My brother-in-law’s laptop recently died. He’s a chiropractor and the laptop contained the database for the application he uses that stores back scans. Of course, he did not have a current backup so he came to me for help. I was able to easily remove the hard drive from the laptop (it was a Dell) and hook it up to my iMac (using a USB to IDE cable) and get the data off. Or so I thought.
On his new laptop he had been using this application on new patients. When I inspected the laptop, I noticed that the database files were being stored in the Program Files folder for the application. Not good, because I hadn’t copied any Program Files data from the old hard drive.
Luckily I still had the hard drive and was able to get the data off of it. We still have the problem of how to merge the two database into one (they’re both Access databases), but for the time being he can at least switch between the databases to see older information.
The moral of the story: your application data should be stored somewhere separate from your applications so that it is easy for the user to find and backup. On OS X, this usually means use the Application Support folder. On Windows XP, use the Application Data folder; on Vista the AppData folder. Unfortunately, AppData is hidden by default on Vista which might make it hard for some to backup. I’m sure Microsoft has a good reason for that, though I don’t know what it could be.
And of course, if you use REALbasic then just use the ApplicationSupportFolder function to get a reference to the folder you should be using for the platform you are working with.
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