Hi Cathy,

All the alternatives you have suggested are quite well-trodden paths that FH users have employed.

 

Regarding cloud storage there is a free allowance on each service, beyond which you must pay:

            Dropbox          = 2 GB

            OneDrive        = 5 GB

            Google Drive = 15 GB

Everything in your Family Historian Projects folder would have to fit within one of those allowances.

But other document folders for other purposes can go on another cloud service and all those services can run simultaneously.

 

They all have configuration settings that ensure local disk copies will exist on both of your computers as well as in the cloud store.

So, yes you will be able to operate perfectly well without Internet access and then resync once the Internet connection is restored.

There is advice in the FHUG Knowledge Base on how to set up all those three cloud services.

 

However, if you are comfortable with using a USB pen drive, then why not continue.

As long as you are happy with your backup regime, then device failure should not be a problem.

An important part of such a regime is to check from time to time that the backups will restore your data, as it will be too late after a device fails.

 

If you have any further questions then do ask.

 

Regards, Mike Tate

 

 

From: family-historian@groups.io <family-historian@groups.io> On Behalf Of roberts.research36@...
Sent: 06 June 2020 18:52
To: family-historian@groups.io
Subject: [family-historian] Synchronising two computers

 

Hello and thanks in anticipation ....

I have been using FH for some years now, keeping the Projects on a USB pen drive, so that I could use the software on whichever of my two computers was the most convenient at the time, simply by walking from one room to the other with the pen drive. This had worked admirably for a long time. However, yesterday the pen drive died. Fortunately I was in the habit of backing the whole drive up quite frequently and (of course) backing up the Family Historian Project on exiting the programme every time, so there are many backups on both machines and also on Backblaze, so I don't think I will have lost much.
However, looking to the future I am wondering the best way forward. Should I  buy another pen drive, invest in a network-accessible piece of hardware, sync the two computers using something like SyncToy or go for the 21st Century & try to work out how to do it (safely) via GoogleDrive / Dropbox/ other clouds?

Before that nice lady whose name I've forgotten starts asking - I have several Projects, the largest of which is nearly 7GB, all my media is stored within the Projects (as well as separately on a hard drive connected to only one of the computers), I am OK with simple IT but have not dabbled with clouds (other than using Dropbox simply to transfer files from my tablet to a computer) and I do not wish to sync everything on my computers, only really the family history stuff plus some holiday & hobby stuff which it would be useful to be able to access. These files run to another 34GB. So it looks like I shall need min 42+GB of space. 

I would be happy(?) to subscribe to GoogleDrive to get more space there but before so doing I would wish to be assured that in the event of an internet outage I would still be able to access my files, even if only on one computer, until the internet was restored. I would also want to be able to take my laptop out of the house, probably away from all internet access, and still be able to use the FH programme & to sync once I had returned home. My knowledge of such things is woefuully inadequate but having followed the conversations on this group.io I can see that there are many learned & patient people who will be able to put me straight & recommend & explain in simple layman's language what best to do next.

So I look forward to your response(s)!
Cheers - Cathy

If the size of all your Projects together exceeds 15 GB then you will need to purchase extra Google Drive storage.

 

Thank you for the screenshot which explains everything to me.

For those three ‘broken links’ Auto Repair Links has found matching media files within the similarly named AlanCrotty Project sitting in the Dropbox folder.

It seems you have a copy of your Family Historian Projects folder in the C:\Users\lenovo\Dropbox folder.

If have no intention of using Dropbox then delete that copy of your Family Historian Projects folder, and perhaps the Dropbox folder itself.

 

That will reintroduce X marks in the Tools > External File Links dialogue for those three Media records.

You need to locate the three pairs of Media records in the Records Window in order to merge them.

Select one pair of Media records and use Edit > Merge/Compare Records ensuring the one with the valid File link is top of the list.

There may be little to merge, but I am erring on the side of caution as possibly some fields and links do need merging.

 

With default settings, there should only be 8 Snapshot files, but FH sometimes seems to forget to purge old ones, especially if there are any Pre-revert entries.

The safest solution is to use File > Backup/Restore > Revert to Snapshot and in the Snapshot Manager dialogue Shft key select and Delete the old ones.

 

Then you should be good to go.

 

From: family-historian@groups.io <family-historian@groups.io> On Behalf Of Cathy Roberts
Sent: 07 June 2020 20:15
To: family-historian@groups.io
Subject: Re: [family-historian] Synchronising two computers

 

Hello Mike & thank you for your prompt reply. As I haven’t got a handy USB pen drive at the moment I thought I’d try the Google Drive option & so I have been reading all the instructions about how to set up GD in the first place & the FHUG instructions too.

 

All went well until I came to the Backup&Restore Plugin instructions – step 1 says to check the file links & to ask for help in the forum if anything untoward appears.

 

The window initially only showed the Media Folder but I had three X marks in the file links. However, as far as I could see each of these media items is accompanied by the same item without an X

 Clicking on Auto Repair Links resulted in the offending links disappearing from the Project data folder but changed the window to show C: as well, (which hadn’t been there before) , which bewildered me!

 

At one time I did try using Dropbox but that was quite a long time ago.  So I am now not sure what I have done or if it is ok to proceed?

 

Another question has to do with snapshots – there is a snapshot subfolder in the .fh_data folder with an awful lot of snapshots, all taking up megabytes of space & from the look of their names, quite old. Should I delete these  - & do they just mount up over a period of time?

 

Your wise counsel would be much appreciated - & as I proceed no doubt more questions will come to light!

 

Many thanks in anticipation

Cathy

 

Virus-free. www.avast.com