Hi Robert,
Yea, I've lost some research worth maybe a week or a month and that alone is terrible, to say the least.
One thing I do, since I have a website, is upload critical data to a private folder on my website. I use GoDaddy and even though it can be many GBs worth, there still seems to be always room for more. I don't know if there is a limit.
A cousin of mine said he backs up data to an external drive and then rotates it to one he keeps in his car. I didn't start this idea yet, but sounds good to me.
I do use three external drives and back up everything there, too.
The main point is to start making back-ups on a regular basis. I back up my genealogy program files every time I exit the pgm. That might be 10 times in a day.
It's sometimes more convenient to just leave it running, but that has sometimes caused data loss when power goes out, or something like that.
So close it and restart.
And it's also very convenient to leave the computer on for days at a time, but Windows systems start running slowly and things get corrupted.
So rebooting daily is best and things run faster.
This is such an important topic. Nobody should ignore it or you're playing with fire.
I think it takes one large loss of data for people to really change their bad habits. I know that's what happened to me in 1997. I year I remember because I noted large data loss in my files - notes on individuals I had been gathering for years. They were suddenly gone one day. These were notes and not the family trees, so I just had to start over again for many people.
Doug da Rocha Holmes
Sacramento, California
Pico Genealogist
916-550-1618
Sacramento, California
Pico Genealogist
916-550-1618
---------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [AZORES-Genealogy] Re: Sad Computer Story
From: robertjm <rober...@hockeyhockeyhockey.com>
Date: Thu, January 10, 2013 10:21 am
To: azores@googlegroups.com
That's certainly an option, and I've even got several of those laying around myself. However, not to sound snarky, but that does you little good if your house burns down, is broken into or the drive goes bad. I've had the latter happen on an external drive and even if it's under warranty, the manufacturer won't try and recover your data for you, which could be an expensive proposition.Things like research and program data backups are fairly small, being text. You can backup quite a bit within 2Gb, not to mention some of those companies will run specials on backup. I've been able to parlay freebies up to about 8gb on Dropbox by allowing them to automate a backup of digital photos taken on my smartphone to my folder on their servers. Once those pics are there I can even delete them, yet I get to keep the extra space. Win-win IMHO. You DON'T backup things like the operating system or program files. You just chalk those up to sweat equity if you have to restore a computer because you if you have a new computer, you're probably going to have a different configuration anyways.You could maintain several external drives and then rotate them out of a safety deposit box somewhere. A little extreme? For most of us probably. However, I shutter to think of the catastrophe of losing a lifetime's research like Doug Holmes or Rosemary Capodicci might have (to name just a coupe off the top of my head). Decent sized flash drives can be had for around $30, or less, these days,and are small enough to fit on a key ring, so they'd certainly fit in the smallest of safety deposit boxes.At the very least, print out your Family Group Sheets for your entire program in pdf format, and store that in the cloud somewhere. You'd have to key it all in, but at least you have it all to look at!Robert--
On Wednesday, January 9, 2013 11:40:28 AM UTC-8, deb wrote:I have Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive to back up all my computer files. It's set to backup once a day in the early a.m. This way I have all my data backed up and I don't have to pay some service to back up for me. the devise is 5"x3"x .5", nice and small. There are newer units on the market. cost is between $80 and $100.00 depending on the size you need. Most services run about $100.00/yr. for 100gb of storage. Anyway your own portable external hard drive is another option.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to azores+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Follow the confirmation directions when they arrive.
For more options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership."
