Performance Hack #021 : IT SolidWorks Performance : Backups

Hello fellow SolidWorks User. Greetings!

and welcome to CADGuru.ca’s Performance Hack Blog Series to help you Save time in SolidWorks : )

Let’s get started today, and talking about Back-ups.  Recall Hack 19 where we set Anti-Virus settings to ignore SolidWorks processes and files types.  Well this is along similar lines, and is relevant to overall OS Care and SolidWorks.

Why is this relevant you ask?  A few reasons.  One, I have seen too many cases where SolidWorks files got corrupted, only because this back-up action was being done at the same time as the User was attempting to open, use and save the files in SolidWorks.

So behind the scenes, the back-up attempts to pause the files because it’s doing it’s back-up thing, and then you have SolidWorks on top trying to save, and the file gets dis-configured and corrupted in the process.  It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s definitely a risk that you can avoid very easily with a little knowledge.

Two, I have also seen other cases, where there was too persistent a back-up throughout the day, and it was massively slowing down entire office internet operations across several departments.  So as a result, anyone who was directly saving files remotely on their server across the network, was experiencing massive slow-downs with all the back-up activity.

Sooooo, backups.  Big topic.  So narrowing this down.  Where do you save your files?  Like your SolidWorks files?  Well this location — > is it being back-up anywhere, duplicated anywhere by any software at all?  Then yes we wanna start there.

So for me, I have a secondary drive that I store all work related files on.  This is my D drive, and then I have a huge folder where dropbox does it’s sync.

Now since, I don’t want to have dropbox syncing while I am using the files, all I have to do is make my general working protocol arrival to the office, I unleash Dropbox. I get the files from all my team members.  Dropbox does it’s thing, sync sync sycn…… let it finish, and then pause the dropbox.  Throughout the day, if there is a critical standpoint, I’ll close SolidWorks and then unleash dropbox, sync and re-leash dropbox.—so that my backup is fresh should anything drastic occur.  Then at the end of the day, before shutting down operations, I’ll do this same thing over again.  All I have to remember, is to avoid opening SolidWorks files when dropbox is syncing.

If you are using One-drive this would also be equivalent.

For those of you using different back-up systems to the disk or server, there’s a few recommendations:

• There generally is not much of a need to do backup actions more than once a day. You will want to set this back-up time when you are LEAST likely to be using SolidWorks.  3 am, generally works best, unless you have an over-seas team accessing the same server vault.
• For those of you using PDM systems, you want to make sure that your back-ups processes are doing the back-ups to ALL 3 databases, Archive server settings and Archive files AT THE SAME TIME.*****Please do not perform back-ups of the different sections of the PDM at different times, you will NOT be be-able to successfully restore in the event of an emergency.  Must be all 3 at SAME time, for the files id stamps to match up to the PDM settings and more importantly the SQL data.  ****

Give us a holler if you need help with anything else in SolidWorks : )

Take Care, Stay Safe

and Hope to be of CAD Service !

– Dez