking 90 mins though is far too long and indicates something is wrong somewhere.
12 Posted by sth on Aug 17, 2015 @ 11:58 PM
I'll put this comment here.... This helps backup strategies.
Ian, Thank you, thank you, thank you
build 1278 Update last modified date of data bundle/folder when items in the bundle change.
System closed this discussion on Mar 19, 2016 @ 05:00 AM.