Family Historian User Group

My upgrade to FH7 didn't work and I hastily reverted to 6.2.

Because my C: drive is an SSD and 6 years ago I experienced a failure that was comprehensive and irrecoverable I don't trust them for data despite having a daily backup regime.

Could someone tell me please if on the upgrade, the project Window path would have defaulted back to C: \ Documents etc. or would the upgrade process have replicated the path that 6.2 was using on my D: drive. If so, I understand why the upgrade didn't work for me and I shall try again. With hindsight I see that I should have checked this in the Project Window but I I was so alarmed at the number of changes made to the GEDCOM in the log it produced that I immediately cleaned every trace of it and reinstated 6.2.

An allied question too please. Because I have a son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren in Canada I daily upload all my computer data to 'Box' (so that when I die my eldest son, one of two executors is not cut off from all the data the other two sons have here). But the largest file 'Box' will backup to the cloud is 5Gb and that has forced upon me a radical change in my use of zip files. Even the FH medium backup file is too large as a zip. If they were faced with re-constituting my FH data on a PC over in Canada what other 'path' problems might they encounter?

Thank you
Peter Williams

Yes, when FH is installed, and certainly when it is a major upgrade like FH v7, then the File > Project Window > Location reverts to the default My Documents\Family Historian Projects folder on the C: drive.

That FH v7 found a Project to convert suggests that you left old Projects in that Location on the SSD when you moved to the D: drive. I suggest you delete such old Projects to avoid future confusion.

After installing FH v7 you must adjust a few key settings such as File > Project Window > Location, your Default Project, and Tools > Preferences > Backup > Default Backup Folder.

Regarding backups, if your Medium Project Backup exceeds 5GB then you presumably have quite a large collection of Media files. The alternatives that spring to mind are to use a USB memory stick or switch to Google Drive cloud storage that offers 15GB free.

Are you sure about that Mike? I don't think installing V7 disturbed my project location or my default project. Can's say anything about Default Backup Folder as I never create backups in FH.

I agree with Helen, my default project folder remained the same after upgrading to v7.

My default folder structure remained the same, for backups too.

Dave

Same here. When V7 is installed over V6 the project location, default project and backup location are all retained from V6. It would be very odd if those settings were overridden when other settings are retained!

I too would agree that nothing changed. When installing FH7, the first thing installer did was announce it had found the existing FH6 installation and asked if it was ok to proceed. From that I assumed it would use existing paths. I’ve certainly not found anything to suggest otherwise.

OK, sorry if I was wrong. I was only trying to explain the OP Peter's experience with the install.
Cany any of you help him with that?

Peter_H_Williams wrote: ↑

13 Dec 2020 08:44

Could someone tell me please if on the upgrade, the project Window path would have defaulted back to C: \ Documents etc. or would the upgrade process have replicated the path that 6.2 was using on my D: drive.

We have agreement that the 6.2 path would have been replicated.

To answer anything further, we need to know exactly what didn't work. I assume you had 6.2 set to open a default project? If so, changes to that Gedcom are to be expected as the format is changing from Gedcom 5.5 to 5.5.1.

Can you remember what the problem(s) was/were that spooked you into moving back to 6.2?

If you try again, disable the default projects in 6.2 and make a copy of it, and open that file the first time you start FH7.

I recommend asking the question about 'Box' separately as it'll get lost in the FH7 discussion otherwise.

Thank you everyone very much.

I think Mike is probably right. Documents and settings contained several very old Projects that had been 'restored' when the PC was rebuilt (but not wiped) I had forgotten about them and I recall that the project window that I was presented with after upgrade contained a very old project which suggest that the conversion process looked first in Documents etc, found something and went no further.

I have been engaged all day on work, 'work' but armed with all your advice and the tip that Google offer the ability to upload 15Gb I shall have another go. First I need to sort out Places and Addresses because it will be important that Places are consistent and I remove the odd faulty place reference like "death at sea" for a place.