I think the problem is that users often do not have the understanding of how Save, Save As and Backup work.

For most software (Word, Excel, Notepad etc.) all of the processing occurs in memory. These therefore need to be written back onto the disk before you close the program. One would normally use the Save command which will overwrite the original file with the updated version. If you want to create a new file, without overwriting the original, you would use the Save As command to create a new file.

Legacy, and other database systems, always make changes directly to the original file, *.fdb etc., as they are changed. These programs have no need for a Save command since there is nothing that needs to be saved. But they might, and Legacy does, have a Save As command. This is designed to make copies of the current .fdb and related files and save them under a different file name. At that point you have two duplicated copies of the same set of files. The moment that you make a change onwards you will only the changing the version that you are working on. On my system it has created the following files, as duplicates of my live Hill.fdb version :

Hill1.fdb, Hill1.FG, Hill1.h1, Hill1.h2, Hill1.ldb, Hill1.SC, Hill1.TC, Hill1~hdb.hdb, Hill1~ppl.ppl, Hill1~rc3.ldb, Hill1~rc3.rc3, Hill1~rc3.rc3.cal, Hill1~rgd.rgd

Notice that the *.ldb files will be removed when Legacy closes, and also that none of the associated media files or other internal Legacy files will be copied.

These files could be regarded as a copy for use as a backup, but more likely as a temporary version for experimenting before making changes to the live files.

Now, you could always make a backup of all of the files - yours, Legacy and media - into a separate location, using the functionality within Windows Explorer, and you can also use a compression system to reduce the size of the files that you copy. But Legacy includes the Backup command to do this for you, as compressed files. This can be set to run every time you close Legacy or you can it whenever you want to. It also has the ability to put a time-stamp on the backup file name, which would be an issue with backups taken every time you close Legacy since you will be building multiple copies and would need you to clear these out manually with Windows Explorer. My preference is to make backups before and after making large changes to the system, while letting minor changes go through without being backed up. I also ensure that the backup files are saved into a different folder, called Backups, below the normal working folder. I also do the same with the media files into the Media/..... folders. Also note that the media backups will ONLY include media files which are explicitly linked into the Legacy system and will exclude any other files in the media folders. To include these you would need to create a fake and hidden event that you can attach them to.

Looking at my Backup files I notice that the Hill~rc3.rc3.cal is not included, and that they are based against the folder they were saved from. However the media files are based back against the full folder structure to the media files; that might be an issue with a restore onto a system with a different folder structure.

Restoring from a backup could be done by extracting the files individually through Windows Explorer or a compression software, and ensuring that the files end in the correct location, but that must only be done when Legacy is closed. But it would be better to use the Restore command within Legacy to do this since it will ensure that there are no issues regarding files that might to open.

The only issue that I have with the backups is that they do not include the internal Legacy files, especially those which are user configurable and should be included in the backup files.

Regards

Chris

------ Original Message ------
From: "Roberta Schwalm" <robertaschw...@gmail.com>
To: "Legacy User Group" <legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com>
Sent: 18/08/2021 12:30:34
Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Problems with Backup

Cathy, am I mistaken or is she using "save as" instead of "backup"? Whenever I close a session after adding new information, I click on the "Exit Legacy" button and it always asks me if I want to back up my data. The default is my C drive and I do save it there. However, I reopen Legacy, insert my external hard drive, click on the "backup" button, change the drive to which I want to save my data, then follow the instruction that I get on screen. I have never had a problem with saving my information.

Roberta

On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 11:03 PM Cathy Pinner <genea...@gmail.com> wrote:
Cindy,
You can't expect the Restore a backup feature to work when you don't use
the Backup feature.

What file are you saving to your external drives and how? If you are
overwriting your previous saved file on those drives, then you only have one generation of a type of backup. You should have at least 10 of your
data backups though many of us keep some going back months and years.

If you are only copying over the <your family filename>.fdb, it's not a
full backup of your family file which is made up of a number of
different files - though it will have all the data.

Use the backup process. File > Backup File OR Backup on exit at least
for your data. I don't use the Legacy Media Backup routine as I back
that up with the rest of my computer data. Also I keep it in Dropbox so
there's already a copy off my computer as well as on it in the Dropbox
folder.

