ChiroTouch's system requirements page is unambiguous on one point: "You are responsible for backing up your data and verifying the integrity of your data and backups." The same page lists "External hard drive and/or offsite backup" under both the 1-to-7-workstation and 8-plus-workstation server configurations. In other words, the software that holds your SOAP notes, insurance claims, patient demographics, appointment calendar, and payment history is only as safe as the copy you keep. For a practice owner, an office manager, or a doctor who has spent months building treatment plans and coding bundles inside ChiroTouch, that responsibility lands on your shoulders rather than on the vendor's.

Your Server Holds Everything—Protect It Accordingly

Think about what lives on that dedicated standalone server. The ChiroTouch database runs on Microsoft SQL Server 2016 or newer, and every workstation in the office pulls from a shared CTData directory on that machine. A corrupted SQL file, a failed hard drive, an accidental deletion by a staff member, or a ransomware event can erase years of patient records, completed claims, and the diagnostic code bundles your team relies on daily. The system requirements also note that RAID 5 arrays with spinning disks are "strongly discouraged" for SQL Server databases because of slower write speeds, which means many practices are running a single or dual-drive setup that offers no true redundancy. One bad sector, one power surge, and the file that held your last six months of billing data is gone.

A practical ChiroTouch backup routine starts with two distinct copies in two distinct locations. The first is a local image or file-level copy of the CTData folder and the SQL database, written to an external drive or a NAS unit in the same building. This copy lets you restore within minutes if a workstation crashes or a file is accidentally overwritten before the end of the day. The second copy is the offsite element that ChiroTouch's own documentation recommends. Whether that offsite copy lives in a secure cloud vault, a secondary office location, or a managed backup service, the key principle is geographic separation. A fire, flood, or theft that takes out your server rack will not also take the copy stored 200 miles away or in a data center with independent power and climate control.

Verification is where most practices lose ground. A backup you have never restored is, in practice, not a backup. Schedule a quarterly restore test: spin up a spare machine, point it at the backup, and confirm that the ChiroTouch application can read the patient list, pull up a chart, and open a billing report. Check that the SQL database restores cleanly and that the CTData shared folder is accessible to a test workstation. If you run an EHR-enabled version of ChiroTouch with Microsoft SQL Server Standard Edition, involve your IT professional in the test so the licensing and client-access details are confirmed alongside the data itself. Document the date, the person who performed the test, and any anomalies you observed. When the next real incident hits, that log is the difference between a thirty-minute recovery and a two-day scramble.

Finally, build the habit into your office culture the way you build in patient check-in and claim submission. Assign a named owner—usually the office manager—who confirms the nightly or weekly backup job completed without errors, rotates old copies, and flags any missed cycles to the practice owner. Keep the server's operating system and Microsoft updates current, since ChiroTouch's supported-platforms section requires the latest .NET framework and PowerShell, and stale patches can introduce the very instability that makes a backup feel urgent. If you use CTSecure or another offsite service, review your retention schedule and make sure it covers the full span of patient records you are expected to retain. None of this is complicated, and none of it requires a dedicated IT department, but it does require a routine. Your patients trust you with their clinical history; your ChiroTouch backup is the quiet promise that that history will still be there when you need it.

Sources and further reading