DataCare 9.1A (110324)

Everything has been working great or so I thought until I needed to restore this morning from a Back Up and I found out that the back up is corrupt. Last night DataCare created a a file called DCB1759.ZIP and a second file called DCB1759.Z01. I cannot open either file. The .ZIP file says it is invalid or corrupt.

It did the same thing the night before and the .ZIP file is also corrupt.

The 3 days before that their is only a .ZIP file and no second .Z01 file and they are all working perfect. I can open the .ZIP files.

Why is DataCare creating a second .Z01 file? And why are my .ZIP files corrupt?

I needed to restore this morning since someone has crashed ledger.

Backup of:
Backup file: C:\Backup\DCB1759.ZIP
Backing up data at: I:\data\ with extension: DAT
Backing up all files in data directory
Backup started at: 2011.06.01 23:30 by Susan Tennier
Backup completed ... OK
Backup finished at: 2011.06.01 23:36

Hi Susan,

Is it possible that DataCare is running from two workstations at the same time? I remember that at one point you were running it on the server and mentioned later that you had moved it to a workstation.

I disabled the scheduled task on the server when I setup the job to run on my workstation. I also re-directed the back up to C:\backup on my workstation.

I've attached a screen shot.

Thankfully I was able to restore from another back up system that ran last night.

Also, there is only one job in DataCare History per day.

I have always thought the Z01 files were temporary files used in creation of he zip files. One time I had Z01 up to Z14. Anytime I have had the Z01 (temporary files)I have been able to find another server backup or action that was overlapping the Datacare backup.

David

The zip files can be large. Make sure you have plenty of room on the storage drive. DataCare can also limit the number of stored backups.

The last 2 nights I ran Toolkit before DataCare ran on the scheduled task. I wonder if Toolkit is closing all the files correctly?

The strange thing is that DataCare History didn't report any error with the back up.

I'll test it tonight when everyone is off the system.

The drive I'm backing up to is 150 GB and only half full.

Bob, what do you mean by DataCare can limit the number of stored back ups? Should I delete some history?

In the DataCare company profile, you can set it to retain x backups. There's an audit trail of Toolkit changes, so review that report. It's unlikely that files were left open, but you should consider competing processes. ie. running the Toolkit and Datacare as scheduled tasks. Both products should be looking for exclusive use of the Adagio dataaset. With Datacare, exclusivity is optional.

Susan:

Thanks for confirming that this problem is still occurring. I've known about it for some time but have been waiting for the resent upgrade to see if it would go away (there has been so many problems with DataCare the last 12 months that we stopped reporting and investigating them).

I can confirm that it only happens at large sites. The Z01 is the temp file and if it still exists then the process of creating the ZIP file was interupted. The problem is what is interupting this backup as it is very random.

Susan:
If a ZIP file is too large, the resulting files would be named .ZIP then .Z01, Z02 etc. I don't know the threshold size but maybe you hit it in the past few days.

I haven't encountered this myself but here's a link where someone says that WINZIP can handle the files.

ZIP Discussion

Hi Susan,

We have duplicated the behaviour you saw (with multiple .Znn files) by having a competing process running on the files when DataCare tried to back them up. Our "competing process" was a large GridView View on a composite table, but any one will do - a ToolKit operation, another backup. You get the idea. Can you let us know what processesyou run overnight in addition to your DataCare Job?

Thanks