File maintenance: consistency checks, compaction, and recovery
IntermediateUnderstand the maintenance operations available for FileMaker files — when to run them and what they actually do.
What you'll learn
- What each maintenance operation does and when to use it
- Why the output of Recover should never go to production
- How regular backups reduce the need for emergency recovery
FileMaker files accumulate fragmentation and occasionally suffer corruption. Three maintenance operations address these issues: Consistency Check (read-only integrity scan), Compact (reclaim wasted space), and Recover (extract data from a damaged file).
Consistency Check
A consistency check scans the file for structural integrity errors. Server runs this automatically on open if the file was not closed cleanly. You can trigger it manually from Admin Console via a Verify schedule (see the Verify Schedules lesson). A clean consistency check does not guarantee data correctness — only structural integrity.
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