| News from David Ashkenaz -
Independent PrintSmith Consultant | August 2010 |
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Dear Friends and PrintSmith Users,
This issue deals with backing up PrintSmith. I hope you enjoy reading and I hope you put some good backup techniques to use. The current version (as of today) is version 8.1.11. I hope you enjoy this newsletter, your feedback is greatly appreciated. Sincerely, David Ashkenaz, Independent PrintSmith Consultant 954-977-7811
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| Backing Up PrintSmith |
Although rare, . losing your PrintSmith data could be devastating. Computer hard drives may stop working, or even worse, the computer housing PrintSmith may be stolen. In either event, it could be a nightmare to reconstruct months or years of information that is in your PrintSmith.
You should set up a regular schedule to do your back ups. My suggestion is to back up right after a daily closeout. If the closeout is not done daily, or if it is done during the day, then I would back up right before leaving for the day. This way you have the entire days work on your back up. |
| How to Back Up |
There are many ways to back up and I will give you just two.
1) Use five (5) USB memory sticks. One for each day of the week. Back up onto the corresponding stick and save 3-4 weeks on each stick. This way you will have 20 different backups. Having 20 will give you comfort in the case 1 or 2 of the backups don't work correctly.
2) Use an external hard drive to back up. Again, I would have 5 folders, one for each day of the week and save 3-4 backup in each folder.
Which ever method you use, make sure you take the back ups off site. This way in case of fire or theft, you have the back ups in your possession. In case of hurricanes, etc., make 2 or 3 back ups and give them to key employees for safe keeping.
Obviously you don't want to back up on to your "desktop" or other hard drive on the master. If you computer gets stolen, there goes your backup!! |
| What to Back Up and Restoring a Back Up | | The safest and easiest thing to back up would be your entire PrintSmith folder. Just make a copy of it and move it to the USB sticks or onto your external hard drive.
The critical files needed are, Data, Prices, Reports, Templates. However, to be safe, copy all the files over!
It is always a good idea to make sure the back up works BEFORE you actually need it. The easiest way to test a back up is to take the original Prices and Data folders from you PrintSmith and relabel them GOOD PRICES and GOOD DATA. Then move the back up'd version of the Prices and Data into your PrintSmith. Launch PrintSmith and make sure that all the customers/history/data etc. is from that backup date.If everything looks good, then you back ups are running correctly. Now move the backup out of your PrintSmith folder and rename the GOOD PRICES and GOOD DATE to Prices and Data and make sure that you PrintSmith is now back to the current state.
I would run this backup test atleast once a quarter! |
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Thanks for reading and I look foward to hearing from you !.
Sincerely,
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