question about microsoft visual sourcesafe

Speaking strictly of backup, since VSS is a file sharing application, all you need to do is copy the data files.  Each night I copy our databases to another machine and if something broke, all I have to do is copy the files back.  Copy everything from the directory that contains the file srcsafe.ini and those below it.  For instance:

   VSS
    |
     srcsafe.ini
     users.txt
    |
    +data
    +temp
    +users

Copy everything from VSS on down.

To reduce panic in case of a problem, it wouldn't hurt to do a GET of your latest versions as is done by the batch file in the second reference above.  This is NOT a backup of your VSS database (history, users, rights, etc.) but just a current copy to keep things rolling in case of a problem.

However, this is just backup.  The Best Practices article referenced above should be taken to heart.

thanks sunncoder. the script of neokobe: did you ever test it? does it works well? does it only copy the vss data files to another location ?

thanks experts. about restoring the files from backup: you mean just copy/paste them back from backup to their original location ? how do you know witch files to copy back ? this is from microsoft :

Caution   Never restore a complete backup of a database over an existing database. Visual SourceSafe maintains very complex links between files. Restoring a whole database backup over an existing database may confuse the links between files and cause incorrect versions of the files to be displayed in the database.

so if i backup vss, and a disaster happend, how do i restore it all from backup ?

thank you all experts
itay

is that mean that if i loose some projects or some files only, the only way to restore them is to delete the entire vss directory (or onlt what's inside it) and to copy it all back from the backup ?

I have not used the script myself .. I used to use VSS once upon a time but I dont use it any longer.

>is that mean that if i loose some projects or some files only,
How would you lose some files? In case of corruption use the analyze tool.

Since incremental backups are discouraged, if the damage is not recoverable, then yes you would have to copy back "afresh" everything from backup.

The databases I tend are about 1 or 2 GB and my backup/recovery system is all-or-nothing.

I do not believe that there is an automated way to backup VSS in a way that permits you to pick and choose which files to recover.  The Admin tool has the ability to "Archive" a project from which you can retreive select components, but I don't think that there is a command line option for archiving.  Therefore, you would have to do this by hand each time you backed up.

Because "all-or-nothing" suits our situation, I have never persued archiving as a backup method.  I just did a quick look at the VSS help file and found nothing about command line archiving.  For me, archiving is a way of removing something from the database that is no longer active.