Hello, I’m thinking of getting a new lap top not in the imminent future in about 6 mos. I have my computer guy transfer my files and such to new computer.
I know that when a attach a picture from my computer to Roots magic media, and move that particular picture on my computer to a differnt file folder, it will break the connection for roots magic to find the picture, I had this happen and got the red X . This got me wondering what happens to media attached to Roots Magic when one gets a new computer.? I have my computer guy transfer all my PC photos to new computer . Just wondering better to find out now than later.
Hi there.
Although the RM9 wiki isn’t populated yet, the RM8 wiki’s info on the subject is still useful.
http://wiki.rootsmagic.com/wiki/RootsMagic_8:Fix_Broken_Media_Links
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If your computer guy places your media files at the “same place” on the new computer that they were on the old computer, then the media links in RM will “just work”.
If your computer guy places your files at a “different place” on the new computer and if your computer guy maintains the same subfolder structure on the new computer as on the old computer and if your RM media folder option was set correctly on the old computer, then all you should have to do on the new computer is to set your new RM media folder option to where the files really are on the new computer and it should “just work”.
If both of the above fail, as long as your computer guy copies your media files to the new computer, you should be able to run the “Fix Broken Media Links” tool in RM to correct all the links.
You can tell your computer guy that “the same place” means having the same Windows userid on the new computer as the old computer, assuming it’s Windows. I don’t know how that works on a Mac. Even on Windows, this could be trickier than it sounds because a new Windows installation tries to give you a Microsoft userid (like an Outlook userid or a Hotmail userid) and to use that as your Windows userid.
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Hi! Kimberly, Thanks I’ll give it a look
Thank You Jerry, I have windows 10 on current computer. I’ll know how to better describe to my computer guy what what I would like. Hope I don’t need to run Fix broken media .
Best to learn where your data is stored on the old computer and just copy it over to the new. Fix media tool on RM works great and is no problem if you change media locations.
Sounds like you may not be backing up your computer at all and that is a recipe for disaster on a Windows pc.
And also on a mac pc.
True but disaster in 5 years instead of 5 months.
So are you saying that Mac users only do stupid stuff/have natural disasters/have hard drives crash/‘insert any one of hundreds of reasons to have a data loss’ only every 5 years? Gonna have to get me a Mac! Then I won’t have to pay for backup services and cloud storage and additional external drives to protect my RM files and all the other valuable data that I have.
Last I checked, Mac drives/SSDs all come from the same manuafacturers that do Windows drives/SSDs.
Thanks, I do have most of my picture files on my lap top backed up on SD cards & usb flash drives, I believe that new computers are being made with usb-c flash drive ports . I’ve starting working on backing up documents . Yes, it’s very important to back up files and migrate to new storage devices
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As a former IT manager at a robotics company I can verify that people are much more apt to do stupid things more frequently than every 5 months or years.
And natural disasters rarely happen.
The more complex the software is the more chance of a DEU (Defective End User) problem occurring.
Maybe I should switch to a mac and buy a new one every 4 years, and never have a reason to backup.
Where was it I wonder where I heard “Once you go Mac, you never look back”? All humour and wit aside, regardless of platform, brand, OS of computer used, prosecuting a regular backup regime is good hygiene and common sense. Totally agree about errors are typically human prone, and too often I’ve experienced folk who “blame the tool game”. Regardless, causes of human error can be minimised if tooling used is designed for easy use and well documented. When that is not done / provided, then lots of “muck ups” can be expected at no fault to persons striving to use the tool. I switched to Mac long ago for personal use, but professionally have had had to put up with varieties of Windows that never matched my Mac ease of use experience. End of rant.
Love that DEU acronym!
Kidye9 seems to be making selective copies of some data rather than an automatic full backup of all data.
Mac crashes are rare but not zero events but automatic backup with time machine and icloud for ios devices is so easy that there is little excuse for data loss.
Hi! Rooty, I realize this is a very late reply, Thank you for your suggestion of having a full back up for data. I have recently bought a new lap top and still have my older lap top . I’m looking into an external hard drive. I’ve been reading about how to do a full back up .
For backup keep it simple and automatic. Multiple copies of everything in more than one place. Google windows backup to an external drive for details. On a mac you just buy a good external drive (ie Samsung SSD 1TB; WD HDD) connect to your mac and turn on time machine (part of the OS). Best to have 2 external drives and rotate one every 10 days. Also you can pay for a cloud backup service like iDrive which avoids the physical risks of local backups (fire…theft…power surge).
As RWcrooks points out people delete or mangle their own files all the time and a recent backup lets you easily recover those items. Supposedly only 5% of users do a real backup giving rise to horror stories of total data loss when the inevitable happens.