I’ve been helping a children’s daycare center with their computer support needs for 15+ years. They use Procare Solutions for child care management. It’s a very popular software system. Procare offers a version that is hosted in the cloud (Procare Cloud) as well as a version that can be hosted on a Windows computer, which uses Microsoft SQL 2014 SP3 Express Edition as the database engine.
Child care (daycare) centers usually have small budgets, so they rarely have elaborate computer networks. And it can sometimes be challenging to find affordable ways to protect data in the event of a disaster. Procare suggests using a third-party backup solution like Carbonite when not using their cloud version. Procare has a good article on how to automatically schedule a daily backup of the database (see their article here).
How to tell Carbonite to Back Up the Procare backup files
If you follow their advice, it’s important to tell the Carbonite program to back up the folder where Procare stores the automatic backup files. To do so:
- Navigate to the C:\Program Files\Procare\Server\ folder using Windows Explorer
- With the mouse, right-click on the Backups folder and in the pop-up menu, under the option for Carbonite, choose Back this up.
CAVEAT: While it’s unlikely that a daycare will exceed the database size limit of 10 GB that exists in SQL 2014 SP3 Express, Carbonite does have a limit on file sizes that it will back up. The basic version of Carbonite is limited to 4GB for large files, so you’ll need to keep an eye on your Procare backup file sizes. Carbonite does have higher priced plans that can backup larger files. Another popular cloud backup solution is IDrive, and their service lists 100 GB as a file size limit. So IDrive is another option worth considering.
Batch File to Perform an SQL Backup of Procare
Because I’m an extra cautious sort of person, I also wrote a DOS batch file that runs via the Windows Task Scheduler every night. If you’re comfortable with batch files and editing them, here’s my batch file that runs SQLCMD to back up the Procare database to a folder called C:\BACKUPS. You’ll need to make a few edits if you use this, which includes changing the computer name and ensuring the folders that are referenced are correct for your use.
I’m also using the 7-Zip program to compress the backup file and I copy it to an external hard drive (F:).
@ECHO Off
@For /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=. " %%A in ('Date /t') do @(
Set Day=%%A
)
IF %day%==Mon goto :MONDAY
IF %day%==Tue goto :TUESDAY
IF %day%==Wed goto :WEDNESDAY
IF %day%==Thu goto :THURSDAY
IF %day%==Fri goto :FRIDAY
IF %day%==Sat goto :END
IF %day%==Sun goto :END
::EXIT
goto END
:MONDAY
echo Monday
set DAY=Mon
goto RUN
:TUESDAY
echo Tuesday
set DAY=Tue
goto RUN
:WEDNESDAY
echo Wednesday
set DAY=Wed
goto RUN
:THURSDAY
echo Thursday
set DAY=Thu
goto RUN
:FRIDAY
echo Friday
set DAY=Fri
goto RUN
:SATURDAY
echo Saturday
set DAY=Sat
goto RUN
:SUNDAY
echo Sunday
set DAY=Sun
goto RUN
:RUN
echo.
echo Starting...
IF EXIST C:\BACKUPS\Backup_%DAY%_bak.dat DEL /F /Q C:\BACKUPS\Backup_%DAY%_bak.dat
IF EXIST C:\BACKUPS\Backup_%DAY%_bak.dat DEL /F /Q C:\BACKUPS\Backup_%DAY%_bak.dat
ECHO Backing up Procare database to C:\BACKUPS\Backup_%DAY%_bak.dat
:: ******* Change "MAIN-PC" to the computer name of your PC that runs Procare ********
SqlCmd -E -S MAIN-PC\PROCARE -Q "BACKUP DATABASE [Procare] TO Disk='C:\BACKUPS\Backup_%DAY%_bak.dat'"
ECHO.
DEL C:\BACKUPS\Backup_%DAY%_bak.7z
"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a c:\BACKUPS\Backup_%DAY%.7z C:\BACKUPS\Backup_%DAY%_bak.dat
echo Copying BAK file to external drive
copy C:\BACKUPS\Backup_%DAY%_bak.dat f:\procare_bak\
echo.
REM pause
:END