* Back up warning

[susanpenter]

I thought I would just post a message on here so everyone can learn from my experience.

I save my tree every time I make an alteration and have done weekly backups (I know I will be doing this daily now...)

However I was entering a census via Ancestral Sources and for some reason it produced an exception error and horrifyingly my whole tree of 4000 plus people were missing. The focus window showed just me and the records window just 42 individuals. I tried to backup from the last backup which was done in the last week and that had become corrupted too by the crash.

I have now had to create a whole new Family Historian project from a gedcom and everything has been lost since 28/12/14, things could have been much worse...

So my recommendation is when you do your recommended regular backups to then copy this file to a different location as a secondary backup.

Please do not be put of using Ancestral Sources I am still a massive fan and will be using it myself, these random unexplained events can happen to anyone at any time.

Susan

[tatewise]

Very wise words that echo glossary:backup_and_recovery|> Backup and Recovery.

Your PC or disk drive can crash at any moment, and sooner or later will when you least expect it.

BTW: AS also keeps a backup of your GEDCOM in its Backup folder, so you might find a more recent version there.

[susanpenter]

Hi Mike,

Do you know exactly the route of that folder as I have searched in the AS folder and found no gedcom in it, unless it was removed by the crash....

Thanks

[tatewise]

Two things:

First check you are using the File > Recover process correctly as explained in that KB advice.

In AS use Tools > Options and check the path for Backup Folder.

[tatewise]

Another thought is to inspect the project .fh_data folder where the Gedcom file resides.

There may be a temp file there that holds your most recent Gedcom data, and just needs renaming.

[NickWalker]

I thought I would just post a message on here so everyone can learn from my experience.

I save my tree every time I make an alteration and have done weekly backups (I know I will be doing this daily now...)

However I was entering a census via Ancestral Sources and for some reason it produced an exception error and horrifyingly my whole tree of 4000 plus people were missing. The focus window showed just me and the records window just 42 individuals. I tried to backup from the last backup which was done in the last week and that had become corrupted too by the crash.

I have now had to create a whole new Family Historian project from a gedcom and everything has been lost since 28/12/14, things could have been much worse...

So my recommendation is when you do your recommended regular backups to then copy this file to a different location as a secondary backup.

Please do not be put of using Ancestral Sources I am still a massive fan and will be using it myself, these random unexplained events can happen to anyone at any time.

Susan

I'm sorry to hear about your problems but I wanted to make a couple of points before anyone panics about using AS. Firstly by default AS keeps 10 backup copies of your file - i.e. a copy of your file just before the 10 most recent entries were made with AS. So even if a problem does occur you'll always have those. Also AS crashing would not have corrupted any of your backups so that sounds like a different issue. Perhaps AS crashed because of that underlying problem...

If you've not changed any of the default settings your 10 backups should be in your Documents folder under Ancestral Sources\Backups.

I'm happy to try to help via email over the weekend if you need any further guidance - email me via the link in the AS Help menu.

Regards

Nick