I’ve used RootsMagic for many years. I have so many old databases and I’d just like to start over. Can I download my TreeShare tree from Ancestry directly to my external HD and put everything on it? What is the best way to make sure everything migrates to the external drive rather than bits and pieces on my computer’s HD???
You can specify where the file saves to. You simply choose your external drive as that place. The database file will be in a folder that you named adn the media will be in a folder with the same name as the database folder but it will have _media appended to it.
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Thank you… will try again.
Media on external drive is fine. The database on external drive (vs internal) not sure I would recommend but maybe other uses have done this way for everyday use with good success.
I have been doing it for years. And the folder that my database is stored in is also the local Google Drive folder, it sits on my 2TB Western Digital external drive.
Thanks. Moved it over but now the media files are not connected😫
Simple click on the Media tab then the 2 dots and select “Fix broken media links”. On the next screen select “A selected drive or folder”. Once selected, click the Search for missing Files.
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Thank you all so much - I used the “Fix Broken Media Tool” and it fixed all but 450 links. I’ve tried other folders but maybe these are lost. My next question: once I back my file up on my new external drive, is everything I need now contained on this one ext HD??? I’d like to dump my original backups on Dropbox and older ext. hard drives. What do I need to keep on my computer other than the program itself???
If you run the MultiMedia List Report, save the report as an excel or pdf file, and then search on “Not Found”, you will see the file names of the missing links and, more importantly, the folder and path where they were located when they were added to your RM db. This might help you figure where the media files are now.
Take a look at your Folder Settings (under the main Settings menu). This page lets you assign the default location for common actions like backing up data, saving reports, etc. You might want to think about where you want each of these items stored. If all of these settings point to your external HD, then that’s the default location for things to be found. You don’t have to change these settings to the external HD but if you don’t you’ll have to navigate to your external drive every time you perform one of these actions or risk saving the data to an unexpected place.
The next step would be to examine your HD to see if you have any of these file types in other places and, if so, move them to the appropriate place. There are a couple of caveats that you should be aware of. First, if the default Media folder is not pointed to your external HD already then you will need to run the Fix Broken Links tool again after you change it. (The ‘relative path’ feature used for storing media file paths requires re-running the Fix Broken Links tool whenever you change the default Media location setting.) Also, there have been reports of issues when storing RM db and media files on an external drive if the external HD is not always connected to the computer. When the drive gets plugged in, the OS might assign it a different drive letter than it had before. If this happens, the file paths to data and media that RM expects will have changed. This could impact the opening RM db files from the “Recent Files” list as well as whether or not media links get broken. Neither of these issues are show stoppers but they could cause confusion.
Most people would consider it risky to keep your data, media, and backups on a single device. A more standard approach would be to store these items on your local disk, then periodically attach an external HD and copy media and db backups to it. If you use an external HD as your main storage device, then you might want to get an additional external HD to periodically to backup your db and media files.
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