Hi All, The word of the day is BACKUP. This comes to mind because of two incidents that I am aware of this week. One, a Tri-County Site guest recently accidentally deleted her genealogy database. She thought she did not have a backup and was up the creek without a paddle. Eventually, she did find a backup, so that one turned out OK but not all such incidents do. Many of you are expending a lot of effort in research and compiling it in your genealogy database. There is no question that a good genealogy program is the best way to store your data, and a really good one will teach you the right way to enter your data and document your sources. However, if you are not doing backups, sooner or later you are going to lose your database. Either the file will become corrupt, your hardware will fail, or something else will happen that will make your data unusable or unavailable. It is only a matter of time. SO, If you are not going to do regular backups, just don't waste your time. Take up another hobby. In my case, I have several computers on a network, so I backup to another hard drive. I also have a one GB Jaz and a 2 GB Jaz drive and a Zip Drive. All of these are satisfactory for your backup. If your database is small enough, you can back it up to a floppy disk. Keep at least three generations of backups. This is necessary, because you may discover a problem with your data and find that it is even included in your most recent backup. To get rid of it you may gave to go back a ways to find a version of the database that does not have the problem. The second incident is that I received notice yesterday that the New York City operation of one of my clients had a hardware failure, lost their entire Accounts Receivable database and the most recent backup was done in January. That means that we have to reconstruct it from hard copy and get the new system we are developing for New Jersey's operation up and running sooner. The smallest amount of effort would have prevented this disaster. It is indefensible. In addition to having regular backups, I also keep a fairly recent off site backup. This is because if something happened to the house both the computers and the backups would be destroyed and, in my case, eight years of massive efforts would be down the drain. Keep the backup of your home files at the office and the backup of your essential office backups at home if you work for a place that does not have backup built into its procedures. That's my best advice and my lecture for today. Every day that you do a significant amount of work in your genealogy database that you do not want to lose and don;t want to do over - BACKUP. Joyce M. Tice <A HREF="http://www.rootsweb.com/~srgp/jmtindex.htm">Tri-Counti es Genealogy & History Sites of Joyce M. Tice</A>