Online backup services look attractive as they seem to need very little thinking effort and most people feel that they do not understand / do not want to understand backup and so they do not want to think about it. A short while ago when I looked at this subject (again) it quickly became clear that although these "services" look a no brainer all of the major players at that time had lost customer data. There was nothing that the customers could do as their data was not guaranteed (read the Ts & Cs). Apart from loss there is the question of "will the data be available when you want it" there are quite a few people involved in supplying and maintaining the pipeline to all that cloudy stuff. If you actually value your data and the access to it, a different approach is needed, for example: Buy a 0.5tb external USB hard drive from PCWorld (less that £50 I expect) "synchronise" your complete machine to this drive and then you have all the data on your PC now stored externally. Do this very regularly - daily. This is not quite enough effort yet because if your C: drive completely dies you cannot restore a working machine from the USB drive to a new empty C: drive. To go the next step you need to use something like Norton Ghost to make "drive images" of all the drives on your PC and store them on the USB drive. Do this regularly - weekly. You can restore a working machine in just a few minutes from these drive images provided that they are up to date. Still not quite enough yet as your PC may completely die and then it is a case of buy a new PC. You probably will not be able to restore your drive images to the new machine because of hardware driver differences Oh dear! Then you are into reinstalling everything but at least you have all your personal data and family history stuff available when the new PC is up and working. To overcome this problem you may want to consider "virtualizing" your entire PC, then you can move the virtual machine anywhere you like and you immediately have your "normal" environment available. You do have to back this VM up as well, bother. If you are storing "stuff" locally on an external USB drive you are not protected against a home fire or flood so you need to keep a copy of the data at the house of a local friend. Oh dear what a lot of thinking! Sorry there is no escape from it. You have only got a good backup strategy if you have the courage to reformat all the drives on your PC (pretty final) and then restore the machine from your backup. If you have not practised machine recovery you do not know that it will work when you have to do it for real. Hands up all those who have done this practise step please - 5 stars to each of you Sorry about the long lecture but there is no easy solution. It depends on how much you value your work, try and figure out how many hours you have spent on just FH and cost it at the minimum wage and I bet that it far exceeds the cost of your PC. Also talk to someone who has lost all data and get them to tell you about the associated despair and trauma. John C -----Original Message----- From: family-historian-users-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:family-historian-users-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Jolly Sent: 29 November 2011 08:20 To: family-historian-users@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [FHU] Using iCloud for backing up Family Historian data? No I am not using it but 5Gb doesn't seem to be very much if yo are backing up the whole project, plus other things as well. I use carbonite which is not free but is unlimited and I'm already up to 65 Gb ! It's the same maxim - you get what you pay for! Regards Andrew On 28 Nov 2011, at 23:26, Davies, Roy wrote: > A growing number of people seem to be using Family Historian on Apple Macs (e.g. by installing Parallels and Windows on the Mac). I wonder if anyone is using Apple's iCloud to back up their data? I tried to set it up, apparently successfully, and it tells me I have 5 GB of 5 GB available but that I am not using any storage. I thought that the backups were supposed to be made automatically. > > If anyone is using iCloud storage for backing up their genealogical data I'd be pleased if they could tell me if there is a crucial step that I have overlooked. > > Regards, > > Roy > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word > 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the > message ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Or invest in a Mac and an external hard drive. Your data will back up automatically using Time Machine utility. No need to think about it. There has to be a limit on how many back up places it is practical to maintain. For me Carbonite and Time Machine is enough and cost effective. Sent from my iPhone On 29 Nov 2011, at 10:13, "John E Cruttenden" <der.baron@virgin.net> wrote: > Online backup services look attractive as they seem to need very little > thinking effort and most people feel that they do not understand / do not > want to understand backup and so they do not want to think about it. > > A short while ago when I looked at this subject (again) it quickly became > clear that although these "services" look a no brainer all of the major > players at that time had lost customer data. There was nothing that the > customers could do as their data was not guaranteed (read the Ts & Cs). > Apart from loss there is the question of "will the data be available when > you want it" there are quite a few people involved in supplying and > maintaining the pipeline to all that cloudy stuff. > > If you actually value your data and the access to it, a different approach > is needed, for example: > > Buy a 0.5tb external USB hard drive from PCWorld (less that £50 I expect) > "synchronise" your complete machine to this drive and then you have all the > data on your PC now stored externally. Do this very regularly - daily. This > is not quite enough effort yet because if your C: drive completely dies you > cannot restore a working machine from the USB drive to a new empty C: drive. > > To go the next step you need to use something like Norton Ghost to make > "drive images" of all the drives on your PC and store them on the USB drive. > Do this regularly - weekly. You can restore a working machine in just a few > minutes from these drive images provided that they are up to date. > > Still not quite enough yet as your PC may completely die and then it is a > case of buy a new PC. You probably will not be able to restore your drive > images to the new machine because of hardware driver differences Oh dear! > Then you are into reinstalling everything but at least you have all your > personal data and family history stuff available when the new PC is up and > working. > > To overcome this problem you may want to consider "virtualizing" your entire > PC, then you can move the virtual machine anywhere you like and you > immediately have your "normal" environment available. You do have to back > this VM up as well, bother. > > If you are storing "stuff" locally on an external USB drive you are not > protected against a home fire or flood so you need to keep a copy of the > data at the house of a local friend. > > Oh dear what a lot of thinking! Sorry there is no escape from it. > > You have only got a good backup strategy if you have the courage to reformat > all the drives on your PC (pretty final) and then restore the machine from > your backup. If you have not practised machine recovery you do not know that > it will work when you have to do it for real. Hands up all those who have > done this practise step please - 5 stars to each of you > > Sorry about the long lecture but there is no easy solution. It depends on > how much you value your work, try and figure out how many hours you have > spent on just FH and cost it at the minimum wage and I bet that it far > exceeds the cost of your PC. Also talk to someone who has lost all data and > get them to tell you about the associated despair and trauma. > > John C > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: family-historian-users-bounces@rootsweb.com > [mailto:family-historian-users-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Andrew > Jolly > Sent: 29 November 2011 08:20 > To: family-historian-users@rootsweb.com > Subject: Re: [FHU] Using iCloud for backing up Family Historian data? > > No I am not using it but 5Gb doesn't seem to be very much if yo are backing > up the whole project, plus other things as well. > > I use carbonite which is not free but is unlimited and I'm already up to 65 > Gb ! It's the same maxim - you get what you pay for! > > Regards > > Andrew > > > On 28 Nov 2011, at 23:26, Davies, Roy wrote: > >> A growing number of people seem to be using Family Historian on Apple Macs > (e.g. by installing Parallels and Windows on the Mac). I wonder if anyone is > using Apple's iCloud to back up their data? I tried to set it up, apparently > successfully, and it tells me I have 5 GB of 5 GB available but that I am > not using any storage. I thought that the backups were supposed to be made > automatically. >> >> If anyone is using iCloud storage for backing up their genealogical data > I'd be pleased if they could tell me if there is a crucial step that I have > overlooked. >> >> Regards, >> >> Roy >> >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >> FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word >> 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the >> message > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' > without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >

Keep it simple. Norton Ghost, external hard drive. 45 minutes to back up the entire hard disk with firewire. Safe, and in your hands. Hard drive failure, as I've had recently, its all there for you - provided you back up regularly and frequently. Martin