Friday finds: Data backup
Nothing is worse than losing data that we have spend hours entering into our computers.
As I lately have had limited time to spend on genealogy, I decided to look at data backup and share some articles about this.
Here is an article from familytree giving us the Genealogy Backup Basics
Storing our data on a server can be an alternative to consider. In the Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, Dick Eastman looks at The Best Online Cloud Backup Service
There’s a huge range of external hard drives on offer When we’re on the lookout for the best external hard drives, there are several important details to consider. The techradar.pro presents Best external hard drives of 2018
When it comes to storage media there are now two main types HDD and SSD. The HDD is the kind we have had in our computers for years. It has several moving parts and most of us have experienced at least one drive breaking. The SSD has no moving parts and therefore will presumably be more sturdy. PC Mag UK tells us SSD vs. HDD: What’s the Difference?
Be sure to check the manual to your genealogy software and learn to use the backup routine that your software offers!
Here are some other blogs that present links under the “finds” meme:
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I am so happy you posted this article. This is good stuff!
As a former software support person, you cannot imagine the number of people that called in for support that did not have a backup to restore. Once you have a data problem that cannot be fixed, or your computer crashes to the point of no return and you have no backup to restore, you are out of luck and back to SQUARE ONE! All of that hard work down the drain! Can you imagine having to reenter all of that data that you spent so much time and energy on? Or even reentering a month’s worth? Or three? Or six months’ worth of data?
This about it this way: every time you enter an amount of data that you would not want to reenter, make a backup. If you’ve just entered a couple of people into your family tree, you probably don’t need to make a backup. But if you’ve spent a day entering data and you wouldn’t want to spend another day reentering all of that data, then it’s time to make that backup. This has to be your mindset.
I am going to plug the backup Cloud service my hubby & I use (and that we are NOT affiliated with in any way, shape or form) and that is CARBONITE. You can tell the Carbonite system which files/folders you want backed up. And if you need to ever restore your files, even if it’s just one file, it’s really quite simple. They also have excellent support, should you need it. (With me coming from a support background, I can attest to this). And I’ve found that their backups have been very reliable.
But I also recommend that you have a SECOND backup system, such as an external drive like what’s talked about in the article above.
If you have two backup systems, then if anything should ever happen to your computer where you need to restore your files, you should not have a problem with any loss of data.
Hello Kaye
Thanks for visiting and for commenting. Interesting to get your view.