Back Up Your Family History!

Back up day! Back up your digital items in the cloud as well as using another method such as an external hard drive and/or a flash drive (or all three!). It's important to keep our genealogy info safe for today and tomorrow.

Also, consider periodically downloading a gedcom (family tree document in standardized format) from Ancestry and MyHeritage so you can keep those trees in your digital possession too, just in case. I have trees on both of these sites so I download a gedcom from each from time to time. Here's how I do it.

Ancestry download

At top of this blog post is a picture of the "tree settings" section of my Wood family tree, showing "tree info" that includes tree name and description on the left.

The button for downloading a gedcom is at lower right of this page (see blue arrow in image). I clicked the button "download your GEDCOM file" and very quickly the file appeared on my desktop (in your case, wherever downloads are supposed to go, since your destination may be different). 

The download will have a .ged file extension at end of the file name. I renamed the file to reflect the Wood tree but left the .ged extension. 

Wash, rinse, repeat for all trees. I have a few trees on Ancestry, including a speculative private tree, and want to download each as an occasional backup.

MyHeritage export

On MyHeritage, I go to the dropdown "family tree" menu at top of page, select "manage family trees," and then see options like "download original GEDCOM" and "export to GEDCOM." This is the image above.

Since I originally began with a gedcom upload from my software, I don't want to download the original now. I do want to export the current family tree to a gedcom now! 

Once I request the export, MyHeritage asks whether I want personal photos and photo album in the download. Yes, I do! See image at right where I checked those boxes for my export.

MyHeritage sends me an email when the export is ready, with a link to click to retrieve the gedcom. I change the name to describe which tree, but leave the .ged ending. Wash, rinse, repeat for each tree if more than one.

WikiTree download

Yes, it is possible to download a gedcom from WikiTree. You can read about the process (and any privacy concerns) here. 

Backing up isn't complicated, and it gives me peace of mind.

Please Back Up and Remember, LOCKSS

With so many extreme weather events and other terrible disasters, we really need to think carefully about how to preserve and perpetuate family history for the sake of future generations. Please make a plan now, starting with regular backups.

Invest in more than one backup method

Diane May Levenick wrote an excellent article for Family Tree Magazine (updated a few months ago) detailing a five-step plan for backing up genealogy files. She recommends NOT relying on free sites (like social media) as a backup. Instead, she suggests a combination of methods, including remote cloud storage, to keep family history safe.

As Diane recommends, I keep my digitized materials safe by backing up on iCloud, setting my Mac to do a TimeMachine backup every hour (using an external hard drive I can take with me if needed), and putting important files on a separate high-capacity USB drive. Or two USBs! They're inexpensive and portable.

Share now in many ways

My family history photo books are one way I'm sharing family history NOW so what I've learned about our ancestors won't be lost. Printed copies are in multiple hands because LOCKSS (lots of copies keep stuff safe). The more people who have copies, the better the chance that info will survive in our family for future generations. 

All the photos in those books and all old family photos from the early 20th century are digitized. I've shared them via USB and email over the years. I have a 1917 photo album from my late father-in-law that has been scanned but I plan to turn it into a photo book this year to provide full captions and context for future generations. The album itself is in an archival box but the album pages are fragile so making a photo book will make the story accessible to all for the long term.

I continue to post bite-sized ancestor bios on multiple sites. These don't preserve original photos or documents, but they do keep alive the names/dates/lives of ancestors in the family tree. And serve as cousin bait!

For more ideas about preparing to keep family history safe, please see my book, Planning a Future for Your Family's Past, available as a paperback or e-book.

Back Up and Keep Back Ups Current

 

It's the first of the month, time to back up all your digitized family history files and genealogy data. Think about protecting everything you've digitized or downloaded and filed digitally, in case of computer problems.

This year, I replaced my older external hard drives with a new, tiny but mighty external hard drive that has a lot of storage capacity. I kept the old drives, because they have all my personal and genealogical photos. But external hard drives eventually need to be replaced. It was time to replace BEFORE I needed to access the data due to some glitch or crash.

I use the tiny hard drive in the picture for my Mac "Time Machine" hourly backups. This small external drive is faster and more convenient than the 2020-era drives I used to use. I like that it takes up less space and it completes backups in a shorter time.

For extra protection, I also back up every day in the cloud and regularly duplicate special/important files to a USB, ready to transfer if needed. 

Download online trees and back up, too

In addition, I have family trees on multiple genealogy sites and occasionally download the gedcoms for these so they are on available on my desktop Mac and backed up in the cloud. 

On Ancestry for instance, go to "tree settings" when you're in your family tree, then select "Manage Your Tree...Export Tree" (see image at right) and be prepared to wait if the tree has thousands of individuals. But it's worthwhile as a backup!

On MyHeritage, the process is explained in this screen shot below...and you can query the site's Knowledge Base for more details. 

Backups provide peace of mind that our family trees and genealogy data are safe, current, and available. I wrote about the value of backups in my genealogy book, Planning a Future for Your Family's Past.