Using Moodle

Backup

There’s a saying in the computer industry: “There are two types of users, those who have lost data, and those that will.” Eventually, a hard drive will fail or your database will collapse on your Moodle server and you will lose data. Fortunately, Moodle has an automated backup system that you can run on a nightly basis to export all the course materials for the entire site.

The backup tool in Moodle actually runs the same functions as an individual course backup. It simply runs automatically on all of the courses on the site at a designated time. It’s a good idea to schedule backups for when your server isn’t usually busy. Running the backup tool over all the courses can be processor-intensive, so you shouldn’t run it when there are a lot of students trying to access the server.

There are two steps to setting up the backup. When you access the backup screen, the top section lets you set the types of material to be backed up. Again, the Moodle developers have done a good job of describing each setting. If you are running a nightly full-server backup (which I heartily recommend), I suggest you use the following settings:

Include Modules

Set this to “Yes with user data” to preserve all student work for each course.

Users

Set this to All. If you need to restore your Moodle server from a backup, you don’t want to lose any accounts, even if they aren’t associated with a current course.

User Files

Set this to Yes as well. You want the restored server to look as much like the original as ...