* OneDrive Data location

[Fruitbat]

My laptop is going in for repair and I'm trying to remove any sensitive data before it goes, including my FH data, which has information about living people.

In the Project Window there are 8 projects listed - all are saved to OneDrive rather than the hard drive on my computer.

As I'm not able to access the internet with that computer at present, when I click on 7 of the projects, a dialogue box appears saying that the file can't be opened - which is exactly what I would expect. However, when I click on the other project, it opens the file and displays all of the data I've entered, albeit with placeholders instead of images. I've checked the path of this project in File > File Statistics and it says that it's on OneDrive.

Since I'm definitely not connected to OneDrive on that laptop at present, from where is FH picking up the data, and how can I remove it?

Your advice would be much appreciated. TIA.

Eric

[tatewise]

Eric, the OneDrive modes of operation can be confusing and depend on its settings.

Despite what you think, OneDrive folders and files do exist on your hard drive.
How long they stay there depends on settings and whether the files have changed since last synchronised.

In the OneDrive settings, on the Settings tab, you have ticked Save space and download files as you use them.
That means they only exist on your hard drive when accessed by FH or AS or whatever.
Eventually, they will be purged to save space as per the settings.
But that will only happen after any file changes made have been synchronised with the cloud storage.

It is not advisable to operate OneDrive in that mode, because OneDrive is not providing any backup.
So you are entirely reliant on any local backups, which MUST be saved on external media.
There is little point in keeping your Projects on OneDrive unless you are synchronising with FH on another PC.

So before you send your laptop for repair, hopefully you have good Project backups.

I also strongly advise you run the Backup and Restore Family Historian Settings Plugin.
That preserves all your customisations in C:\ProgramData\Calico Pie\Family Historian\ and Windows Registry.
Without that, when your PC comes back, all those may have been wiped after a Windows re-install.

Regarding sensitive data, don't forget the Recycle Bin, which may hold old deleted files.
But even if that is emptied, and the OneDrive folder is emptied, the sensitive data will still reside on the hard disc, because deleting files just deletes the file index and not the file data itself.
It is rather like tearing out the Contents page of a book, which makes finding data difficult, but not impossible.

Oh, BTW, the OneDrive folder is usually within your Documents or maybe alongside your Documents folder.
However, right-click on the OneDrive cloud icon bottom right and choose Open your OneDrive folder to find it.
OR the FH File > Statistics you mentioned gives you the OneDrive folder path.
You could use File > Project Window > More Tasks > Delete Project but only after taking a Backup.

[GeneSniper]

When I sent my laptop for repair, I did a factory reset of my computer using the setting to reformat the drive. It took a little longer but that way anything left on my laptop would have been well deleted and someone would have to be very determined to find any fragments that may have survived. I would advise taking this route if you have all your files backed up and your laptop is in a working position to do it.

I would also agree that not having your data stored on your hard drive and Onedrive (if using MS Windows 7/10) is not the way to go. Even backing up to a USB memory key plugged in to your laptop is another good practice, that gives you 3 copies of your Projects one off site, one on site and one that can be on/off site. With this you should not have to worry if you have a computer hard drive crash, Microsoft server problem or laptop theft.

[Fruitbat]

Hi Mike & GeneSniper,

Thanks to both of you for your advice.

The reason I can't retain everything on my laptop is that the hard drive doesn't have sufficient capacity, whereas OneDrive gives me 1TB included in my Microsoft 365 package.

I regularly back-up my computers and OneDrive to a pair of external portable hard drives, so I don't have any issues with using OneDrive as my main storage medium.

Fortunately, I had already downloaded the Backup and Restore Family Historian Settings Plugin, before I lost the internet connection. However, when I tried to run it, it failed - saying it couldn't find a network connection. As I have a good back-up of the projects, and my limited number of personalised FH settings still exist on my emergency laptop, a wiped hard disk won't worry me too much.

I went one step further than just emptying the recycle bin. Any sensitive files went through McAfee's shredder.

I found the offending file where Mike said it would be, so rather than delete it, I just changed the file name and removed the default flag in the Project Window, so now none of the projects will open from the list in the Project Window, or from the recent files list in File > Gedcom File Tasks. The data is still there, but you would have to find your way through over 4,000 nested folders and 72,000 files to find it.

So, with your help, I've achieved what I want to achieve. Thank you.

[davidf]

If you have a good local computer shop you may find that they can swap your laptop hard drive for one with a bigger capacity. I did this to go from 100G to 500G (it was a while ago!), I think they charged me £30-£40 for the labour, plus the disk at cost.

About three years ago I did an upgrade myself (from 500G to 1T) following instructions on the internet. IF you feel confident to do this, you buy a new drive and a "caddy" (which temporarily connects an internal disk to a USB port) and suitable software (sometimes comes with the hard disk). I transferred everything (Win7 at the time) to the new bigger disk, but the alternative, if you have your system disks is to do a rebuild (clearing out all the garbage that computers acquire). You install a clean copy of your OS; update it, install your applications, update them, then copy across your data and configure your applications as required. (Your old set up remains on the old disk - so you have that as a "security back-up" and can always just reinstall it!)

[tatewise]

A number of points...

The Backup and Restore Family Historian Settings Plugin "The Internet appears to be inaccessible" message is just a warning that occurs when it checks if there is later version in the Plugin Store or tries to show Help & Advice.
Click OK and it will continue to run as normal.

