I always make a backup whenever I use and close my database, regardless of whether I’ve made changes, so I’m used to the messages RMG makes when it does a backup. It ALWAYS warns us that this can take a while for a large database, and it normally finished my file in a matter of seconds.
It always makes me wonder, what does RMG consider a large database? Mine is somewhere between 10,000 and 11,000 records. At what point does the backup take longer than an average sneeze?
Or is this just a jest on RMG’s part, making all the male users worry whether size matters?
That’s a message probably composed in the 1990’s for the technology of that era. Your database file is likely a few MB in size which is now trivial for the Zip function used by RM and contemporary tech. Including media in the backup can have an impact on the time that is proportional to the cumulative size of those files. RM backup in earlier versions choked if the total was over 2 or 4GB. I think that cap has been lifted.
There is no exact answer to your question. I’m amused sometimes when users describe their data base as “very large” at something like 1,200 people. I consider my database pretty small at something like 40,000 people. These days, I don’t think an RM data base is really “large” until it’s at or close to 100,000 people. I’m sure opinions will vary, and sometimes for good and valid reason.
As Tom described, the thrust of the message was to alert the user to be patient because of the long time that might be required for a backup. The message wasn’t referring to any particular count of people in the database. It was referring to time for the backup. I agree with Tom that databases typically can be backed up much more quickly now with modern technology that would have been possible decades ago when RM’s warning message was first created.
An exception to the size rule can be if you include media files in your backup file and when your database includes a lot of media files. Your RM database doesn’t actually include any media files. It only includes links to where your media files are actually located on your disk. But if you include media files in your RM backup, a copy of all those media files is included in your RM backup file. So RM’s backups can take much, much longer if they include media files.
Including media files in an RM backup file can be a good strategy, but it needs to be used thoughtfully. In addition to the extra time for the backup, including media files makes the backup files much larger. And if you restore from an RM backup file with media, it puts all your media files into a single large folder rather than restoring your original folder structure.
people? or all records. It not only matter the # people, or # of events per person by the amount of content for each person and/or records. Media Thumbs make up small but measurable part of a database and adds up. Note and formatted notes. If a GEDCOM is drastically smaller than that RM database (in mb) than that gives you some indication. It can be quit subjective (as Jerry gave some examples) – a person new might find anything over 1,000 people getting large. I have been doing this since 2004 and I find a db size of 25-50K or so to be moderate, approaching 75k+ it getting large. At same time I also recognize a decent single photo could not fit on my first hard drive circ 1987. (10mb)