atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems VoiceMail Systems and Programming backing up a DOS voice mail

I have a lot of key voice systems out there. I had one of the hard drives go bad today, so it was not fun. Does anyone have any ideas on how to go about backing up a DOS based system automatically or by using a CD burner. The key voice can be backed up using floppy disks, but this is a terrible way and to time consuming.

Mr. Z

you're right about the floppys! Been there done that. I'm going through this right now as I have several systems that are getting pretty old. One site is going to try to put another hard drive (replace the floppy if necessary) in the VM system and just do an occasional disc copy, their IT dept. is going to do it. I'm anxious to see if anyone else has a good idea. I don't know how to make hard drives redundant but that would be the best case solution. I'll let you know how my client makes out, when and if they actually do it. They have been warned to make a back up so I'm clear.
mark

I have backed up several Key voice systems using a porable tape drive unit.

The unit plugs into the back of the hardware key on the parallel port.

It may be hard to find one new these days as I have had this one for about 4 years now.

As usual in the ever changing PC trade the stuff comes on the scene and is gone in less than a year.

Searching on e-bay for a portable tape drive may help.

DJ

I would think there should be a way to hook up as tip said but use a portable drive to store them on, I would ask one of the compt. guru's , they may know of a slick trick to back up DOS programs.

We use the same methode as Markk. Most company IT dept's have a spare hard drive to put in the voicemail pc. Just remember if you have to use the backup and it is a month or so old, so will be the messages in all the mail boxes. And greeting changes will be lost as well. Most IT dept's tell us they will back-up once a week but once a month is more like it.

With the second hard drive you can use a batch file that uses xcopy to back up to the second hard drive after the nightly reboot

Mr. Big has the best senario for my money.

Now, how do we back up the new "in skin" systems? Let the wiz kids put their caps on and figure that out cause we'll need to know that in a year or two.
mark

A second hard drive is best. The cost is minimal compared to a full rebuild and lost messages.

I put a second hard drive in all the voicemails I install DOS and NT/2000.

Its just a simple batch file I wrote to xcopy the vm diretory to the second hard drive. I even have it saving several days of backups before deleting the oldest.

(keep in mind you need DOS 6.22 for xcopy to work. Keyvoice sends them with DOS 6.20 you need to upgrade it)

I always put in my diskm.bat file to call the batch file I wrote. this is the file the keyvoice system runs to do its nightly routine.

If you have any questions I will try and walk you through it.

Do you know if it will work with all dos based vm

xcopy is a DOS 6.22 command.

SO it should work on any DOS 6.22 base voicemail.

In the KeyVoice systems I xcopy the whole vm directory out to another drive. This is basiclly the whole vmail.

The key is knowing how the voicemail shuts down to do its nightly routine.

Assuming the vmail shutsdown and runs a nightly cleanup, you just need to know if it runs a batch file you can edit.

KeyVoice runs a file called diskm.bat. I do my editing in that file.