Making a Quick Backup of Master Builder Data

Making a Quick Backup of Master Builder Data


Updated 12/5/12

Applies to
: Master Builder 11.x and earlier, 12.x, 13.x, 14.x, 15.x, 16.x, 17.x, 18.x

Sometimes it is useful to have a backup of a Master Builder data set that is independent of the system backups. For instance, when we close the books for a company, we make a backup of the data set just before we close and then immediately after we close. That way, if there is a disaster along the way, we can quickly restore back to the point before we began the close and try again.

The company data for any Master Builder company is completely contained in a single directory (with all the associated sub-directories) that has the same name as the company you access in Master Builder. All that is needed for a backup is to copy the entire company directory to another location.

For instance, if you access your MB data from the F: drive (your network drive) and the company name is “ABC Constructors”, the data directory you need to copy is:

F:\MB7\ABC Constructors

Backup of a Company Directory

For backups, our standard procedure that we use in-house and at most of our clients is to create a directory in the MB7 directory called “Backups”. Each copied data set is set up as a subdirectory in the backups directory with a file naming convention of:

YYYY-MM-DD Company Name

For example, to make a June 3
rd
backup of “ABC Construction”:

  1. Copy the directory “F:\MB7\ABC Constructors” to the “F:\MB7\Backups” directory
  2. Rename the directory F:\MB7\Backups\ABC Constructors to “F:\MB7\Backups\2010-06-03 ABC Constructors”

This naming convention will allow easy identification of the most current backups for each company directory.

Restore of a Company Directory

To restore a Master Builder data directory completely, copy the contents of the desired backup to the original location. For example, copy the contents (including subdirectories) of:

F:\MB7\Backups\2010-06-03 ABC Constructors\*.*

To

F:\MB7\ABC Constructors

This will revert the entire ABC Constructors data set back to the state it was in when the backup was completed.

Other Notes

Often we will use a compression utility such as
WinZip
to then compress the backup directories. This will conserve space on the network. There is an older version available at no cost at
www.oldversion.com
.

Alternatively, you can use the Windows Folder Compression utility, but it is much slower and more cumbersome than WinZip.



posted by
Larry Wendt

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