Genealogy Chat

As I hinted earlier, Memory Sticks and CD's are NOT the best idea. Far better is an external drive coupled with a file backup program.

Still no good if your house goes up in smoke. If you want to insure against the latter then use a web based storage system.

Just read this thread with interest as my PC is nearly 10yrs old now. No-wonder its a bit slow! Hubby backed up his laptop only 3 days before it crashed and he lost everything. Thank goodness he did as there was all his own Fam Hist. and 100's of photos.
Me - I put all my photos into folders and onto our ext hard drive and at the end of each year I transfer them to CD. Works for me.
Also my FH is a real mix of photos, word docs etc etc and they are all on our ext hard drive. When I work on one I copy it over to PC whilst working and re-save it to hard drive... again - works for me.

I'm a bit of a paper person too as I have a folder with sections for each family surname which hold printouts of all emails and replies. Works for me as I wasn't very techy when I first started all this.

Must say, never thought about memory stick *son raises eyes skywards*! What a great idea. That way we won't be fighting over who has the hard drive either !

Now I know why I keep nothing on the computer, it is on hard copy....slow, but safe.

thanks for al thesuggestions, chaps(and chappess's)

will give them a serious perusal. thanks again
Jonesy, most interesting article.....
Bob

lets hope this site dont go down,or we will all be in trouble!
I too have lost information, having 3 computers on the go is a real problem.
I print everything off and place in folders in a storage box. Great for family members who are not on the internet. Christmas time is spent with them exploring the box while I start on the snowball bottle :)

Is it possible to back up "Bookmarks" on my main screen?
I can't even see how I can print them out.

Your computer contains thousands of filed and manually copying a handful over to another drive is only playing as it is easy to miss something important.

Far better to install a proper back-up program and run this on a regular basis, than trying to do things manually.

I am currently experimenting with a program called Backup4all which came free with Issue 93 (August) of Your Family Tree Magazine. This allows you to create back-up schedules which can include as few or as many files as you wish - even an entire disk - and run either manually or automatically whenever you wish. The output can be zipped to save space and automatically restored to the original location as the click of a button.

There are also other programs which will allow you to take an image of your disk i.e. clone it - which in theory will allow you to recover your entire operating system, programs et al - but I have not tried any of these as yet.

Do be careful using sticks and CD's as these can fail. Especially take heed of Paulines post re removing sticks correctly. The problem with CD's is that they can be unreliable and fail to burn correctly every now and again.

You probably all know this, perhaps.

But you should also export your family tree to a gedcom file, so that you can back this up too.

You can use this gedcom file to import the data into other software too.

Periodical backups are recommended, but are unfortunately something we all put on the long finger until it is too late.

Other thing when buying a hard-drive, I always stick to WD (Western Digital) or maybe Seagate, found these to be more reliable than others I have tried.

Bob, take a look at this site it might provide the answer:

www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=418

Not sure about completely cloning your existing fixed hard drive onto your new external one although it probably can be done. I know that I wish I had done something like that as sorting out all my original program disks including Windows and then loading them on to my new fixed hard drive was a pain in the proverbial.

When I copied my files onto my external hard drive I first arranged them into folders on my existing fixed hard drive then I simply copied the folders one at a time from my fixed HD onto my external hard drive.

Perhaps someone cleverer than me can explain how to clone a complete drive.

right chaps, i have got a Medion 1 terrabyte drive from Lidl a few weeks ago for £79.

how do I go about cloning? my hard drive to it.
is it possible to do this
My PC is just about clogged up with stuff.
Bob

Now she tells me (lol)

I had indeed forgotten to do that. As far as email addresses are concerned I have another way of recovering those quite easily but my favourite websites will take a lot longer to get back together particularly my Genealogy ones of which I had at least 100.

Don't forget to back up your e-mail messages and contacts too. When my old computer gave up the ghost I had backed up all the important files but forgotten about the Outlook messages. There was a lot of valuable information in there that I no longer have, and some contacts I have lost touch with.

Oh Ozi - that sounds useful.

Jill

I agree with all. My computer became unstuck the other day but I had backed-up only the night before on an external hard drive.

However usb/memory sticks have so much memory now they are just as good.

Another thing I've learnt about recently is the website https://www.dropbox.com . You can drop files into your account which means all your data is stored away from home as often your pc/laptop and external drive/stick are in the same place if a disaster happens such as fire or theft.

You can access dropbox, obviously, from anywhere in the world and on any computer. You can register for free and up to 2GB of storage is free.

Ozi

Thanks Jonesy. Tomorrow's job.

I keep my offline tree and lots of other stuff on a memory stick - which I back up onto the pc periodically. It also means that I can work on my family tree at work in my lunch break ...

Jill

Meg,

I bought mine, a 320Gb one for £39.99 at PC world. It just plugs into a USB socket whenever needed. It is manufactured by Western Digital.

Sensible guy, that Jonesy.

I'm off to get an external hard drive, I thought they were about £200.

Mmmm................darn good idea! Me thinks I will invest in an external drive.

Seems more logical to have all genealogy stuff in one place for starters.

I have several 'Word Documents - History of the XXXX Family' - whcih I update as and when new infomation has been found and proven. This enables me to pass on information to my cousins etc., periodically either by post or email as they don't all 'do' genealogy. I'd hate to lose those files. So much work gone into transferring info from Census records, certificates etc.

I have a lot of genealogy stuff on CD's too but it's a nightmare trying to find certain things on them..my own fault of course for not labeling them all correctly!

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