Updated from 8 all went well, except Media Files are not saving or to selected folder at backup. Ideas appreciated.
The backup with media files combines database and media files in one .rmbackup file.
Thanks for getting back to me.
Has this changed from RM8 then, as I have a folder full of the media from Ancestry sync? If not, why then is there in Settings>Folder Settings>Media folder that is not being used for media?
Media files downloaded from Ancestry work a little differently than all your other media files. Media files from Ancestry are all stored in one large folder which is a subfolder of the folder where your RM database is stored. RM does not find such media files using the Folder settings. Rather it finds them by looking in the special subfolder that is in the same folder as the RM database.
Exactly how did you do your update from RM8 to RM9?
If you simply opened your existing RM8 database from RM9, you will no longer be able to open that database in RM8 and the media files from Ancestry should still be where they always were and should continue to work just fine.
If you copied your RM8 database to a new folder and opened the new copy in RM9, you would need to copy your RM8 media folder to the folder where you placed your RM9 database.
The media folder for Ancestry will have the same name as your RM database plus the string _media. For example, if you RM database is called SmithFamily then the media folder will be called SmithFamily_media. So if you have to copy your RM8 media folder to a new folder for RM9, rename the media folder if necessary if you give your RM9 database a different name than your RM8 database.
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That setting does nothing much more than tell Add New Media where to start browsing; it’s probably a holdover from earlier versions which supported scanners and would direct where the image file would go.
TreeShare has its own rule. Say your RM8 database was named chris_rm8.rmtree. TreeShare creates and downloads to a sub-folder of the database’s folder named chris_rm8_media. You then migrated your database to RM9 and renamed it chris_rm9.rmtree in a new folder. Any future TreeShare downloads will go to a new subfolder named chris_rm9_media while the previous ones remain in chris_rm8_media.
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From 8 to 9 I opened the 8 DB and everything appeared as normal with media attached. So assume that it is pulling media from where it was already located. Hence, any new media from Ancestry will find its way to the same location?
So if I add media directly to RM does that get stored in the database, if so will it get uploaded to Ancestry when syncing? So can I assume the said media from RM in Ancestry will not be stored in the
during any further sync?
It appears this is what I did when updating from 7 to 8 but not to 9. As I was able to change the name to -----rm8 as you say. Can I change the name version number in 9 without messing up?
Apologies if I have complicated things with my additional question.
No media files are stored within the database; only the paths and thumbnail image are stored within.
You could rename or move your TreeShared database a dozen times. If you downloaded a citaion each time its media goes into the correspondingly named subfolder of whichever folder the database is currently in. So that would leave a trail of subfolders with media files. The paths stored in the database files might not point correctly to them because RM8 and 9 used a variable to shorten the paths to the TreeShared database’s subfolder in which case you’ll see a red X in the Gallery or Album. The Fix Broken Media Links will hunt them down and correct the stored paths. You could move your media to a different folder structure and use that tool to relink them with the database but don’t change filenames.
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While not your main question it’s worth noting that “backup without media” consumes much less space on your drive, which may lead to more frequent backups without any significant disk usage penalty. At least for me, it’s been more likely that I’ve make a mistake in my db that I want to recover than the case that I’ve lost media. Media still has to be backed up but can be done on a different schedule than db backups.
Backing up without media is more important for people who maintain more than 1 media folder. That may not be an issue for you if you keep all of your media in the folder that gets created by ancestry treeshare.
Also, I saw an interesting post recently regarding an incremental media backup strategy. The idea would be to update ancestry tree names periodically, in order to intentionally create a different media download folder upon subsequent treeshares. This approach would allow the user to easily identify which media files have already been backed up to offsite storage.
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All makes sense, Kevin along with the incremental backup process.
Many thanks to you all for your help
Chris