I'd like to add a post script to Thurmon's tale of woe. I lost my system just after Thanksgiving, 2001. But I had been careful to make backups of my genealogy data base on a regular basis, so I was smugly confidant that I had not lost anything. When it came time to reload the backup files, I discovered that one of the floppy disks that contained the backup files was bad. Like Thurmon, I turned to the services of a Data Recovery business. But they could not help me. The file backup process of Family Tree Maker uses some sort of proprietory data compression routine which the Data Recovery people couldn't deal with. I had lost months of work, some of which I fully expect never to recover. Lessons learned. I will never again trust a floppy disk & I will never again use Family Tree Maker's file backup process. I invested in a CD burner. I rotate my file backups between 2 different CDs. And I use File Manager to "drag & drop" the FTM database file to the CD. 'Sorry to be off-topic, but the sick feeling of despair that I experienced is something that I wouldn't wish upon anybody. Ted Mudge Thurmon E King wrote: > Hello Sackett Searchers: > > Some of you may have noticed [and possibly with some relief] that my > postings to the SACKETT-L have been rather "few and far between" for the > past month. The primary reason for this was the failure of the hard > drive in my computer on 17 Sep 2003.