Backup

[Revised Nov 14

Backups should be done daily. Pharmacy data is valuable, expensive to re-create, and at risk if good backup procedures are not followed. Enforcement of good regular backup procedures is the responsibility of the pharmacy management.

Tools, such as repair database are provided but a corrupted database is not always repairable. In those cases a reliable backup is the only thing standing between the user and lost data. In event that a restore from backup is needed, Roll forward recovery is provided to recover work done since the backup was made.

Normal daily backup

1. From the RxOne Start Menu, go to Tools, Backup.

2. Make sure the flash drive is inserted into the drive.

3. If not already selected, select the drive to backup to.

Normally this will be D: or E: Do not backup onto C:, as that is the hard drive and already contains the working copy, and backing up again onto the same medium does not achieve much. If changing the drive letter, watch to see if the device concerned has its light flash when the backup is being made, to confirm that it really is going onto the correct disk.

4. Select 'Daily Backup' Backup to backup the database each day.

The computer will do a differential backup (just backup the changes) when the daily backup is selected, then every 14 days the computer will automatically do a 'fortnight backup' (the full database). There is no need for you to change your selection for this. Note: the fortnight backup will take a little bit longer.

Once a month after the programs have been upgraded choose to back up the 'Monthly Backup programs and database'. This keeps the latest program versions for quick restore in event of serious disk problems.

Note that only the monthly backup contains the Claim files- so it is important you still do a monthly backup at the end of each month

If the backup on RxOne is more than 3 days old, a big red warning message will come up on the RxOne Start Menu to advise a backup needs to be done. Please do not ignore this.

If your backup is done by "Keep It Safe", when the master is changed, please notify "Keep It Safe" so that they can ensure the backup is done on the new computer.

Full backup to send to support service

Just send the latest normal daily backup. To do this go to the RxOne Start Menu, Tools, RxOne Update, Send backup to HealthSoft. This will take a while to upload but you can continue working on RxOne while this happens in the background.

If running both POS and Dispensary

Backing up the master automatically backs up both POS and Dispensary data. If a sale is made on a POS Slave while the Master is backing up, the Slave will go into stand-alone mode, do the sale normally, and automatically catch up when the Master is free.

** Do not economise on backup media. Data is worth much more than the hardware and software combined, if the time to recreate it is taken into account.

Off -site Backups

If Nexus do backups off-site for you, please leave a flashdrive in your master computer and ask Nexus to organise for a backup to be done to that at the same time. The flash drive backup is the easiest to restore from in the case of a computer failure and will save you time to get up and running again.

Backup drive

A flash drive or a CD are recommended. These have proved quick and generally reliable.

- Streaming tape drives are not recommended as they are not under direct control of the pharmacy software so operator actions cannot be guided and verified.

Using Flash drives for backup

The safest option is 1 drive per day of trading + an additional drive for monthly back ups, 2 for monthly is better still, alternating these every second month, taken off-site..

Another option, say the shop trades 6 days per week, have 4 flash drives, 3 for daily backups so one does Monday and Thursday, one for Tuesday and Friday, and the third for Wednesday and Saturday. The final flash drive should be dedicated for a monthly backup.

REMEMBER backups are important, but crucial when you need them. No one has lost sleep doing too many backups.

Weekly/Monthly Off-site backup

Take the most recent backup home for safety, to reduce fire/theft risk to bearable levels of data loss.

It's a good idea to have two sets of disks to use for the 'monthly backup' one for 'even' months and one for 'odd'. Keep them at home so if you have a fire or other disaster at the shop at least records are okay. A Full Monthly backup should be done on the last day of the month, or at least before the update is run. (Ensure the appropriate option is checked).

Notes

Backups automatically overwrite the oldest backup on the disk if there isn't room for the current one, but it won't overwrite other data since the user may be using the same backup disk for other programs. A separate topic describes cleaning off a disk.

Please note that if you are using 3rd party offsite backup facilities [eg Nexus] you still need to do a RxOne backup. Offsite backups with Nexus work well with RxOne, but it is often useful to have a backup on-site as well.

The RxOne backup provides you with a backup onto your flash drive AND a backup onto your master hard drive AND a backup onto each RxOne slave. In addition to this, if one of your staff calls us with a computer down, we know where to find the latest backup to get your system going again.