Find My Past Uploaded Gedcom inaccurate!

[Guy Etchells]

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I do agree with the advice on keeping copies of your personal data in different places. But remember your home PC can crash. My own laptop failed miserably about 12 months ago, and I lost everything that was on it at the time. Fortunately my family tree data had been backed up elsewhere!

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Hope the advice helps.
Phil Moir

One very simple way of adding an extra layer of protection for ones files is to backup daily/weekly/monthly (whatever suites your style of working) on to a plug in hard drive.
Keep this hard drive disconnected from the computer unless you want to back up or recover the data.
This helps to protect the data from a system crash that affects the installed drives.

It may also be used to share data pictures etc. with relatives when visiting.
Cheers
Guy

[LizzieW]

Guy - I used to back up regularly to a large hard drive connected to my husband's PC, but my husband thought it would be easier if I had a smaller hard drive plugged into my lap top that backs up continuously.  Are you saying I shouldn't have it permanently plugged in, but just do a back up weekly?

Liz

[Guy Etchells]

If that suits you then fine.
I don't like automatic back ups as backups can and do get corrupted sometimes and unless checked one could be storing a load of rubbish.
More than one person has attempted to restore a file from a back up only to find it doesn't work.

I prefer a manual back ups but my regime may sound too fussy for some.

Cheers
Guy

[smudwhisk]

I personally wouldn't rely on a single external hard drive because, as with any hard drive, they can fail.  OK there is really only a small chance you could lose your external hard drive at the same time as your desktop/laptop hard drive, but it is possible.  I tend to use two and alternate which one is used for a manual backup, neither are left connected permanently to the laptop though, but that is just my personal choice.  I managed to kill an external hard drive a few years ago when I inadvertently knocked it when it was copying files off a previous laptop.  It fell over and bent the controller head so the hard drive was unusable so I lost what was on it.

Obviously, anyone's backup solution is their choice but its worth remembering that hard drives, as with USB memory sticks, can die just as easily as an internal hard drive and with the price of external drives not that high these days, it may be worth investing in a second one to alternate backups.  I would personally purchase a different model and/or make to an existing one just in case there is a fault with the particular model, but then perhaps I'm a little to paranoid about these things.   That said, although I alternate backups to different external hard drives, I probably don't backup as often as I should.

[ankerdine]

Thank you all for your responses, especially Paul.

Not being too IT literate I'll wait and see what develops.

Been away so that's was the reason for not dropping in before.

Judy