When I originally started my Family History work, I got in fast. I had a lot of info to work with, and I found some very interesting things out. I had a PAF file with roughly 3,000 names in it, which was awesome in my book. I know it’s small compared to some, but that is a lot of data entry work, as well as the background research. Then the unthinkable happened. My hard drives crashed. Luckily, I had an old backup that had roughly 2,000 names in it at a different site, but when my 3 backup drives went out at once that was a major setback, and I’ve not gotten on a roll with it again since. Now I’m getting motivated to get back to it, but there’s one main issue I’m looking at:
I now use a Mac almost exclusively. Even though I know PC’s quite well, I’m fed up with Windows, and I won’t touch Vista. I do also know Linux quite well (I was on the dev team for Linux From Scratch back in the 2.x days), but that’s a similar issue–there’s just not much in the way of non-windows software that handles ordinance data. So, I’m thinking I might need to write up some kind of software system that does what I want, much as I dislike the idea. I also think that FamilySearch is updating in a significant way, but I don’t want ot wait to get my files back up.
Any ideas?
8 responses so far ↓
1 Ben // Nov 28, 2007 at 8:45 am
I had the same idea a while ago (see http://www.beyondproject.org) but never really got anywhere with it. I don’t have the time to write any genealogy software any time soon, unfortunately, but I’d be quite interested to see what you come up with.
2 Donna // Nov 28, 2007 at 9:24 am
Thanks for the warning. I have been too trusting of my storage. I am up to 8932 names and I should put them on a second thumbdrive as well, dual backup every time. They do not last forever, so I need to update before I lose it all. Thank you.
3 Connor // Nov 28, 2007 at 11:05 am
If you use a mac, do you have Leopard? Time Machine might be just what you need. I used to always email myself a backup copy of my PAF file whenever I updated it, as a remote backup solution.
4 Joe Weidenbach // Nov 28, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Ben–
We’ll have to see what happens–I’m thinking I’ll do it in Ruby on Rails as an exercise if I do it. Although I might just do PHP since I know it. Even though it requires a web server for either one, as an initial setup I think that works, plus it’s better for collaboration.
Donna–
Keep up the good work. It was a freak accident that lost all of my data–I had it backed up on three different hard drives in two different computers (and an ipod), and they all went out over a period of two weeks. One went out, and I just let it while I thought “well, I still have two.”, and so forth. Stay vigilant!
Connor–
I don’t have Leopard yet, I’m still waiting for the reviews of the 10.5.1 update that Apple just released. But yeah, I’ve been much more conscious of maintaining my backups than I was before–I now tend to keep at least three copies on removable storage.
5 Joe Weidenbach // Nov 28, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Hmm…after looking around, in the name of user-friendliness, this is probably going to need to use a flash frontend of some kind as well. I guess I’ll start up a requirements doc so I have something to build on.
6 Donna Goff // Nov 29, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I should learn from my own mistakes. Earlier this year I had my computer and laptop disabled for different reasons, the same day! I asked the tech that was changing my motherboard on the laptop, what they odds were, he said less than 1%. I thankfully lost no data and quickly backed everything to a thumb drive. Then one of my students was working on a book and he backed up everything on two thumb drives. I should probably figure how to email my sister data as well.
I have worked on this for 35 years, and all but 1600 names were located since Jan 2004. I would not want to reconstruct this. Thanks for making me think.
All I want for Christmas is a couple of 2 gig sticks:)
7 Joe Weidenbach // Nov 29, 2007 at 3:52 pm
I hear ya. As it turned out, the 2000 names I was able to recover were only because I’d sent a copy of my file to my mom several months earlier (she was curious). I got lucky there, at least. But yeah, it’s interesting how the 1% probability situations have a tendency to crop up more than we’d expect.
8 Scott // Dec 16, 2007 at 7:42 pm
I have multiple backups of my data. Every time I visit my parents (once or twice a year, 700 miles away) I give my mother a copy. I have copies on my desktop and laptop, and my network drive which I back up Mydocuments to. I have two databases that have several thousand names, my personal ancestry and then the Descendants of Henry Woodward Henery Woodward
Right now I am working on merging a few thousand names that one of my Aunts sent me to update me on my mother’s side of the family.
I am a member of the blogward and found your site though it.
Scott’s Blog
I almost forgot I have not started using Carbonnite to backup my desktop computer. For less than $50 a year it backs up you files online securely. It requires a high speed connection though. I started using it after the external hard drive I was using using for my back up quit working. (”unrecognised USB device”..)
Use this link to download a free 15-day trial subscription to Carbonite, and get an extra free month of service when you buy: Carbonnite
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