Access DB Backup

[Cliff]

Guys,

I was attempting to back up a DB with approx 15 months of data in the tables. It also has a bunch of queries and reports. Turns out that it is 1.8 gig in size already.

Is there any way to back this up on CD's or do I have to get a Zip drive or what?

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Cliff

[MikeDee]

Cliff 1.8 gig doesn't sound right, is this the size after you have compacted it?

[hurrikane]

Cliff,
Have you compressed your db? It's in the tools>database menu. Be careful. you need to have more free space than the size of your db on your hard drive to do this because access makes a copy before it starts the compression. So you would need more than the 1.8 gig free on your hard drive.

[Donnie]

To Cliff and All---

If you are not compacting your database regularly, you can have Access do it for you automatically upon your shutdown of the application. Go to Tools to Options to the GeneraL tab. There should be an option called "Compact on Close". Not sure if this is in '97, but it is in 2000 and beyond! If you turn that on Access will compact your database everytime you close it. Depending on the size of your databse it may take a while the first time. I did some database work for a company that had a databse that was 695 megs. After compacting it (which took 35 minutes the first time) the size of the database was actually 17 megs! Why do you have to compact? Because Access does not release the free space caused when you delete records out of the db. It holds the space until you compact, then it frees it back to the hard drive. To check the size of your database, right click on the icon that opens it up. Choose properties and in there you will see the file size.

Cliff...yours will probably take quite a while to compact the first time. If you turn on the auto compact, Access will take a little longer to shut down, but it will be worth it!

[Bernie]

Exception to this, I think, is if you don't modify your db often. I only update the records in mine once a week, so I have the same policy with respect to compacting as I do to bathing - do it once a week whether I need to or not. :)

[Cliff]

Thanks guys,

That got it down to 1.1 gig.....still too big to copy over to a CD though. There's got to be something else I'm not doing.

Cliff

[MikeDee]

The only other thing would be that your tables have duplicates in them.

One other thought. If you have kept all of your orginal HTR files and have them backed up on cd's or what ever. You can make a copy of you db and them delete the contents of all the tables, and them save this on a cd.

This will give you a back up of all of your queries and should you ever lose you db you could rebuild it by using your back up and re-importing your data from your htr files on a CD.

[Rick]

You can probably zip your db and get it small enough to fit on a CD.

If it still won't fit a CD, get back to me and I'll find a program that will split into sizes small enough to fit on a CD.

There is almost always a way to get most anything done.

[hurrikane]

Cliff, I can't imagine your db being that size. How many tables do you have? Anouther idea may be to pull out your main db into a diifferent access db and save that. Then if you need to rebuild you have all the data and can rebuild everything else.

Just hard for me to believe you have that much data after only 15 mo.

[fred4now]

My thoughts too, Hurrikane. I have around 78,000 races and my db is 426 meg. I also do like you said my master table is in one access db and all of my forms, queries,reports etc. are in another and linked to the master. Don't know how many times this has saved my but, when I really screw up my queries or whatever I just throw it out and drag out another that I backed up and link it to my master again.

[tbrown]

Can't you use WInZip to shrink the db and then copy it to a cd?
You don't need a zip drive for this.

[Cliff]

hurrikane may have hit on something I was thinking about. I have 4 tables.....all with 15 months worth of data. They are:

1) All (msac)
2) Impact
3) Prgm (the All table with the horse program # parsed out)
4) Appended table (Impact and Prgrm appended together)

I have removed the duplicate fields from the Appended table. Maybe I don't need to keep 15 months of data in all of these after I have gotten everything appended? I wasn't sure. Just kept plodding along in my old rut ways......until I noticed disc space rapidly disappearing.

Thanks,
Cliff

[Carl]

I just save what you call "appended table" in quarterly increments (3 months of data in a database/table).

I then delete HTR MSA and IMPACT.

If you ever wanted the "original tables" for some reason, you should be able to reverse engineer them from "appended" anyway, or close.