Cathy
> Cindy Custer <mailto:custerc...@comcast.net>
> Wednesday, 18 August 2021 10:48
> Every time I update anything, I save a file (not zipped) to a USB
> flash drive AND I also save it (not zipped) to an external 1TB Western
> Digital storage drive.
>
> However, when I try to restore my C: drive Legacy database
> (...\Documents\Legacy Family Tree\Data\...) using either one of those
> it doesn't work because the Restore File function is apparently
> only looking for zipped files.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: LegacyUserGroup <legacyusergroup-boun...@legacyusers.com> On
> Behalf Of Cathy Pinner
> Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2021 9:32 PM
> To: Legacy User Group <legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com>
> Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Problems with Backup
>
> Cindy,
> Here are the Support articles on your errors.
>
> http://support.legacyfamilytree.com/article/AA-00261/11/Error-Messages-Problems/Error-503-Backup-problem.html
>
> http://support.legacyfamilytree.com/article/AA-00271/11/Error-Messages-Problems/Error-508-Cannot-move-temporary-file-to-target-zip-file.html
>
> It's a bit strange to get either of these if you are backing up to
> your computer hard drive as you indicate.
> The default location for backups is ...\Documents\Legacy Family
> Tree\Data\ folder but that's because it's a folder Legacy created so
> knows about. You should backup to an external drive or to a folder
> that syncs to the cloud - like a Dropbox folder or Google Drive or
> OneDrive.
>
> To use the backup data zip, you don't unzip it yourself. You use File > > Restore File in Legacy and it does the unzipping as part of the process.
>
> Cathy
>
>
>
>
>
> Cathy Pinner <mailto:genea...@gmail.com>
> Wednesday, 18 August 2021 09:32
> Cindy,
> Here are the Support articles on your errors.
>
> http://support.legacyfamilytree.com/article/AA-00261/11/Error-Messages-Problems/Error-503-Backup-problem.html
>
>
> http://support.legacyfamilytree.com/article/AA-00271/11/Error-Messages-Problems/Error-508-Cannot-move-temporary-file-to-target-zip-file.html
>
>
> It's a bit strange to get either of these if you are backing up to
> your computer hard drive as you indicate.
> The default location for backups is ...\Documents\Legacy Family
> Tree\Data\ folder but that's because it's a folder Legacy created so
> knows about. You should backup to an external drive or to a folder
> that syncs to the cloud - like a Dropbox folder or Google Drive or
> OneDrive.
>
> To use the backup data zip, you don't unzip it yourself. You use File
> > Restore File in Legacy and it does the unzipping as part of the
> process.
>
> Cathy
>
>
>
>
> Cindy Custer <mailto:custerc...@comcast.net>
> Wednesday, 18 August 2021 05:08
>
> For some reason, my backups have stopped working. When I try to backup
> I receive either a 503 or a 508 error message
>
> telling me that the system cannot Access the .zip files.  I have my
> backup locations set as C:User\/myname/\Documents\Legacy
>
> Family Tree\Data\/database name\/8-17-2021-2021-8-17 4.51.27 PM.zip
> AND C:User\/myname/\Documents\Legacy
>
> Family Tree\Data\/database name\/8-17-2021-2021-8-17 4.51.27 PM-media.zip
>
> I opened the last file that I saved to my USB flash drive (K:) to try
> and backup on my C: drive.  The latest backup (zip) files showing
>
> In my C: drive are dated 8-11-2021.
>
> I tried to do a restore from the unzipped K: drive, but the unzipped
> files don’t show when I use the Restore icon in Legacy software.
>
> I obviously don’t understand how the files are relating to each other.
> What should I do now?
>
> Basically I want to get the unzipped file from my K: USB flash drive
> resident onto my C: Legacy 9 software so that I can create a
>
> Zipped backup file and be able to proceed backing up future changes.
> I have 1057 individual names in my database. I am using
>
> Legacy 9 version 9.0.0.182 and I am running Microsoft 10 Pro 64bit
> version 2004 (May 2020 update)
>
> custerc...@comcast.net <mailto:custerc...@comcast.net>
>
> I
>
>
>
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