punkerdoo said:

We thought we were better to clone the drive (of numerous companies) each night while everyone was logged out, then we ended up with a corruption in a file and Sage told us the only way to avoid that is to use the "backup service within simply".

If the backup, cloning software only, ever accesses the drive at night, then there should not have been any data corruption *caused* by the backup. 

The tech may have confused your description of drive *cloning* with a *continuous* backup system.  These run all the time, are incompatible with any database system, and were meant only to back up small individual documents. 

there somehow was a corruption in the database during the day. the prior evening clone (which was in 2017) was fine, but then we converted to 2018 next day and opened fine, worked in it all day, and then went to work on it a few days later and none of the clones from after the 2018 conversion work. they all show the corrupt version. we had to go back to the 2017 and restore and re-convert again and re-do that days work. they don't know what caused the corruption but said safer to use "backup" in the software and I explained to them the reason we don't is because it only backs up the first use/close of the day and not the rest of the day. it should have an option to backup each time you use it.

the part where he is confused is that he thinks checking that box within the program means it backs up each time, IT DOES NOT. backs up first close each day. one time.

punkerdoo said:

IT DOES NOT. backs up first close each day. one time.

You are correct, it does exactly what it says on the screen.  There should be a checkbox for 'every time'.

The backup *reminder* will run every single time (also, as is says on the screen), but the automated *backup* will only run once per day, the first time the file is closed from Single User Mode.  If the company 'file' is in Multi-User Mode it just closes.

punkerdoo said:

we converted to 2018 next day and opened fine, worked in it all day, and then went to work on it a few days later and none of the clones from after the 2018 conversion work. they all show the corrupt version. we had to go back to the 2017 and restore and re-convert again and re-do that days work. they don't know what caused the corruption

Well, like I said before, it's fairly well impossible that a backup software that runs overnight will attack and gibble files that are closed - *especially* only, exactly the particular data that has gone through a highly complicated process to be converted to another version. 

We're a larger multi-user installation, and only use the manual backup method because it gives an opportunity to put in the last JE entry number and the person's initials, and the last person logging out has to know they're the last one out, and *manually* switch to 'single user mode'.  Which defeats the automation.

I don't think it corrupted overnight either. I think the corruption happened in the conversion or while working on it that day, but prior copy was fine and evening of the 2018 change was corrupt. he said wouldn't have happened if I used "backup within the software" I kind of think he's wrong but i'd like the option of backup each time opened if they are telling people this is the best way to backup. 

I argued with him that he was wrong and it does exactly what it says on the line there, he said "no the program words it wrong". nope, program words it exactly right. he was clearly confused. I sent him an email, no response.

All I can suggest as far as getting a feature changed is to send it to Sage as a product suggestion.  (from the Help menu in the software, takes you to a website where you have to sign up, if you haven't already)

Sage should take any report of conversion errors quite seriously.  Sounds like they stopped looking at the first slightly plausible excuse for it not being their fault, rather than getting a copy of the file from you to pick apart and see if they could see the cause of the problem. 

As I understand it, the database server software does a check of each block, and if there's any mismatch to the checksum from when it was last written / closed, it will refuse to load anything.  If that happened, there was a (always serious) problem with data that couldn't be read back from the disk after writing, and whether it's the operating system or a hardware issue or antimalware shenanigans, it's never Sage Software's fault when that happens.