Blackmagic Forum

I am trying to back up my database and am getting a 'failed to back up' prompt. Never seen this before in my previous back ups. How do I finish the back up?

Try backing up to a different location, say the Desktop. From there, you can move it wherever you need.

Coming from working in a program like Pro Tools for decades where each project file is stored in its own project folder in a very straight-forward way and in location(s) of your choosing, the Resolve Database is terrifying and baffling to me. It seems like there's just so much that can and will go so wrong with projects being stored in such a way.

Am I completely wrong in feeling trepidatious? So far, I'm exporting project files to the folders containing media as a matter of course so that I have an alternative, discrete version of them. Is that common / good practice, or am I being paranoid?

(Sorry if this is something of a thread hijack, but this is one of the areas of Resolve with which I'm most uncorfortable as a newer user and about which I've been thinking a lot lately.)

A database is just a series of folders. Descend deep enough and you'll find a "Projects" folder and inside that, your project files in ".db" form. You can also just drag the database folder to another disk, for an instant backup. Or make a copy. Or use Resolve's cloning function, for data verification, to copy it.

It's also a good practice to export project files (.drp) regularly. If anything goes wrong with the database, you still have the project files which can be imported into a working database on that machine or any other.

Just as a follow up, this is what I found. I opened the file location where the backup resides on my drive and copied the files. I pasted them to my external drive and had a prompt show up saying there was 'inactive' file or something like that. I told the prompt to skip the files that were in question. I then did a side by side comparison of the two folders (original back up file and the copied file). I found 2 DBF files that did not copy over (the 'inactive' files, I am assuming). I really didn't need the two projects so I deleted the projects. After that, I tried the back up and it worked. I don't know why this worked or even why I encountered this problem to start with. But that is what I did. Hopefully it helps someone else.

rstreber wrote:Am I completely wrong in feeling trepidatious?

I think so.

The database actually offers some advantages that separate project files don't, such as the Live Save feature, which is a Godsend.

And you can backup the database for security, as well as export out individual projects to stand alone files. So I see it as the best of all possible options.