Digital Preservation for Genealogists

Editor’s Note: This article is very relevant to this issue of the The Denbow Diaspora, which has been delayed because of  two successive crashes of my genealogical computer (also same machine as my ham shack computer) that required two clean installs of the OS (Win8-64). I had all my data in the documents folder backed up via Crash Plan online backup service and was able to restore it without too much hassle. I did forget that a few data files (e.g., a log made by a ham radio program for a mode called JT65-HF) were not backed up to the online service; therefore, I lost about two months worth of contact information for that digital mode and a few other items. Also, I’ve been placing a lot of my data on Dropbox over the last several months, though I haven’t gone “whole hog” yet and used it to replace my entire documents folder, as has the author of this article. It was a real hassle to  reinstall all of my programs, so in keeping with the LOCKSS principle, as described by Mr. Eastman, I’m now also regularly imaging my entire hard drive to an external drive via a program called Casper, which I had in the past used with great success at my office.