Over the weekend we relaxed and took it easy, for the most part - yard work, shopping, and TV - Patty worked on some orders she got, and continued making samples for the website. She came up with a price list and I just need to get it online!

This morning I got to work to find that the backups all went perfectly, even the W2K server, so that is corrected, at least. Of course, the BrightStor database was full and corrupted beyond repair. Seems like there is always something wrong with this backup software. Since it is limited to 2gb per database, and we don't have that large a drive to put it on, we can only have a weeks worth of data in it. Worse, purging the data does not reclaim the full space it took - only a fraction - so that after a few months the database fills up. This morning I deleted and reinstalled the entire database portion of the software, and added 4gb of storage to it (2 extensions) in an effort to make it last a bit longer.

Since one full backup takes it to 60% full, and in order to run the 'true purge' script we need 3x as much free space as occupied space (insane requirement), we will never be able to run the reclaim script. We have a 9gb and two 4gb drives - one 4gb is the log file drive - 2gb used. One 4gb is the main database - 4gb used as the main db is 2gb and the two index dbs are about 1g each when full. I had about 6gb free on the 9gb drive, so I added the two extensions there, leaving about 2gb open for logs and normal operations. Without a major investment in a new server and huge drive array, we will likely never be able to do the routine reclaim script. As I have said in the past, I truly do not recommend that anyone use BrightStor.

You would think that 1.2 million files would not be an obstacle in this day and age - only about 100gb total. Yet the BrightStor database claims that you need an insane amount of drive space for the databases alone in order to use the system efficiently.