"according to the district technology people, the backup tape was corrupt"
THE back-up tape? Wow! Are the district tech gurus using a single tape to
back-up every night? The problem with database corruptions is that they
don't always manifest themselves right away. If you only use one back-up
tape you may be out of luck by the time you discover the problem. All of
us should be using a rotating collection of back-up tapes. We use ten
tapes (a two week rotation). If the database dies and last night's tape
has copied the dead database I can go to the previous day's tape, or the
day before, or the day before that... At worst I may lose a few days of
circulations. We also run the vendor's back-up utility every day to a
local hard drive. Restoring from the vendor's back-up is easier and faster
than extracting the data from a tape. And finally, several times per year
we export our MARC and patron data to a CD and place it in the fire safe in
the office. I usually do this after entering a large order. If the worst
happens and the database cannot be restored from back-ups we can import the
MARC and patron data to a new installation of the software. We would lose
all of the circulation data but if you don't tell the students that the
data was lost you will still get most of your checked out books back.
If you don't do the back-ups yourself, check with the person who does and
make sure there is a lot of redundancy built in. The tapes are very
expensive but compared to the cost of disaster recovery they are a bargain.
----
Tony Doyle, Librarian
Livingston High School
1617 Main St.
Livingston, CA 95334
209-358-2948
tdoyle@muhsd.k12.ca.us
<Http://www.lhs.muhsd.k12.ca.us/library/index.htm>
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get
people to stop reading them."-- Ray Bradbury
-----Original Message-----
From: Lynn Autry [SMTP:tlautry@EARTHLINK.NET]
Sent: Friday, February 28, 2003 3:33 PM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: GEN: Losing your library data
Has anyone ever lost their entire library data? Today our server died and
according to the district technology people, the backup tape was corrupt.
It appears not only that we have lost the entire Follett library program
and data but our school's email and other programs on the server as well.
This wasn't Friday the 13th was it? Anyway, tomorrow I will know exactly
how bad everything is. I am being told though that it's BAD! My question
is, has anyone ever experienced this before and if so, what plan of action
do you suggest. There is no other backup. There are no shelf list cards.
Everything was on the server. Our immediate plan is to limit checkout (we
don't even know what books we have checked out now) and to use check-out
cards. Fortunately there are some of those still around. It is going to be
a mess. Any suggestions?
Lynn Autry
Central Hardin High School
Cecilia, Kentucky 42724
270.737.6800
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