# History

On this page you choose what goes into DU Meter's totals and when weeks and months begin. You can also back up,
restore and delete the history DU Meter has saved.

> [!NOTE]
> These options apply to every user of this computer, and only an administrator can change them.

### Recording

While **Count traffic toward the totals** is checked, DU Meter adds the traffic it counts to the totals and
reports. While it is cleared, DU Meter shows the traffic but records none of it: totals, reports and
dumeter.net stay as they are. Use it, for example, to try other filtering options without affecting your
totals. DU Meter shows a pause sign before its speeds while nothing is recorded.

While **Keep separate totals for each program** is checked, DU Meter keeps how much each program received and
sent in every hour. The Programs tab of [DU Meter Totals and Reports](https://www.hageltech.com/support/kb/du/using/totals) shows it, to every user of this computer. Clear the
checkbox to stop recording. What was recorded stays until you delete it: **Delete...** removes the programs of
the deleted dates together with the totals.

Both are checked unless you clear them.

### Weeks and months

DU Meter can count weeks and months from any day of the week and of the month: useful when your billing period
does not begin on the 1st, or when weeks in your country begin on Monday rather than Sunday.

### Saved history

You can create a backup file with all DU Meter accumulated statistics. This is useful if you need to re-format
your hard disk and would like to preserve DU Meter data for a later re-install.

**Back up...** will let you select a file to write a backup to, and then will perform a backup. **Restore...**
will let you select a previously created backup file, and then asks whether to replace the current history
with the backup or add the backup to it. Add a backup made before a re-install to the days DU Meter has
recorded since; an hour that is both in the backup and in the current history is counted twice.

**Delete...** deletes the saved statistics of the days you choose, the first and the last included. Although
DU Meter is fairly efficient and even 100 years of accumulated statistics do not take much disk space or affect
DU Meter operation in any way, sometimes deleting old data is a smart thing to do to avoid confusion (for
example, if you changed Internet providers and would like to count only traffic to/from the new one). Another
reason would be if your system's clock was set incorrectly way into the future, and you would like to delete
that data from the database.