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.

Xcopy will work, also you could just ghost the drive to keep it simple.

Xcopy would be your ideal solution.

can someone post how to do this batch file, I want to autoback up a COVoice by VSR.

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https://www.tgscorp.com

I don't remember what directories the covoice uses, but something like this should work:

xcopy /e c:\vmdir d:\vmdir

I'll check into it and post something more exact in a few days.

In addition to the line that Junkman gave you wil probablly want to add the /c and /y switches to keep the backup from hanging up the voicemail. Add this line to either the autoexec.bat or the batch file that the system runs for maintenance.

Kerry

What about a flash drive? Has anyone ever tried that?

looks good, I don't have a flash drive but I'll try out the xcopy. thanks a bunch.

We have a backup of our voice mail. For ours we use Norton Ghost to make a clone of the hard drive, which we have in storage, just in case.

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Together We Prosper

I do a Xcopy c: d: /y/e/v on the Macrovoice systems.

This is the second time I've done this. I just setup a Keyvoice voicemail with some consecutive batch files to prompt the operator to insert disk, type this, then it prompts when to insert the next disk. I made a 10-disk set, in case the message files consumed more than one disk. The one I just did took up 5 floppies. I did it according to the backup instructions in the I&M manual. The first disk has the config.sys and autoexec.bat. The second has the various files like the *.cfg, trans*.*, etc. I also included my Disk1, Disk2, Disk3 (and so on) batch files to backup on this disk. The 3rd disk backs up the gt*.* files. The 4th backs up nm*.* files. The 5th and higher disks back up the mg*.* files. Although the message files don't have to be backed up, it keeps the database happy when they are restored along with the *.dvm files (which I forgot to mention are also on disk 2).

Anyway, the reason I'm bringing it up is because I'm wondering if anyone else has done anything similar? I tweaked on these files a while until I got them where I thought they were decent. Then, this time, I saved the batch files, so I have them available next time I want to do this. The first time I set it up, I didn't save myself a copy, so this second time I had to do it all over again. I do think it turned out better the second time around.

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| Signal Communication Systems - Fresno, CA |

| Telephone Systems, Voicemail Syste... & Data Cabling - Central Valley, CA

yep, I have created the same thing for the floppys. I wrote a batch file that runs and back up all the important files in the system. Not prompts or messages though.

I did this for the customers that did not want to fork out the cost of a backup hard drive. I tell them, they think the backup drive is expensive. wait to see what it cost to rebuild from scratch.

At least with the major backup files. you get the vmail structure any changes made in the trans.txt,vm.cfg and the comdial.lnk.

I back up anything that may be important to rebuilding the system.

then its just a reinstall the software and copy my files back into it and your done. other then them recording their name and greetings to their mailboxes. I copy all the routing box greetings.

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