Buddy Back Up System

[Amy K]

I recently had a bit of computer trouble, which meant I had to wipe my hard drive, reformat the partition and reload everything onto my computer. Luckily the procedure went without a hitch, but it did get me thinking, "What if I lost my family tree file?"

Since then I have transferred a copy to my laptop (I had done this before but got annoyed with myself because I'd add something onto one of the trees and it would be missing from another etc...)

Anyway I know not everyone is lucky enough to have two computers at their disposal, so I was thinking, maybe as a backup we could each have a  "tree buddy."

This would involve simply keeping a copy of someone else's tree in a zip file on your computer and them keeping a copy of your, just in case of dire emergencies. (I heard a case of someone's computer exploding during an electrical storm, but I don't know how true this is.)

They could be updated every 3 months or however often as necessary. 

What do other Rootschatters think?

[Boongie Pam]

I create a back up of my entire hard drive on CD every 3 months so if I did lose everything then I'd only have to re-create 3 months worth of data.

I back up paper with scans and back up scans on paper.  I give my mum a paper copy every year of the new stuff just so someone else has a paper copy.

I would definitely recommend backing up on CD even if it is just your Family HIstory stuff.

P

[Spotty]

The other thing to do is set up a weblog which is a personal website and keep it on there.

http://www.freewebs.com/spookycat/index.htm

Here's mine if you care to take a look.

 

[Ticker]

All these ideas sound good to me.  I would suggest using a buddy (mine's my Dad!) to hold a copy of you important stuff and regular CD backups and web hosting.  At least if one backup fails at least one other should be OK.

[Adi1962]

Over the years I have had far too many problems with hardware failure and human stupidity (me spilling coffee on my PC). I now use an almost fool proof system.

I use raid and mirror my primary drive to a secondary, so that all data saved to the primary is replicated to the secondary. But the really cool bit is the secondary is an external hot swap drive, which I remove when not in use and keep with me.

Touch wood - since I built the PC over a year ago I have never had a problem.

Adrian

[trystan]

I keep most most critical data on an USB "Memorystick" that is on my keyring. It's very handy, and they are becoming very cheap too.

[trystan]

We also have a hidden cheap old pc set up as a linux server which we save our data to.

[Ticker]

Trystan's idea of using memory sticks is a good one.  They are very convenient and extremely cheap now.  Another idea for very important files is to email them to your web based email account.

[Fitty]

I have gmail which allows upto 1gig storage. It's by invite only and i have a few invites left.  If anyone wants one pm me with your email and i'll invite you.