From roots-in@roots-l.rootsweb.com Wed Feb 15 16:17:24 2006 Received: from mail.rootsweb.com (mail.rootsweb.com [192.168.65.34]) by admin.rootsweb.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id k1FNHOjb028223; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:17:24 -0700 Received: from roots-l.rootsweb.com (roots-l.rootsweb.com [66.43.16.22]) by mail.rootsweb.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id k1FNHLBu028027 for ; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:17:21 -0700 Received: from roots-l.rootsweb.com (roots-l [127.0.0.1]) by roots-l.rootsweb.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id k1FKmRFI020394 for ; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 15:48:27 -0500 Received: (from roots-in@localhost) by roots-l.rootsweb.com (8.12.10/8.12.8/Submit) id k1FKmRrG020393 for roots-approved@rootsweb.com; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 15:48:27 -0500 Received: from lists5.rootsweb.com (lists5.rootsweb.com [66.43.27.41]) by roots-l.rootsweb.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with SMTP id k1FJJ6FI020009 for ; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 14:19:06 -0500 Received: (from slist@localhost) by lists5.rootsweb.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) id k1FLlnAL016635 for roots-in@roots-l.rootsweb.com; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 14:47:49 -0700 X-Envelope-From: ChristieTrapp@aol.com Wed Feb 15 14:47:49 2006 Received: from mail.rootsweb.com (mail.rootsweb.com [192.168.65.34]) by admin.rootsweb.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id k1FLlnjb016624 for ; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 14:47:49 -0700 Received: from imo-d04.mx.aol.com (imo-d04.mx.aol.com [205.188.157.36]) by mail.rootsweb.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id k1FLlkvB018168 for ; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 14:47:46 -0700 Received: from ChristieTrapp@aol.com by imo-d04.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v38_r7.3.) id e.1db.4cae4793 (16335) for ; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:47:36 -0500 (EST) From: ChristieTrapp@aol.com Message-ID: <1db.4cae4793.3124fb78@aol.com> Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:47:36 EST To: ROOTS-L@rootsweb.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" X-Mailer: 9.0 Security Edition for Windows sub 5300 X-Spam-Flag: NO X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.52 on 192.168.65.34 X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.52 on 192.168.65.34 Sender: roots-in@roots-l.rootsweb.com Subject: [ROOTS-L] Losing Data My husband just had his "tower" harddrive crash BEFORE he had a chance to back it up. I think I got all my stuff backed up into a CD back in December, but had made some changes to a file or two for my high school reunion mailing list. I usually make a print out of this mailing list and file it away with the reunion stuff when the reunion is completed. We just had one in September and was in the process of inputting address changes that came after the reunion. Needless to say, I'm not sure if I did it before I backed it up, or afterwards. Now his "tower" harddrive decided to take a dive in January - both of them! We quickly went out and bought a Seagate 300 and he finally backed up both our laptop computers. His took very little time to do - maybe he didn't have as many large files as mine, but my initial backup took almost 4 hours to transfer. One of these days we're going to find some computer geek to look at his two harddrives on his "tower" to see if any data can be recovered, though we aren't hopeful. Someone just wrote about the rest of the media that can crash and I agree. Anyone of them can do it. I just listened to a music tape of one of my favorite pieces of music that I bought in China back in 1984. A portion of it was played on the local classical station and I thought about buying it in a CD version. Exploring this possibility has been hard because it appears that most of the "current" versions only play one part of the concerto and not the entire concerto. I decided to play the tape last night on my car radio and discovered that I had inadvertently pressed the record button the last time I played it, so am missing about 10 minutes of the concerto on side B. Now I'm frantic to find a CD version of the entire piece. Will probably have to return to China to get the entire concerto. So if we can "crash" our computers, we can also crash the old cassettes too. As for websites - one thing I always make a practice of is to print out the information from the website and put those copies into my files. I now have paper copies because I have learned that websites come and websites go. In my database when I have entered this source I type in the _http://URL_ (http://URL) address and then put "as of whatever the date was I found it" following so that if a future researcher looks at my information and then can't find the same website that they know that on that particular date it did exist. That's what makes it so hard to use the Internet as a source and then try to go back and repeat what you found one time way back when. The only time I don't make copies of the websites for my records is when it is a transcript of a known printed source such as "The Register" or "The Mayflower Quarterly" or TAG or some vital record that I know is located at a local library in my area. But if it is someone's genealogy, or anything else, I take and make the time to print it off for my personal records. As for the possibility of a fire or a flood? Food, no worry - everything is on the second floor. Fire - well, if that happens, I'll probably just quit doing genealogy because most of the records will probably be destroyed, wet, smoke damaged, ruined and I've got too many years invested in my family genealogy to make it worth my while to go back and start all over. True, I could put it onto floppys as far as the computer stuff goes, but I've also got two 4-drawer laterals full of research, about 60 photo albums and about 15 of the old LDS Book of Remembrances that are all handwritten that I could probably begin anew if I had to, but at this point in my life, I'm getting close to retiring, I've got no children to pass it along to, and only one cousin who is interested in genealogy and might want all my research. So, the whole point of this tale is to say that you need to think about why you are doing this wonderful hobby and is it all worth it? If the answer is to pass along to your children, you are doing it for yourself to learn about your roots, then by all means make sure your information is secure. For me, at this point, it has become a hobby and nothing more. On my main lines, I have gone back about as far as I can go. I've found my Mayflower ancestors on my mom's side. I've followed my dad's roots back to 1650 in Sweden and England to about 1700. There are a few holes left to fill, but mostly I'm now working on all the collateral lines and bringing them down to the present. I'm going back and documenting a lot of the names I've found in printed genealogies to verify the information found to be accurate by locating the names and dates in the locations where the source has said the were and citing the VRs. If I were to print out my hard drive of data I would, at a minimum be printing out over 60,000 pages, which equates to 120 reams of paper or 12 cases of paper which amounts to about $300 if each case of paper only costs $20. That would mean at least one page per name; however, I know that many of them have more than one page of information either as a listing of sources or as notes that I have copied, so this would add up. How many inkjet cartridges I would use to pursue this printout project, heaven only knows. But at $50-$60 for each set of cartridges that would probably only print a case of paper, it would be a costly project. At one point I used to print out my records and put them in binders. But 4 binders later and only about a third of the names I had at that time (probably less than 1,000), I gave up on that idea! Printing books? I printed out a "short one" when I went back to Plymouth, MA last Sept and did my direct line only as an Anatafel and it was almost 200 pages. Can you imagine if I did one of just one of my more prolific lines as a descendants - with collaterals? My mind can't fathom that one. So bottom line - everything is relative to what you want to have happen to your research and all the hard work you put into gathering your family data. How important is it? Christie Trapp