Media preservation

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W11, AIO64-5.1.5-1

I would like to know what is the best method to keep the photos accessible. I am going to explain it in some detail so that you can understand what I mean.
I start from the assumption that I have no programming knowledge or experience in GRAMPS.
For my tree to be able to pass to my descendants in conditions, I use the 1-2-3 rule

  • 3 copies of data, one primary and two backup copies only
  • I store the data on 2 different types of media
  • I keep a copy in 1 different physical location
    With that I have no problem, but with images and documents, how do you do it, besides putting relative paths, do you synchronize folders? Especially for day to day use. For long term copies, you replace folders and it is not so much of a problem.
    Any pc can suffer an accident and I don’t want to lose the images.
    Thanks
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Everyone is different and Gramps does not impose any particular system or another as best whatever that means, so whatever works best for you.

You can read how some other people have organised files at the following link: Organise your files - Gramps

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I backup all my media files (currently 27K / 64GB) once a week to an external hard drive which I do not leave on and connected to my PC. Backups of the database get loaded to a thumb drive daily.

As you say, accidents happen.

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All my genealogy files are in one Genealogy directory hierarchy on my PC, even databases and backups.

That directory is part of my Dropbox file structure, automatically backuped on cloud.

On my Synology NAS, Dropbox re-import that structure as it. Every night it does a cold backup and put it on another Dropbox directory to archive it. Ideally I would backup that with another cloud backup service or to another Synology system. But that’s enough for my needs.

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Thank you. I have no problem organizing my files, I have it pretty well figured out.

My question is how do I manage to keep the documents and data I add, modify or delete in sync?
Thank you.

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There is one aspect you have not considered: file format. You want to be able to pass photos to your descendants. This means your timeframe measures in decades.

One decade is eternity for computer technology (hardware as well as software).

I saved all my scanned photos (using your 1-2-3 “physical” rules) in JPEG 2000 lossless format. Lossless because I don’t want to lose details considering the time I spent to scan. J2k because it has a fairly good compression ratio. Unfortunately, though promising as J2k was at its time, it has fallen out of fashion. There is a possibility in the mid-term that you won’t find J2k decoders any longer.

Storage media has now tremendously grown in size. I think I’m going to use some other format for my next scanning session(s). It will be some sort of bitmap so that, even with low programming skill, data can be extracted easily. I have not yet decided which format. It must be lossless, patent-free and easy to hack if technology obsolescence stumbles in the way as my originals have already worn out (some of them are close to 150 years!) and can’t be rescanned to full quality.

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The easiest way is to use the built in Robocopy in Windows, it has a lot of functions, one of them is to copy only new and/or changed files.

It is a simple Command Line tool, but there are some GUI’s made for it.

with it you can set up a one-line batch script that can be run with schedule, it is fast and can be configured to create logs in addition if you need it.
It will also be possible to create a cmd or bat file that sync or copy to multiple locations as long as those locations are accessible on the network from the computer it runs.
here is a link to Microsofts “Learn” page for it… robocopy | Microsoft Learn
but if you search for “robocopy”, you will find multiple other guides for using it.

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Maybe it would be easier some way to put a button, command? “save” “save as” or similar? Thanks.
W11, GRAMPS: AIO64-5.1.5-1

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It is not possible for Gramps to have a full sync of media files built in as long as it is a software for all three platforms…

Gramps is a database software for registring your genealogy data, just like Legacy, RootsMagic and more… none of them have any type of media file synchronization in them, because what you want and need is a Operating System level feature.

There is also multiple other easy to use software for Windows that do full sync of your media folders, some of them can be configured to sync multiple folders at different locations… but it is way out of the scope of Gramps or any other genealogy software…

What a developer might do is to add a configurable button, where you can add a link to a executable file, either another software or a runnable script or batch file…

It might be they will do that if you ask for it…?
But you will still need to set up your sync/backup routine yourself… e.g., using Robocopy or any other sync/backup tool.

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