QUESTION:

"Why does my recipe data keep getting corrupted? I keep renaming the data folder to data-old and restoring from my Cook'n Cloud account. But, every few months, this problem happens again. Just curious, Cook’n and Master Cook seam to have the same type of issues with files or program being corrupted, why is this?" -James

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ANSWER:

There are some real-time backup software products out there that corrupt the Cook'n data files (and probably MasterCook and others too). Carbonite, for example, is one of them.

What happens with real-time backup software is when the Cook'n app terminates, the backup software notices that the Cook'n data files have changed so it locks them in order to make a backup. When the backup is complete, it unlocks the files.

This is well and good unless Cook'n is installing an auto-update. In that case, as soon as Cook'n exits, it launches again. When it launches, the app cannot access the database files because they are locked by the real-time backup software. As a result, the files become corrupted.

To solve this problem, simply change the Carbonite (or other backup software) settings and configure it to backup once per day at 2:00 am, for example, rather than in real-time. Not only will this resolve the problem with Cook'n but it will increase the speed and responsiveness of your computer by about 5 to 10x.

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RESPONSE:

Ok I will give it a try!

You are a rock star!