Gotcha - thanks. That makes perfect sense. I have a Time Machine on my home computer (which should backup the DT database sitting there, though perhaps I should check that!), and there is some kind of regular backup utility installed on my work Mac (I am looking into what the output of that looks like, because I’ve until now stored everything on the central server). And besides that I will periodically store zipped versions of the whole database on the work server, though I won’t work from them. Possibly overkill, but I’m freaked out about losing a whole lot of research : )
Better to have a bit more backup than not enough. 