Backups 

BACKUPS ARE USELESS UNLESS YOU REGULARLY VERIFY THEIR QUALITY BY TAKING A BACKUP HOME AND RESTORING IT TO YOUR HOME COMPUTER. We suggest an inexpensive USB flash drive for this purpose. They are very inexpensive, so get a few and rotate them. CDs can cause problems and we don't recommend them except for long-term archival.

In the Manage module, click the Backup button. You will need to enable Security permission first for this feature.

Backup
This must be done from the server, where your database is located. Plug a USB flash drive into your computer. It would then be recognized as the D: drive in MyComputer. Make your settings look exactly like in the above screen shot and click Backup. This will result in two folders being copied to your flash drive, opendental and OpenDentalData (images).

Restore
Restore your backup to your home computer to make sure it's a good backup. You will have already installed Open Dental on that computer. The version should be the same as your office computer. Verify versions from Help | Update. It is somewhat forgiving if the versions don't match, and it will try to update the version for you.

Plug the flash drive into the computer, make the settings look like the screen shot above, and click Restore.

If you have trouble opening the program after restoring, you may need to run the setup program buried within your backup. The location of the setup program is D:\OpenDentImages\Setup.exe. If the installed version is newer than the backup version, then you will need to uninstall Open Dental from your control panel before running the Setup program.

Additional Backups
You also need to keep old copies of some of your backups. You can make separate weekly backups to a different flash drive. When it fills up, put it in storage, and get another one. If you are using imaging, then manually backup the C:\OpenDentalData folder to CDs, DVDs, or removable hard drives. An occasional copy should be stored in a legally secure manner. If you send us a flash drive by certified mail, we will store it unopened for you.

Complex Situations
If you don't know how to set up a backup strategy, get a networking specialist to come in. Show them this page so that they will understand exactly which folders to backup. Our backup feature automates the task for you so that you won't forget or get confused during the copy process, but you can also use any third party backup program to perform your backups. It will need to backup these two folders:

\\SERVER\mysql\data\opendental\
\\SERVER\OpenDentImages\

You should try to make sure nobody is using the program during this type of backup, but you don't need to close the program.

If, for some reason, you decide to restore a backup manually instead of using our built-in restore button, you will have to follow the complex process below very carefully:

• Connect your backup flash drive or removable hard drive to the USB port.
• Stop the MySQL service as follows: Right click MyComputer | Manage | Services and Applications | Services, then look for MySQL in the list. Highlight it, and stop the service.
• Rename the old database folder from C:\mysql\data\opendental\ to something else, like C:\mysql\data\opendentalold02142006\.
• Copy the database folder from the backup source, (e.g. D:\opendental\) to the appropriate location on the main hard drive, (e.g. C:\mysql\data\opendental\). Make sure you don't end up with too many layers (e.g. C:\mysql\data\opendental\opendental\).
• (optional) Copy the OpenDentalData folder (with the A-Z folders) to the hard drive (e.g. C:\OpenDentalData\).
• Restart the MySQL service.
• Open the program.