Before the academic year starts, it's a good time to do a little spring cleaning. Removing old backups both from the backup queue and from your files area will help reduce clutter on the server, and prevent problems with course backups down the line. Let's start by looking at your "online backups"

Online Course Backups

Blackboard/WebCT CE stores a copy of your backup online in the database for quick retrieval. However, it also takes up a great deal of room when you look at nearly 3000 courses having backups like this. We encourage you to backup your course with some frequency, but please download the backup to your computer to reduce load and bloat on the server. Here's how:

1. Log in to your course in the Build or Teach tab.
   
2. Click on Manage Course, then on Backup. If you have any online backups, they'll be listed here along with the date and time they were made.
   
3. To save a copy to your computer, you must first save the online backup to a backup file. Click on the action link menu (the gray button) next to the backup you wish to download, and click "Save as File."
4. You'll get a "Browse for Location" button that only offers you "My Files" and "Class Files" as an option. I recommend saving it to "My Files"
5. For the "Save As" name, either accept the default name, or change it to something else that makes more sense, like "geo503_090909_afreed.bak" that identifies the course, the date, and your name.
6. Make sure you check the Tracking Data check box. This makes sure all tracking information about your student activity is stored in the backup. This will be essential if you need to restore the backup for a grade challenge later.
7. Click OK
8. Once the backup has finished saving, click the action link button again and select Delete.

You can also watch a video of this process. Online Course Backups in Blackboard CE8

Backup Files
Saving a backup from the database to your files area is a necessary step, but you still need to download the backup file (ending in .bak) to your computer. If you saved it to My Files, here's how to download it.

1. Go to your course list. If you're already in Blackboard, click on the "Course List" link at the top of the page.
2. Click on the "Content Manager" tab
3. Locate your backup file (ends in .bak), click on the action link next to the file name and select "Download."
4. Find a safe location on your computer to store this backup file.
5. After the file has downloaded, click the action link next to the file name and select "Delete."

You can also watch the video Blackboard CE8 Course Backup Files

Backup Files in Class Files
If you save your course backups in your "Class Files" area (that is, the file manager for that course), you increase the size of each backup significantly. For example, if you save a 30 MB backup in your course, your next course backup will be the size of your course plus that 30MB backup, or roughly 60MB. Your next Backup will be the course size plus the 30MB backup and the 60MB backup.

While the technical maximum backup size is quite large (~2GB), course backups exceeding 100MB because slow and difficult to work with. Backups exceeding 300MB become unpredictable, and may not restore correctly. Backups exceeding 500MB are almost impossible to work with, and unless the administrator has command line access, are essentially unusable.

It is important that you do not store course backups in your class files area so you do not jeopardize the integrity of your course backups.

You can also watch the video Blackboard CE8 Backups in Class Files

Labels: admin, backup, cleaning, webct