PROTECTING FILES

[suha]

Hello

i had an application, where everything is ok, but yesterday while issuing a report using a certain file(dbf) an error message appears 'illegal operation' and then the application is shut down.
i browsed the file and found that 3 records having unreadable data so the file was corrupted i deleted these 3 records an pack and it's ok now.
i want to ask what are the reasons that can cause this and how i can protect the data files.

suha

 

[BlindPete]

I generally only get this corruption issue when the computer would crash, hang or experience power failures. (UPS cured the power failures) However it Generally only corrupted a record in each open table. However they were recoverable errors with Norton FileFix.

The fear of "Lost Data" became a high priority here sometime ago. The system copies certain crucial databases 3x daily now. I never thought it was that big a deal. In 3 years we have never had to look at one of the copies to recover a record. Perhaps we have been lucky? In addition the server makes disk backup often... Haven't needed one of those either. I guess we have been very lucky.

I still occasionally get corruption errors for no obvious reason. Perhaps they are network collisions. I would be very interested to know what others think too.
-Pete

 

[dgrewe]

My favorite file corruption story is the dumb a** that opens database files in a word processor program and tries to alter info and then saves it. David W. Grewe
Dave@internationalbid.com
ICQ VFP ActiveList #46145644

 

[dmedeot]

Pete.

Norton FileFix only repair free table?
or also can repair database tables with long names?

Dario

 

[tomavery]

I have had some major corruptions across the network. Especially after long data entry sessions, and the network drops in the middle of it. We do schedule backups each night and keep track of data entered through auditing of changes to help us find where the users were in there work and by time. When the data has gotten bad due to backup failures, we used foxfix and after a little playing it seemed to work.
Tom

Go Canucks! (rabid Vancouver Canucks Fan)

 

[BlindPete]

Dario,

Our core databases are still FP2 format (I forget the reason). In that system a DBC is not used. And yes filefix only works on a free table. At least the old version I have.
-Pete