How to Back Up Your Crystal PM Database
It’s very important to back up your Crystal PM database as a preventative against theft, natural disaster, or hardware failure. This walkthrough will explain how to perform this function.
On your server computerperform the steps below:
For Windows Vista/Windows 7: Click on Start > Computer > Double-click Local Disk (C:).
Within the Local Disk you will see a folder titled Program Files. Double click this.
Note: If your version of Windows is 64 bit you will see Program Files(X64). If you see this folder, open it.
For Windows XP: Click on Start > My Computer > Double-click Local Disk (C:).
Note: If you do not see My Computer in your start menu, it will be on the desktop.
Within the Program Files (or Program Files X86 folder) you will locate the CrystalPMfolder.
Double-click on the folder. Once it is open, you will see the various files that operate the program. Click the letter ‘b’ on your keyboard. The selection will show this backup icon.
Right-click on the icon titled ‘backup’ and mouse over the entry titled ‘Send To’. Choose the second option in the list titled ‘Desktop: (create shortcut)’.
This icon will appear on your desktop.
Note: To backup Crystal, you will need a form of removable media (flash drive, external hard drive, etc). A good rule of thumb is to have two external hard drives that you rotate out on a daily basis and to back the data up with the same frequency. Your data can be backed up to the server computer, but if the server computer fails, your data cannot readily be transferred to another machine and may be lost altogether.
To ensure that the backup icon is backing up the data to the proper location, right click on the backup-Shortcut icon and select ‘Edit’. The following screen will appear in Notepad:
There will only be two areas to edit in this screen. One is program files, if your server computer shows Program Files (X86), you will need to put the cursor after the word ‘files’, hit the spacebar once and type ‘(X86) as shown below:
This ensures that the data folder (within Program Files(X86) is being backed up properly. The second entry that you will need to edit is the filename where you see ‘e:\backup\’ in the screenshot. This drive letter must match the drive letter that your computer has assigned to the external hard drive or flash drive. To locate this, insert the device into your server computer’s USB port and click on Start > Computer and you will see the following:
For this example, my computer assigned my external device to the ‘D’ drive. On the backup shortcut editing screen change the drive letter from e to d (leave all other data on this page as it is)
Save the changes to the edits made here:
And your back up icon for Crystal is now setup.
Note: Do not run this during the day when your staff is using Crystal. The first step of the backup process is to stop the Crystal PM database which means that all users currently logged in will have their sessions in the program abruptly ended.
A good rule of thumb is to verify that all users are logged out of Crystal (including the server computer) and run the backup at the beginning or end of your workday as time permits.
Once the backup completes (time will vary depending on the size of your database) you can verify that the backup completed by clicking on Start > Computer > Removable Disk (D:). Within the external device, there will be a folder titled ‘backup’
Opening this folder will display similar information as you see here:
Click the item titled ‘Date modified’ at the top to view the most recent date that the data was backed up.
Note: This backup icon does not back up any other data on your machine other than Crystal PM.