Family Historian User Group

Do other users have my problem?

I have 'backed up and copied' files time and time again, scared of losing information. I now have an external hard disk full and well as my pc. I also have a large wooden trunk full of paper information I have gathered. I think the availability of larger discs, flash drives etc. have helped cause my problem. When we only had small floppy discs we only kept about four backups.

I bought a new netbook so I could take my tree, photo's etc. to show relatives but all I have done is copy the 'clutter' accross!

I know I need to tackle this problem - It has stopped me enjoying my Family History.

Last week I received an email telling me V5 was released, so I have purchased and loaded it. I have split my tree, and removed all census records I had 'attempted' to enter. I downloaded AS v3 and studied the video's (which were great - I kept going back several times). By last night I had entered four census records with images attached.

I have opened a new file on my desktop for one person (my 3 X Gt Grandfather) and am moving one copy of each image I find connected to him and his family (making myself delete the duplicates). I will also try and do the paperwork at the same time. I will then try and work my way through my principal ancestors.

Hopefully at the end of this long exercise I will end up with a project that I can be proud of and something my family will be interested in - not just Nana's clutter!

Any other tips anyone has would be very helpful.

One last query - when I close FH V5 the option to 'back-up' comes up - which is the best to use - does the backup overwrite or will I end up with even more backups? Does the program 'save' all the changes and this backup be saved to an external device?

Thank you.





ID:6091

The 3 Backup Options.

Small, as before, just creates a zipped copy of your Gedcom file.

Medium, Backs up the project file and data sub folder only.

Full, Backs up your entire project (including media)

There is no backup management, each backup is separate and is titled with date and time.

Personally, I would recommend a daily small backup, and a full backup about once a week, or month.

Periodically, you will need to use windows explorer to access the backup folder and delete the older backups

Hello

Thank you for explaining the FH v5 Backups.

That sounds very good advise, which I think I shall adopt. I will definately try to manage the backup folder, so I don't end up with too many backups.

I always backup to a separate drive, not the PC hard drive. Apart from a large external drive, I backup to a 2.5 inch USB drive and every so often delete the old versions.

Maybe I'm doing the wrong thing?? Please tell me if there is a flaw in my method.

Every day I drag my complete Family Historian Projects folder from My Documents on my PC to a USB memory stick. I allow it to overwrite the previous day's version so I only have the most up to date one. I also drag the Calico Pie folder across to preserve my settings. Every month I drag these and much more onto a separate hard drive. I do keep a few older versions on the separate hard drive.

Is this the same as backing up as described above or do I need to do something else?

I must say I have no trouble running FH directly from the memory stick on the laptop (with FH installed) so I assume I am doing it correctly.

Anne

The full backup does essentially the same thing, although as a compressed file it can be smaller.

Anne, in several ways, that is better than the FH Backups described above.

• You are preserving all your Projects in one go, whereas FH Backup is one Project at a time.
• You are preserving the Calico Pie settings, FH Backups do not.
• You are managing the backups, FH Backups does not.

If laptop FH runs the memory stick copy (including Multimedia images?) then everything is OK.

You might consider keeping a few more backups, just in case you don't notice a problem for a few days, by which time you have overwritten the backup you want, and have to resort to last month's backup.

Note that copying the Calico Pie folder is good, but does NOT preserve ALL your Preferences & Settings. The Windows Registry based settings are not included.
See How to Move FH Settings for methods to save the Windows Registry based settings.
Before long, I intend there to be a V5 Plugin to make this task a lot easier.

Thanks Tatewise. Its what I do with all my files (FH and anything else)

You say 'you are managing the backups' ..... that's me, a control freak!!!![smile]

Anne