[GNC] Backup

[Stan Brown]

On 2023-06-28 13:21, David Carlson wrote:
> James,
> 
> When your computer fails, your data will be gone unless you, by your own
> volition, have made a special plan to back up your data to a safe and
> proper external location.  Nobody here can tell you if you made a proper
> choice.  That also goes for all the other data on your computer.
...> There is no backup in GnuCash.

And let us be clear, it's not GnuCash's job to do a backup against the
possibility of a computer failure. It's not the job of _any_ application
program to do that. Making backups is a specialized system function.
Windows itself has a backup program, though I've not heard good things
and have never used it, and there are several good third-party backup
programs.

One thing is key: if you "back up" to another location on your computer,
you have not done a real backup. A real backup is to another device like
an external hard drive, one which is connected to your computer while
you are making a backup, then immediately disconnected till next backup
time. Why is it critical to back up to a different device? Because if
your computer crashes, and your backup is on your computer, you won't
have access to your backup.

Many people back up to "the cloud". I will say it's better than nothing,
but there are potential privacy and security problems with copying your
sensitive data to what is, after all, just some big corporation's computer.

P.S. You mentioned a "backup" by Libre Office. All that does is copy
your documents somewhere in a folder below AppData. For the usefulness
of this, see "if your computer crashes", two paragraphs up.

Stan Brown
Tehachapi, CA, USA
https://BrownMath.com