I was checking the backups at a dental office that used Eaglesoft.<\/p>\n
The backup drive held about 4 GB of data. The server held about 160 GB.<\/p>\n
The backup was missing most of the practice\u2019s data.<\/p>\n
The backup had run every night for about two years. It saved the main Eaglesoft database to an external Seagate drive.<\/p>\n
But it did not save the X-rays or scanned documents attached to each patient.<\/p>\n
If the server had failed, the office could have restored patient names, appointments, and treatment codes. The X-rays and scanned files would have been gone.<\/p>\n
The external drive stayed plugged into the server all day and night.<\/p>\n
That could help if a hard drive inside the server failed. But a fire, theft, lightning strike, or ransomware attack could damage both the server and its backup.<\/p>\n
Every copy was in the same room.<\/p>\n
Someone had told the office that the setup was fine. I do not blame the person who set it up. The problem had gone unseen for two years because no one had tested a full restore.<\/p>\n
First, we changed the backup so it saved the X-rays and scanned documents along with the Eaglesoft database.<\/p>\n
We also changed where the copies were kept. The external drive now leaves the office each night. We added an encrypted copy in another location too.<\/p>\n
A problem at the office can no longer destroy every copy at once.<\/p>\n
A backup should be tested before anyone has to depend on it.<\/p>\n
Before the next backup ran, I added a test appointment to the schedule. After the backup finished, I restored the offsite copy to another computer.<\/p>\n
The test appointment was there. That showed me the restored database was current.<\/p>\n
I also checked the file sizes. The restored copy included the full 160 GB of X-rays and documents.<\/p>\n
Ask the person who handles your technology these questions:<\/p>\n
Clear answers can help you catch a bad backup before a failed server, fire, or attack turns it into a much bigger problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A dental office had a valid backup, but about 160 GB of X-rays and documents had been missing for years. Verify recovery, not just reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-backup-recovery","category-dental-it"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nowelltech.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nowelltech.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nowelltech.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nowelltech.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nowelltech.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nowelltech.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"https:\/\/nowelltech.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nowelltech.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nowelltech.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nowelltech.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}