[or-roots] ain't puters wunnerful

[wm0g at comcast.net]

Hi listers,

This backup subject is bothersome to most genealogists as well as any other home computer user. Fortunately, there is a backup alternative that is very affordable to us and from what I read on this and any other genealogy list, this is not a unique situation. Computers will crash and/or get corrupted. 

I use a backup service that backs up any file I have changed AUTOMATICALLY. So, if I add any data to my FTM files, or add a new picture or video, etc.. it's done without me even having to remember to back it up (thank God!). The software also stores these backups on a "server farm" away from my home and computer that is available to me from ANY other computer I want to use too. So, if I'm traveling and want to show my online pictures to my aunt in Florida, I can access them from the backup files on this service on the Internet and download them to her computer when I'm at her house, if I so desire. Also, if I should lose or mistakenly delete my files, crash my hard drive, have my notebook computer stolen (it happened once already), etc.. I can reload all of my latest data files back onto a new hard drive seamlessly once my program software has been installed on the new computer or hard drive.

It is called "Magic Backup". The program is downloadable from the Internet. The cost is less than $5/month... pretty cheap insurance, I believe. I know the software developer personally (he is a family friend) and I know that he developed this software with his 72 year old mother in mind. She is not very computer savvy, but can use the computer enough to get her email, balance her checkbook and download or store family pictures, etc.. She lost all of her computer files when her computer crashed and that was the seed of thought for the baseline user of this software. It had to be simple enough and reliable enough for his own mother to use. 

If you have any interest, just go to www.magicbackup.com and sign up for it. If you'd like a $5 discount coupon on it, just put "wm0g" in the offer (without the quotation marks of course, and that is a zero and not an Oh). No, I don't work for them... I arranged that for anyone who signs up from this email with the company. Read the introduction and features/benefits on their web page. It sounds like it was written for us genealogist types!

Regards,
Jack Ciaccia
Erie, CO

Researching NICKELL, POSTON, MILAM and REBENSDORF in Multnomah, Lane and Jackson Counties and NICHOLS, STALLSWORTH and TURNHAM in Jackson County.

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Leslie Chapman" <reedsportchapmans at verizon.net> 

> Marilyn; 
> 
> I had a discussion with our favorite computer salesman on the subject; One 
> of the advantages of the My Book is portability, that is if you are away 
> from home you can take your computer stuff with you. Unfortunately that also 
> gives you greater opportunity to lose everything. On the other hand it is 
> also a way to save things in the event of a disaster like fire. He has all 
> his accounts on a drive at home and work all the time. 
> 
> One advantage of backing up to an online service is that it avoids the 
> disaster at home problem. It is as slow as your Internet connection though 
> and that can be a bit of a hassle. I have historically been lucky to manage 
> to transfer most of my data from one computer to the next when I had a 
> computer meltdown and mostly relied on what I had shared with family to 
> "back me up" Unfortuntately this time it was the drive that went bad and I 
> had qute a bit of precious stuff that wasn't backed up anywhere. The 
> genealogy mostly just means time lost, though I am sure a lot of what I had 
> accomplished I'll probably not manage to recover, but the photos and video 
> of family are a big loss. 
> 
> I guess my only recommendation is to consider what you really don't want to 
> lose; pictures and video could be converted to DVD and saved, but 
> unfortunately my understanding is that even that medium is transitory, I 
> hear things like ten years at most. So we face a never ending task of 
> recopying important stuff, or saying goodbye to it?? 
> 
> Genealogy info can be saved as hardcopy; but that has quite a cost and in 
> the event of major disaster would be a lot harder to move/save. 
> 
> What I am looking at is redundant hard drives; I think I will probably end 
> up installing two 500 gb drives on my computer and my 250 gb external. I 
> will use one on board disk for regular activity and the other one as a 
> "ghost" or mirror of the first. Of course there is always the chance of 
> losing both drives at once, but that is a rare event. Then when I wan to 
> travel I put what I want along on the external. It will be more of a hassle 
> and expensive, but I sure don't want to go through this again. 
> 
> I guess the big question is "How much computer stuff do you have you can't 
> afford to lose?" When I started playing with PC's my hard drive was 200 mb 
> uncompressed and I thought it would be a long time before I needed more 
> space. Then my son started playing games on CD. Now my nephew has a flash 
> drive that has ten times as much storage and cost me 1/50 th of what my 
> first PC cost! And it won't store a tenth of my photos that I still have, 
> or even all of my genealogy as of Dec 2005 which is one stage of my backed 
> up stuff. 
> 
> Ironically one of the things I lost was the photos of the Crescent City 
> Cemetery; now they are available online. So my sugestion would be DVD of the 
> images if that is practical, and make a copy to share with family and make 
> sure they understand you expect them to keep it in good shape in case you 
> need to get a copy of it back! 
> 
> If you have a LOT of "finished product" genealogy (like that's ever gonna 
> happen) I would suggest putting that on CD or DVD as appropriate and I 
> really think the only safe way is redundant drives, but again that doesn't 
> protect against fire or floode etc. 
> 
> The big problems I see are time and money. I had never recovered completely 
> from the previous two computer disasters because I was restructuring my 
> genealogy and wanted to get that done (like that's ever gonna happen) before 
> I worried about backing it up big time. WRONG. 
> 
> My problem is focus; if you can do so I would suggest focusing on the 
> important stuff first. 
> 
> I hope some of this rambling will give you some worthwhile ideas. 
> 
> Les 
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: or-roots-bounces at listsmart.osl.state.or.us 
> [mailto:or-roots-bounces at listsmart.osl.state.or.us]On Behalf Of Marilyn 
> Schwartz 
> Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 6:25 AM 
> To: 'or-roots mail list' 
> Subject: Re: [or-roots] ain't puters wunnerful 
> 
> 
> Thanks for the warning on the "My Book" thing! I just bought one, thinking 
> IT was the way to save all of my photos, out of danger of computer crash, 
> etc. So how do you back it up? Do you still have to keep all your photos 
> on your computer? I thought the idea was to be able to keep all those 
> megabytes OUT OF the computer and make space. Do I need to subscribe to 
> Carbonite.com or one of those back-up pay sites? 
> 
> Marilyn S. 
> 
> _______________________________________________ 
> or-roots mailing list 
> or-roots at listsmart.osl.state.or.us 
> http://listsmart.osl.state.or.us/mailman/listinfo/or-roots 
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