The type of information you enter in into our software is invaluable for "running your life". If something were to happen to your computer that might cause a data loss, you could have a significant problem. It is in your best interest to make backups on a regular basis to protect yourself from the unknown.
Backup is something you should use often to take a snapshot, if you will, of the way your data looks at this moment. Restore, on the other hand, is something you will use rarely or never, as it is something to resort to only when everything has gone wrong. Without a backup to work with, even restore can't help, so take advantage of this option to protect your data!
To make a fresh backup of your data, simply choose the Backup Data option from the File menu at the top left corner of our screen. You can also choose an option to have us remind you to backup when you exit the program. Backup will compress each of its databases, give them a file extension of .BAK and store them in your backup destination. The backup files will be named CALENDAR.BAK, CONTACTS.BAK, TASKS.BAK, and PROJECTS.BAK for your Appointment Calendar, Contact Entries, Tasks Items and Projects, respectively. Backups can even be made even while other users are working with the data!
When you backup, you are given an opportunity to select a location to store the backup files. The default choice is Local Folder, by which we mean the current location of the data you are using. You can also choose to have these backup files copied to "This Folder" or a new location of your choice. We highly recommend using a removable USB stick memory drive as a backup destination to ensure you still have a copy of your data even if something happens to your computer.
When you restore, you will be given an option to indicate where your Intellect backup files are located. This could be in the Local Folder where the main data files are found or any location you can Browse to.
Restore is a REPLACE. It will completely roll back the clock to the way the data looked when the backup was made. This makes it great for disaster recovery or useful when transferring data to a new computer.
If you don't want to completely replace your current data, you could consider either making a new data folder as a completely separate location from your current data OR using the Advanced Backup Explorer on the File menu at the top left to find and restore select items instead of a complete data set.
Intellect users: Please note that email is NOT one of the backup options. If you want to make a protective copy of all your email history, you'll require significantly more time and storage than this backup option, which makes quick and compressed copies of the other databases. Instead of using Backup data, you should look at the option for Folder Synchronization, which can copy your complete email folders to a removable drive.
Here is a video from our Chaos University video series that shows how this feature works:
This help article applies to Intellect 4 or newer, Time & Chaos 8 or newer, and Chaos Free