Multiple copies of family files

[karno49]

I want to say that I am a woman of a certain age and this is probably why I am having these problems!!! I am doing a number of family trees. Can you tell me, when I start a new family tree do I have to back it up or, having backed up previous files, will it automatically do that? Also, I seem to have 4,5,6 copies of each family and don't know how this happens. I really do need help. I'm not using reunion touch to its best advantage. Thank you in anticipation!!

[baddorfdeb]

Re: Multiple copies of family files

Reunion (the mac end of it) will save the file. Making a backup copy just makes another copy on the same disk, which is a GOOD idea if you are about to make some edits that might not turn out to be right. Those are probably the 4,5,6 copies that you've found. Each time you tell Reunion to make a backup copy, you get another copy on the disk.

However, making a backup of the whole disk, is very important too. External disks are quite cheap these days. Buy one that's bigger than your main disk, and use Time Machine to do automatic backups to it. This is external to the Reunion software. You could also use a "thumb drive" and just make a backup copy of the Reunion file. But backing up the whole disk is a very good idea.

[jamills706]

Re: Multiple copies of family files

But backing up the whole disk is a very good idea.

And on a Mac, you can use "Time Machine" to handle all of those full system/full hard drive backups for you to an external hard drive.

After you attach the external hard drive to the Mac, open the System Preferences (grey square full of little gears), and choose the Time Machine preferences (teal clock face with a circular arrow on it)....in there you can click the "ON/OFF switch" to the on position - then choose to "Select Disk" to tell Time Machine where to store the backup files. and BOOM, you're done and rolling!!!!!

Time machine will initially take a bit to do the first backup because it has to back up everything to the external drive...but each subsequent backup will be much shorter as it only "re-save" files that change or new files.