======Database -> Backups Tab======

The **Backups** tab lets you specify how VPOP3 will make its daily backup of its database.

We strongly recommend that you backup the database regularly in case of disk problems or file corruption. You can use the VPOP3 backup feature, or manually backup the PostgreSQL database using the pg_dump command, or use another program to backup the PostgreSQL database if you wish. Note that a simple disk copy will **not** backup the database in a usable form!

To restore a backup of the database, see [[how_to:restore_a_backup_of_vpop3]]

In general the **PostgreSQL Binary Directory** and **Dump Command Options** settings should not be changed, but the **Dump Command Target File** setting can be changed to make VPOP3 store the backup in a different location, or with a different filename.

====PostgreSQL Binary Directory====
This is where the PostgreSQL executable files are stored - usually it is the **VPOP3\pgsql\bin** directory, but if you have a custom installation of PostgreSQL it may be in a different location.

====Dump Command Options====
VPOP3 uses the **pg_dump** command (part of the standard PostgreSQL distribution) to backup the database. 
See [[http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/app-pgdump.html]] for details on the **pg_dump** command, and the command line options it supports.

The default options used by VPOP3 are simply **-F c** which tells pg_dump to make a compressed file.

====Dump Command Target File====
Specify the filename/location here. For instance if you specify **c:\backups\dbback.dmp** then VPOP3 will write every database backup to the file **dbback.dmp** in the **c:\backups** folder on the server.

You can implement a simple backup rotation system by using replaceable strings in the filename. For instance, the default name of **DBBACK-%w.DMP** tells VPOP3 to save the database as DBBACK-0.DMP on Sunday, DBBACK-1.DMP on Monday and so on. The following Sunday, the earlier DBBACK-0.DMP will be overwritten.

If you want VPOP3 to store the backup files on a network drive, you must use the **UNC** path format (**\\server\\share\\path**) not mapped drives, and you must be aware of network permissions for the Windows account which VPOP3 is running as.


{{tag>backup database}}