Tuesday, January 24, 2012

5 ways to say Goodbye to Access database corruption



Most Access database users complained that Access is susceptible to corruption. Here are some ways to help you to protect your database from corruption. The ways are understandable and useful which I explain here not only for technical users, but also novice user can easily use it. These ways can help you in future as well. 

Never forget to take “Backup”!!


It is mandatory to schedule and maintain a regular backup of access database on safe location in the drive. Never store it on the same hard drive with your database because if something went wrong with that drive, you’ll lose data as well as backup copy. You can also use backup software to perform backup process. But remember some backup software starts backup process even if they’re open. These process only increases the possibilities of corruption, so first close your database before you perform backup process.


Encrypt only when required!!


At writing time every page is encrypted and decrypted at load time. If your database gets corrupted then it is very costly & difficult to recover encrypted data. So use only when it is more required.


Schedule regular maintenance of your database!!


Every application should have some basic maintenance built in. Schedule regular maintenance within your database. You can set it weekly, monthly.  Through automatic backup and clean shutdown detection, you can maintain your database.


Compact Regularly!!

Regularly compact your access database. Compacting always improves database performance. The Compact and Repair Database option is available in the Tools group on the Database Tools tab. Set this option to database so that at the time of closing database will compact automatically. Be sure you should back up your database before compacting.


Don't use mismatched Versions of the Jet Database Engine!!


All access database version supports different Jet database engine versions. If you try to run different versions of the Jet Database Engine in your environment, it can also corrupt your Access database. 


Last but NOT least:


Test to ensure following points that mentioned in the article. If all things in your database appear good & backup copy is also fine then you just need to check you are using right Jet Database Engine or not. Use compact repair utility to make sure about the maintenance of database. If it completes, then the corruption issue get resolved. But it may be possible that database get failed or at least appear to be fail in the initial step. You may have received corruption warning message it means there is still something wrong with database. To overcome this problem you can use Access Database Recovery Software. This software easily recover corrupt database and save it on your defined location.

Please feel free to write your comment if you have any doubt.

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