Maybe you misunderstand the OneDrive versus Disk Drive storage requirements.
Just because OneDrive has a 1 Terabyte capacity does not require your Disk Drive to have that capacity.
I also have OS 365 and 1 Terabyte OneDive capacity, but my PC Disk Drive capacity is far less than that.
Every file that is saved to OneDrive is also permanently on my Disk Drive.
So unless you really are expecting to save more than your Disk Drive capacity to OneDrive keep a permanent local copy.

While your laptop is away for repair that would be an ideal time to upgrade its Disk Drive capacity as suggested by David.

[Fruitbat]

Hi David & Mike,

My current hard drive is 512GB, whereas the files I have on OneDrive are over 700GB - I do a lot of photo editing - which is why I choose to use OneDrive as my main storage medium. However, it's a good idea, to enquire about an upgrade for the hard drive, which would solve two issues at the same time - I should have thought of that myself.

When I saw the plug-in warning message come up, I presumed it was because I was trying to run it in safe mode - I can't get it to boot properly in normal mode - so I aborted the process. It's too late to do anything about it now as the laptop is going to a recommended local shop in a few minutes time, and as I said, I'm not too bothered about losing the few changes that I've made to the settings, because they'll be easy to redo when I get the machine back.

Thanks,

Eric

[davidf]

If upgrading your computer moving from FH 5 to FH 6 (£25 download then with free upgrade to 6.2.7.) might also eliminate a few gremlins.

However buying into an upgrade today does not qualify you for the forthcoming FH7 upgrade so you may choose to wait.
IF you buy a new full FH6 download today £36 you do qualify - per Calico Pie Website

Upgrade Protection: When you purchase Family Historian 6 (download) today, you will also receive a free downloadable upgrade to Family Historian 7 when it is released. This means that you can reserve a copy of version 7 at today’s lower version 6 price! This upgrade protection applies to purchases of the full version, as a download, only. Upgrade protection does not apply to purchases of upgrades to version 6 from earlier versions.

[Fruitbat]

Hi,

My laptop went in yesterday and I got it back today, after a wipe and Windows 10 reload, so I didn't see David F's suggestion until I coincidentally logged in this evening to ask this related question...

I'm currently using v5 and it was my intention to jump straight to v7 when it comes out, in order to avoid having to going through two upgrade processes (ie. to v6 then v7). However, now that I've got to start loading the software from scratch anyway, it seems to me to make sense to forget about v5 and instead buy v6 now, then take the free v7 upgrade when it comes out.

As I intimated earlier in this discussion, the changes I made to the settings in v5 weren't worth saving, so loading the full v6 will be a straightforward new load, rather than an upgrade.

Am I righting in assuming that I can load the backed up project files from v5 straight into v6, or must I go down the 5 > 6 > 7 route?

Thanks.

[tatewise]

Yes, you can restore the backed-up Project zip files directly into FH V6.
It probably does not matter, but once in FH V6 the Projects will no longer be FH V5 compatible.
i.e. You can migrate forwards in versions but not backwards.

Hopefully, you know the File > Backup/Restore > Restore Backup command is the one to use.

While you are installing stuff, don't forget Ancestral Sources.

[Fruitbat]

Hi Mike,

I ordered FH v6 and it arrived today, so I'm ready to do a clean load of the application straight from the disc in the box.

I know I can load data and media from the back ups of my various trees, however, when my main laptop died on me, I had to temporarily use an ancient one I had lying around, and I was able to continue working on FH v5, by simply picking up the most recent files that were residing in OneDrive*, which included all of the data and images up to the point when the main laptop failed. Is there any reason that I shouldn't adopt this approach when loading it into v6?

Thanks,

Eric

* I took on board the earlier comments about saving to my hard disk and not simply relying on OneDrive - even though I make regularly back-ups of both - and I've overcome the capacity issue, by excluding a couple of very large folders from the sync.. The shop that did the repair advised me against replacing the existing SSD, on the grounds that I would probably outgrow a 1TB drive relatively quickly, and a 2TB SSD is silly money.

[tatewise]

Yes Eric, that method should work fine.

However, I suggest taking a Windows backup of the Project folder onto your external drive just in case.

When you install FH V6 it will create the Family Historian Projects folder by default in the Documents folder.
In the File > Project Window change the Location to specify the OneDrive location of your Project as you did when migrating to OneDrive with FH V5.
Then FH V6 will detect your Project, which you can make default and open.
It will review your Project GEDCOM and produce reports in Window > Log Files.
It will convert the GEDCOM to FH V6 format automatically.

You should review the Log Files and ask for any advice here.

The Documents default Family Historian Projects folder should be deleted to avoid any confusion.

BTW: I don't think we realised you had an SSD. We thought you had a HDD that could be upgraded to 1 TeraByte.

[Fruitbat]

Hi Mike,

As soon as I got the machine back from repair, I did a full back-up of data from OneDrive, rejigged the sync. settings on OneDrive, then after the files appeared on both the cloud and the hard disk, did another back-up, so I was happy that I had secure data before installing FH6. I learnt something in that process, the WD Backup software that replaces the WD Smartware that came with the My Passport Ultra doesn't appear to detect any file name starting with a tilde, so they don't get backed up.

The installation process of FH6 was a piece of cake, just changed the default location of the projects (in the way you suggested), closed the Project Window and reopened it and, lo and behold, all the projects are listed and working as expected. No reported errors and no log files produced - result!

Thanks very much for your help and advice.

Eric