Backup Files

There is some probability that you will loose a stack by corruption: If the program crashes just in the middle of saving a stack, that stack file won't be usable, and the data in it lost, because the structure probably won't be valid. Another albeit less likely way for corruption to occur is if MoStacks would not crash while saving, but write a stack with structural errors nevertheless because of a bug, a stack that you won't be able to open again.

The problem with the second scenario is that everything looks ok until at a later time you try to open the stack, only to be greeted by a message that the stack is not valid and can't be used.

To protect against this somewhat, MoStacks on Symbian as default behavior writes backup files: Whenever you save a stack that is already present on disk, that "old" stack file is filed away with another name first. If you later use the proper stack file due to corruption, you can at least go back to the state of the data that is contained in the backup file.

For writing backup files _bak is appended to the stack name. If for example you have a stack with a filename of Countries.MoStack, MoStacks will produce a backup file with the name Countries_bak.MoStack.

There is no function yet for easy switching to the backup file when the "main" stack file is corrupt, and as a default MoStacks does not show you backup files in the stack list on the Start View. You can use some file manager tool like SMan to delete the damaged stack and rename the backup file, or use the Open function in the Stack menu of the Start View because the file selection box that is used by that command does show backup files, followed by a Save as command.