Joe
Vacaville, CA
MAGLAUGHLIN MARTIN HARKNESS HAMLIN ELWAY SPOTTSWOOD KIEFFER
----- Original Message ----- From: "John R. Bayle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, March 20, 2005 1:48 PM
Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Legacy vs FTM
gedcomI see. Since you mentioned that you use the three programs, how do you update them? do you keep one up-dated at all times and then export ato the others to update? Just curious, cause I kept FTM 5.0 updated forthelongest time and finally just went with legacy all the way. I just now
deleted all of the back-ups that I kept from FTM , heck, I had ten years
worth of FTM back-ups. Made me a little nervous to to delete them but I am
backed - up thoroughly with Legacy.
The short answer is that I don't keep all of them up to date. But that's only partly true. I really don't want to do triple data entry, but I do a little!
I use Legacy as my primary gen program. I do all new data entry in Legacy.
When I want to make a chart of something in FTM or Generations, I make
a GEDCOM from Legacy and and import the GEDCOM into one of the
other programs. However, there are some exceptions. When a new event
occurs in the family, such as a marriage or a birth or a death I update both
the FTM and the Generations file as well as the Legacy file. Thus I still
have
"current" versions of the database in all three programs. It's just that
they are
all different sizes. There are 10,900 people in my Legacy file, 10,023
people
in the Generations file and 7220 people in my FTM file. I also like the way
FTM handles pictures better than either Generations or Legacy, so I have a
fourth file in FTM, which has pictures in it.
I do keep all these files backed-up. Clearly the Legacy file which is getting more updates gets backed-up most often.
This is a complex way of doing things, and is more complex than many
folks would do. One advantage is that since I have multiple backups
on both an external hard disk as well as CD-R disks, and on multiple
internal hard drives, with multiple native file formats in addition to
GEDCOMs, which I also back-up from time to time, the data are now
virtually indestructible. I've sent copies to cousins in Texas and New
York;
I live in Massachusetts. If I lost the most recent copy of my Legacy
database
I wouldn't lose more than a hundred or so names at most. Right now I'd
lose less than 10. Even if my house and all it's contents were obliterated,
the cousins would have up to the last thousand or so names, and they
have it in four different formats so it should be easy for them to access.
I have deleted some old FTM backups on Floppys from years ago. My more recent backups to CDs are still kept. One file on my hard disk is "the original" FTM file that had all the stuff I initially got started with. That is I got started doing electronic genealogy years ago. In 1997 I entered all the data I had into FTM 3.4. This data came from a large Family tree which my Uncle had shown me when I wa a teen. I made a copy of Uncles Tree back then. I still have that paper copy. In 1997 I entered all the data in that tree into FTM, and then added the "new stuff" that had happend since I copied Uncle's tree. My marriage and children, siblings', cousins' marriages and children, deaths etc. This became "the original" file. I still have this file on my 'puter's hard drive as well as in other places.
Guess I'm just a sentimental old geezer!!! ;-)
jr
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