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Effects of Synchronisation Failure in FTM 2012
I have recently had several failures of synchronisation and that has been picked up by the Ancestry.com team who are addressing the issue.
This had led me to the realisation that failure is eventually inevitable, even in the most well constructed systems, and to consider what good practice might be in order to preserve the many hours of work represented by synchronised family trees.
It seems that when synchronisation fails there is currently no information as to why that occurrs or any way to address the problem of relinking other than to either upload the Family Tree Maker version to Ancestry.com or to download the Ancestry.com version and relink. As the versions are different that leads to information loss. For instance, if the FTM version is used the links to other trees are lost or, if the web version is downloaded tasks are lost as is any organisation of media into sub folders. There are many other implications.
If I have any of the foregoing wrong, then I'd like to understand what is the actual situation.
I have currently opted for downloading the web version (partly because it is faster given that my download speed is much higher than my upload speed) but this had led to many problems. The most urgent one is that the behaviour of downloading seems to differ each time. The last but one download automatically included all the Ancestry source material (copies of census forms etc) whereas the last one only included my own media (photos, etc). Given that I consider it important that I have copies of all source material available locally and properly linked to FTM, the last download is less than satisfactory.
The purpose of this message is not necessarily to address any particular issue but to point out that there are problems and to find out if others see similar problems and are wishing to discuss them with a view to them being addressed by Ancestry.com and to determine what are the considerations relative to good practice in the real world of occasional system failure. I appreciate that I am new here and that the matters may have been addressed elsewhere. If so then can somebody point me in the right direction?
Views: 1745
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Russ Worthington on
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John,
When you see the Sync Error, did you Compact the file before you did the Sync?
Russ
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Permalink Reply by John on
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Russ,
The process was:
1. Prepare test GEDCOM from Legacy
2. Import test GEDCOM to FTM - no compact
3. Upload uncompacted data to Ancestry encountering `Media: 2 not complete - process error' error at the end of the process.
The `Media: 2 not complete - process error' error occurred on initial upload and the subsequent syncs. Nevertheless the system indicates that the trees are in-sync. So far I have not encountered a sync error on the few test updates I've done on that tree.
I have just done a compact then another test change to the Ancestry data and a sync. This sync went OK but the media error message is still in place.
John
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John,
A GEDCOM will NOT have any Media files. So I am confused adout the "Media 2 not complete" error message.
Russ
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Hi Russ,
The GEDCOM file contains references to files such as:
2 FILE c:\Legacy\Pictures\\Barbara.jpg
I guess that FTM uses those to find media files and subsequently uploads them to Ancestry. I'm guessing also that it couldn't find two media files and thus provided the message - but it is hard to know as there is no further information available.
John
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John,
If Legacy generates a GEDCOM 5.5.1 file, then it might have Links to the media files on your hard drive. YOU would have to "tell" FTM2012 to Find Missing Media, however. Can you SEE those Media files that were in Legacy?
Russ
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Russ,
I am not sure if I fully understand your question but I'll have a go at responding.
The GEDCOM 5.5.1 file DOES have links to the media files on my hard drive.
FTM2012 found all except 25 of the files and I haven't told it to find those. Those files may have been renamed or moved.
Using the media tab I can see the media files that were in Legacy but I cannot be sure that I can see all of them. Many of them are linked and visible several times at the media tab and that would be because they are referenced from several events. The end result of that is that there are 1049 media files linked FTM as compared to the 320 media files in Legacy.
Looking at the Ancestry.com version there are 1020 media items and many items are shown multiple times. I've had a look at the file names and it seems that each duplicated file has a different file number. So then Ancestry has uploaded each of the duplicated files - no wonder the upload took so long and used up my data cap!
Looking at the numbers - there are 1020 media items at Ancestry.com of the1049 linked from FTM - 29 missing. The 1049 probably includes the 25 FTM couldn't locate leaving 4 unaccounted for. That 4 may include the 2 originally reported as a process error and perhaps if those 2 were each intended to be used twice the numbers add up. Additionally some of the test data changes may have included media - so, even with that possibility the numbers appear to add up reasonably well.
This is getting very complicated and I wonder if it is now time to leave it to Ancestry to respond to my original incident report?
Regards
John
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John,
First, you can't compare FTM2012 to your AMT for Media Files vs Gallery Images. Reason: FTM2012 will NOT upload any Ancestry.com media files, like Images.
FTM2012 to Legacy. That sounds interesting. Does Legacy have Citation files like FTM2012 does? That is Census Images for example.
Filenames in FTM2012 will NOT equate on AMT, as AMT Gallery Items use Caption's from FTM2012.
What are the 25 files that FTM2012 NOT find?
What were the 320 Media files in Legacy?
Do you see them in FTM2012? You should be able to compare filenames there.
I am wondering if the 25 "missing" files from Legacy have something to do with the 29 difference with FTM2012 and your AMT.
I think you have something going on between Legacy and FTM2012. FTM2012 and AMT should be OK. You need to find out why that major difference between FTM2012 and Legacy.
Russ
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Permalink Reply by Daphne Goodwin on
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Hi. My name is Daphne and I'm a newbie to FTM 2012. I just read about the sync problems and that you compact frequently? Am I suppose to compact my trees frequently? What is compacting? Is compacting backing up? I use BackUpMyTree.com.
Thanks,
Daphne Goodwin
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Daphne,
I have found that IF I compact my file, just before I do a Sync I have no issues with it.
Have you ever tested out a BackUpMyTree to see if you could recover your file?
Russ
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BackUpMyTree.com works perfectfully including restore which I have used twice. And it is free.
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Daphne,
I just wanted to make sure. Free is always a good thing. I could never get BackUpMyTree to work.
Russ
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