Backing up should be a regular part of your accounting activity. Although NewViews has an automatic crash recovery system, there are still circumstances under which your files may be irretrievably lost unless you can recover them from a backup copy:
Your hard disk is physically damaged.
A file is inadvertently deleted.
A program goes amuck and renders information on the hard disk irretrievable.
A virus invades your computer and damages your system's setup or holds your data for ransom.
Your computer is stolen.
Sections of your database are randomly overwritten by an unknown source.
Although these circumstances are relatively rare, you can assume that one will happen sooner or later. When it does, you will be very relieved to have a recent backup copy of your NewViews database.
You should keep backups on separate computers or external removable disks. Technology has reached the point where external disks such as USB drives are affordable, have huge capacity, and are easily used.
You need to avoid the situation where all backups are on a single computer or computers at the same site. Backups should be removed to a separate site on a regular basis, and preferably to more than one separate site. If all computers containing backups are at the same site, they could all be simultaneously stolen, or destroyed by a flood, fire, or other catastrophe. Such a catastrophic failure can only be recovered if backups are kept on separate off-site locations.
Backups are invaluable as you will find out if you ever encounter a catastrophic failure. Other sections of this documentation on backing up will cover NewViews backup commands separately and in detail, but here we provide a brief overview of what NewViews does to help ensure that you have a recent backup. As a first backup line of defence, NewViews has the File>Backup command and the File>Download command for cloud databases. These can and should be run often to create hot database backups. For either command you specify the destination folder and NewViews generates a file name guarantied not to overwrite previous backups. Permission to run each command is controlled for each database user by a user option: File Download option for the File>Download command, Multi-user Backup for File>Backup on a multi-user (remote) database, and Single-user Backup for File>Backup on a local database. The database administrator can control which users have permission on that database.
File>Backup copies a database to a target folder somewhere in the database computer's directory space. Since a computer's directory space may include disk volumes on separate compters, say other computers on the same local areea network, it is possible to place the backup on a separate computer. In general, you should try to create backups on a separate computer or external drive. If the active database and it's backups are kept on the same computer then both will be lost in the event of catastrophic failure. The File>Download command backups have the advantage that copies downloaded from the cloud almost always copied to a separate computer. (For completeness we mention that it is possible to run a workstation and server (cloud) on the same computer but this is not the usual case.)
Each user in each database also has a Backup Reminder Days user option. When you log out of any accounting database, assuming you have permission to backup or download, NewViews checks the date of the last backup or download. If it is not as recent as indicated by the backup reminder days, then you are prompted to backup or download the database. You can then decide to proceed or cancel. You can change the backup reminder days to any number deemed appropriate and a value of zero disables the reminder altogether.
In an effort to ensure recent backups are available, NewViews performs overnight and logout backups. Only one overnight or logout backup is kept per database and they are kept in the same folder as the active database. Therefore overnight and logout backups are not a reliable way to protect against catastrophic failure. Nevertheless, in some situations they have enabled the recovery of broken databases for users who were otherwise delinquent in their backup routine.
You can use a file explorer or terminal command line to create backup copies of local databases. However, this works only on cold databases. NewViews commands (see below) can be used to back up hot databases, and basic integrity checks are also performed by NewViews commands when backing up.