Question: How can I make my backups faster? How can I make my backups smaller?

Symptoms:

Backups seem to be taking longer.

Causes:

Many contribute to the problem and are not readily defined.

Resolution:

Shortening your backups, during posting for example, depends on a few different things. We can try to shorten backup time, but it depends on how much and how often you are backing up. Make sure you have a good Backup (from the Files menu) before you attempt the following procedures, just in case.

The first step in shortening your backup time would be a Rebuild Data Files. This function will remove any TMP (Temporary) files that are created by various users throughout the day. It also deletes any records in the database files marked for deletion. I would recommend doing this once a week to rid the system of these files. If you do not do this, these files will pile up in the data folder, and each time you backup, you will be backing up these files as well.

Secondly, if there are any files that use the file extension of ".bak" or ".tbk" they can be removed as well. These are backup files created by the system when doing various activities. These are generally in the YR200x folders (history). You can generally do a windows search on these folders for the file names .tbk or .bak and delete the files it finds.

After that, you want to make sure there is nothing in your DATA folder that should not be there. The only FOLDERS (not files) that should be in your DATA folder will depend on what version of the software you are using:

For Version 9.x Users: The Data folder should only show your history folders (such as YR1998, YR2005 or yr2002 etc) and the Mapping folder. If there are any other folders in this directory, they should be moved out of the DATA directory.

For RM Advanced Users: In RM Advanced, the DATA folder contains a lot more information. I would suggest contacting Technical Support for help in this area.

What you are backing up to also plays a small part in the speed of your backup. If you are backing up from your local machine, to a zip disk for example, that will take a little longer than backing up to your hard drive. The computer can copy data faster to the hard drive than it can to the zip disk.

Also, backing up on the Main Computer (or Server) will be faster than backing up from a local workstation. This is because the data resides on the server, and all it has to do is copy it to wherever you specified as your backup drive. The workstation however, must pull the data across the local network, then copy the information to the backup drive specified.

This should speed up your backups.

If you have tried all these methods, and it is still taking a long time, it may just be you have a lot of data to be backed up. Possibly you have quite a few years worth of history. The only other option at this point to make the backup smaller/faster would be to remove some of that old history. What you can do in this case is MOVE some of your oldest YRxxxx folders (history folders, such as yr1998) to another location on the hard drive. You may want to create a History folder within the RM2000 folder to put these in. They are there in case you ever need to access them again. Deleting them would not be recommended, as you will lose that information from those years.

More Information:

I would recommend your talking to ARS Technical Support for help in this area.