there are multiple ways to make a backup, but it would be most nice to do this when I am sure no other transaction is running at the moment; not kill off others retreival or store before i stop the orthanc service for backup. And even if I only dump the 'index' db and copy the files in db-v4, i'd rather wait for a sure quiet spot.
This is a very dangerous way to approach backups as you cannot guarantee that a transaction hasn’t begun since you got the response back from Orthanc. Your main concern is really about the database (sqllite) and there is good information about how to do it safely here:
Orthanc should implement a backup mechanism that uses the sqllite backup API and either expose a REST call to trigger it or do perhaps do it automatically via a schedule.
Currently, before Orthanc implements other database back-ends than SQLite, the only reliable way to backup Orthanc consists in stopping it, waiting for the process to go away, archiving the content of the “OrthancStorage” folder, then restarting Orthanc.
Using an embedded database engine such as SQLite comes with great advantages in the ease of deployment, but does not provide advanced mechanisms such as those available in advanced database engines like PostgreSQL/MySQL.
