Arthur Fuller
fuller.artful at gmail.com
Sat Feb 2 10:12:30 CST 2013
Wow. Reading this thread makes me feel like such a dinosaur. I haven't even heard of most products mentioned, let alone used them. All I have is a 1TB USB external drive, and a scheduled procedure that works nightly and copies everything of interest to said external drive, and that's all that I have. I don't trust clouds but maybe that's something I have to get over. What I do like is that I can just unplug the external drive and then plug it in to my laptop, and everything I need is there. Of course, I have no defence against a nuclear attack, but on the other hand Canada doesn't have many enemies, other than our First Nations people, whose side I am emphatically on, so hopefully they will spare me, but in the event that they don't, I still have my USB 1TB drive, which is guaranteed to have yesterday's data intact, and speaking frankly, it's not as if I had ten tremendous world-shaking ideas yesterday. On the other hand, when I'm working, then I back up the current project every hour, to the aforementioned external USB disk. I am not claiming that this is the most intelligent solution, just saying that this is what I do. The thing that I like about this solution is that I can bring my USB hard disk anywhere and copy the files of interest to the client's box, and the only thing that could go wrong is that some robbers take over the streetcar and demand that I surrender my watch and wallet and USB drive. Yes, that is a potential problem, and I have no solution for that eventuality. Perhaps I need to get past my objections to the cloud and copy all this stuff to God Knows Where, and hope for the best, and plan for the worst. Two USB drives, and scheduled copies about four times per day. To protect me from doing something stupid, which unfortunately seems to be habitual. However, I have learned over these woe to many years, that Intelligence is the Art of Anticipating Your Stupidity, and therefore I have pre-empted my stupidity thanks to scheduled programs and batch files.. I haven't written a batch file in about a dozen years. Those that exist on my machine work, but you remind me of how much fun it was to write batch files. A discipline that I fear is if not gone, fading quickly. In fact, I would go so far as to say, "Most computer users don't even have the foggiest idea what a batch file is." This IMO is a sad thing, and it brings to mind one of the greatest ads in software history, an ad for Ashton-Tate's product called Framework, I know that I'm not going to get this right, but the gist was this: "I don't want menus, I want power commands." And speaking of great software ads, the greatest IMO of all time was created by Hal Pollack, and it was "dBASE II versus the Bilge Pump". A bunch of years ago I met Hal, and told him that he wrote the best ad ever in the history of software. A few years after that, I landed an interview with C. Wayne Ratliff, who wrote dBASE-II in assembly language and it ran it 64K. That interview was published in Data-Based Advisor magazine, and got me a bunch of brownie points, because nobody got to him except me. And then something else happened. Brian Russell, former A-T employee, had an idea, called Clipper, named after a restaurant in Nantucket, where the original deal was done. And now, a few decades later, I am infatuated with the people that developed Alpha Five. These people are very smart, and also very open to communication. I have been toying with their software for about 8 months, and I finally have landed a gig to be developed and deployed in Alpha Five, It's a relatively simple app (about 20 tables) and it needs to work on desktop, tablet and smart-phone. And A5 delivers all this. I have built a few apps for my own use and proved that their technologies work. Now I'm about to do a real-world app, and I am way excited to do this. All you people wasting your time in Access development, I have just one suggestion. Download the free time-limited edition of A5 and take it for a spin, For all the pieces, it costs about $1K, but you'll make that back in your first gig. I have no commercial interest in A5, no shares, no edge in any way. I'm just calling things as I see them. Download the trial stuff and run the demo-apps and see for yourself. This thing blows the door off Access, and I say that having made much of my living for the past 20+ years as an Access developer. A. On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 5:13 PM, Stuart McLachlan <stuart at lexacorp.com.pg>wrote: > That's why I like it - and why I suggested " ...batch file" :-) > > -- > Stuart > > On 1 Feb 2013 at 8:23, Jim Lawrence wrote: > > > ...and to add; it also works via any command line (old or via > powertools) so > > the programmed and scheduled to run any number of backups. > > > > Jim > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > > [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Stuart > McLachlan > > Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 10:41 PM > > To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving > > Subject: Re: [AccessD] FW: Back-up > > > > Shadowcopy with a scheduled task batch file? > > > > http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-products.htm > > > > > > On 31 Jan 2013 at 21:05, Rocky Smolin wrote: > > > > > Dear List: > > > > > > User is looking for a backup system. > > > > > > Any votes for favorite? > > > > > > TIA > > > > > > Rocky > > > > > > > > > _____ > > > > > > From: Frank Federman [mailto:ffederman at roadrunner.com] > > > Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 1:00 PM > > > To: info at e-z-mrp.com > > > Cc: 'rich lindkamp' > > > Subject: Back-up > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Rocky - > > > > > > > > > > > > Can you recommend an automatic back-up program (similar to Carbonite) > that > > > works well with E-Z MRP? We just recovered from a server crash, and > found > > > out that Carbonite does poorly, if at all, with databases. > Fortunately, we > > > had a not-too-old manual back up copy of E-Z on hand, but I'd like to > do > > it > > > automatically, and off-site (cloud) based, if possible. > > > > > > > > > > > > Thanks for any advice. > > > > > > > > > > > > Frank Federman > > > > > > Active Thermal Management, Inc. > > > > > > (661) 294-7999 - voice > > > > > > (207) 967-4047-- fax > > > > > > frankf at activethermal.com <BLOCKED::mailto:jillf at activethermal.com> > > > > > > > > > > > > The Trusted Name in Thermal Protection > > > > > > > > > > > > CELEBRATING OVER 14 YEARS OF QUIET COOLING! 1999-2013 > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > AccessD mailing list > > > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > > > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > > > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > > > > > > > -- > > AccessD mailing list > > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > > -- > > AccessD mailing list > > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > > > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > -- Arthur Cell: 647.710.1314 Prediction is difficult, especially of the future. -- Niels Bohr