Backup Genealogy data

What are genenalogists, family historians, and others doing to backup their
genealogy data files? Do they store them offsite ? Keep a backup CD in their

Lesley Robertson...

I backup to an external hard drive and to CDs which are replaced regularly
(I have had CDs less than a year old refuse to be read, so am now changing
over to DVDs for long term backup). The CDs are kept in my office (and all
the important stuff from my office pc is backed up and kept at my house). I
keep the master files of everything on my pc, with copies on my laptop
(which is much more easily stolen than the pc).
And I have hardcopy printout of trees, genealogy reports, etc.
Lesley Robertson

home office?

Denis Beauregard...

Keep the 2nd copy in a separate building because the house may burn
and there are burglars. You can rent a small safety drawer at your
bank if you work from home, or you can leave a copy to a friend or
relative.

Hugh Watkins...

I am in Europe and my two out of house back ups copies are in USA on
different servers :-)

Hugh W

Steve Hayes...

I use a flash drive to copy files from my desktop to my laptop and back again,
usually every day. So there are always three recent copies, and in addition
whenever I close the program I store a backup on the same computer, so there
are two compressed backups on each, not more than 2-3 days old.

I backup to CD about once a month, and give soem of the CDs to my wife to keep
at the office. Occasionally send some to other relatives.

Thanks in advance for your input.

john...

Apart from using CDs/DVDs, many ISPs now give you 2Gb of e-mail space.
It is easy to zip up your genealogy database files every day (excluding
images) and send yourself a copy to one of those accounts.

Hugh Watkins...

and if you change your isp?

best to keep ISp and mail services separated

Hugh W

Dennis Lee Bieber...

Which wouldn't be that much of a backup on my ISP (even if they
offered more than a 10MB mailbox)... My mail client checks for mail
every 30 minutes, as long as I'm connected, and downloaded messages are
deleted from the ISP... So I'd be creating a ZIP file, it would be

Ralph Page...

I use Outlook for an email client and it provides an option to leave
the email messages on the server rather than deleting them after they
are downloaded. You might find that useful.

I think the best option is to obtain an email account that you use
exclusively for this backup activity though.

BTW, I use an on-line back up service for my images and geanological
data, it costs more than the email technique but it is a little
handier to use. You can web-search 'online backup' and find several
companies I'd imagine.

uploaded (sent) to the ISP on a mail check, and 30 minutes later it
would be retrieved and deleted from the ISP.

john...

You can get a free account with a large mailbox limit from other
suppliers (e.g. check out

There is no need to give the e-mail address to anyone else so you don't
need to download anything from it with a mail client. So no data will be
deleted. You can access it, if necessary using a web mail client to
retrieve a backup or to do housekeeping. Then only use for backups.

Hugh Watkins...

and email them to myself as an attachemnt in web-search mail

just moved a file from one room to the next by doing that

Hugh W