What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Briefly, the Y2K problem is the concern that the internal programming within Personal Computers will not successfully handle the rollover of the date from the year 1999 to the year 2000. This stems from the year date being stored as a two digit number - "99" - rather then the full four digit year. Processing on PCs may be interrupted when a 2 digit date of "00" for 2000 appears to the PC to be numerically LESS than "99" rather than 2000 being greater than 1999.

In order to be enjoying Robert Burns' most famous work as rendered by the ghost of Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians at midnight on December 31st, it is best to plan ahead regarding your PC and Y2K. Assuming that you've taken the steps necessary to assure yourself that your PC will be Y2K-compliant, you may still be experiencing a lingering fear that "something" may still go wrong.

The only absolute insurance which you can obtain against unforeseen problems occurring due to Y2K is to create backups of your important data. Backups are always good practice, but they may be particularly "life saving" as Y2K approaches. Now is the time to develop your own backup plan - don't delay until the end of December. The remainder of this article will provide suggested backup plans for a genealogist's PC.

Backup Early and Often

• Will recreating the new data you've entered since your last backup take more time than making a backup now? If yes, it's time to make backup copies.
• Since your last backup, do you have new information on your PC which is unique, exists only on your PC, and nowhere else? If yes, it's time for a backup.

Backups Have Families Too

This same concept of strength in multiple generations is also true of your backup plan. Regardless of what media you use or how frequently you back up, it is very important that you retain several generations of backup copies in order to ensure recoverability. Let's take a simple weekly backup to a floppy diskette as an example. The diskette from week #1 can be considered the "grandfather". Come week #2, don't just overwrite your backup on the same diskette as you used in week #1. Make your week #2 backup onto a different diskette. Week #2's backup diskette can be considered the "father". On week #3, backup to yet another new diskette, leaving both the grandfather and father to continue storing week #1 and week #2's data. Week #3's diskette thus becomes the "son". Finally by week #4, it is time to retire the grandfather diskette. Overwrite the week #1 backup diskette with week #4's data. Week #2's diskette has now moved up to the grandfather generation, week #3's to the father position, and your newly-minted week #4 diskette is now the son generation.

By continuing this rotation pattern, you can save yourself a great deal of grief. Let's imagine that after you've taken your week #4 backup, you have a problem with your Personal Computer. Once the problem is resolved and you have a need to restore from your backup diskette, you would naturally choose the son generation diskette, in this case week #4's backup, from which to restore. It is, after all, the most current. However, what if week #4's diskette has some physical flaw in it which was not detected when you created your backup? What if your floppy disk drive refuses to read the diskette?

If week #4 was your only copy of a backup, you'd be in a world of hurt. However, because you treasured the multiple generations of backups prior to week #4, you can still recover. Granted, you will have to go back to week #3's diskette, the father generation, and you will have lost any new information entered between week #3 and now. But chances are that the majority of your data will be there. What if still further problems are encountered with week #3's diskette? What if the backup process failed when the diskette was being written but you didn't notice at the time? You can still go back to the grandfather generation, week #2. Even more of your most recently-entered information will not be on this diskette, but again you will still recover the majority of your prior work. See the wisdom which multiple generations of backups can provide?

One helpful addition to a generational backup plan is to take a copy of a recent backup offsite, away from your PC and away from your home. I actually make two copies of every backup, one copy specifically for offsite storage which I take to my office with me. You can store your other diskette at a relative's house or in your safe deposit box or anywhere you deem safe. The important thing to remember is that the offsite storage location needs to be a considerable physical distance from your home. This is to ensure that a fire in your home, burst pipes, or other localized disasters don't destroy both your Personal Computer and your only copies of your backups as well.

Files, Files, Where Are the Files?

Note that most of these programs have their own backup features (usually found on the menu bar under File). Using these built-in backup features is always recommended by the vendors to ensure that all critical files are backed up. Most of these built-ins allow you point your backup to a specified piece of removable media such as your floppy drive or a Zip drive. Some of the files of those named below are actually created by the built-in backup process. Thus if you can't locate them, make sure that you've run through the built-in backup process in your software first. Use your PC's Explorer, My Computer, or File Manager search feature to find the locations of these file name extensions on your particular PC.

Critical genealogy files by product:

And don't forget to backup any GEDCOM files which have been sent to you. If you have not yet incorporated them into your own genealogy software files, they may be the only copies of the information you have. Their file extensions are *.ged.

Something to remember about genealogy software which incorporates your images, audio, or video clips is that these types of files are often not included into the actual genealogy database. They are usually stored elsewhere on your PC and are simply linked to by the genealogy software. Thus making backups of your genealogy database may not include the ancestral photographs or family reunion video clips which are accessible via your genealogy software. Be sure to follow your vendor's advice on the location of these types of external files and back them up as well.

Your Communications With Others

You will want to back up as much of your e-mail directory as practical. If you do not wish to save all of your e-mail, at a minimum you should regularly back up your e-mail address book where you keep the e-mail addresses of your regular correspondents. The following is a partial list of the file names, file extensions, or directory path names of the address books for some popular e-mail programs. This is not an exhaustive list, so consult your e-mail software vendor for your program's specifics.

E-mail Address Books:

Likewise for your bookmarked web sites, a PC failure should not deprive you from visiting your favorite research sites. Check with your browser vendor to determine which specific files to back up for your browser software. Here are the file names and directory path names for three of the most popular browsers.

Your Bookmarks or Favorite web sites:

An Ounce of Prevention

Useful Links

Performing Backups from Indiana University - http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/usail/backups/

Removable Backup Media - iomega - http://www.iomega.com/

Internet-based Backup Service - @Backup - http://www.backup.com/