Sadly, No Backup Plan is Foolproof

Last Thursday night, I experienced a catastrophic failure with FTM2019. Even though I diligently back up (auto and manually), I was unable to sync to Ancestry even after restoring from backup (2 different backups from 2 different days as a matter of fact). Live Chat didn't even look for the issue, as soon as I told them restoring didn't work, they said I either had to upload my tree back to Ancestry, or download a new copy to FTM. Each has drawbacks. It was a a rough couple days deciding. 1/2 of my media files don't come down from Ancestry. I DO have backups of all the media so that's fine. But I also have a small amount of private notes and private facts, and FTM currently doesn't have an easy way to find these.

If I re-uploaded to Ancestry, I'd have had to re-invite some family to my new tree, relink all my DNA matches, and I'd be uploading a ton of media items eventually showing up for other users as those pesky multiple images of the same item, something I don't enjoy in my own research,  I didn't really want to go this route.

I did download a new copy of my tree from Ancestry to FTM, after applying my customizations for the tree, I started manually relinking, renaming, and recategorizing all the media files, including those not downloaded. (These extras are primarily screenshots of text only records, and additional pages of census records or draft cards when only the main image downloads.) I spent about 16 hours on it Friday and Saturday and was barely 5% of the way done. I started rethinking my plan. There was no way I'd finish any time soon, and my OCD dictates I've have had to work on it exclusively until finished. It wasn't practical given most of what I "lost" wasn't tremendously important and I really want to continue moving my tree forward.

I finally made the difficult decision not to do all the reattaching. I decided a tolerable amount of non-critical data loss was acceptable for me. Of course, I've saved all the media (and a copy of the tree) in case I want to refer to it. But after much consideration, the reality is most people see my online tree anyway. My male offspring has no real interest in genealogy (unless I happen to stumble on something interesting, then he'll listen for a few minutes). Most of my work will be preserved online. I doubt anything I have private would ever be found by anyone and there wasn't very much of it.

So I scrapped the reattaching project, redownloaded another fresh copy of my tree, and I'm moving on! I do have color coding and some filters set up in my software, so I can reference people easily and track where I am in my research, but for the most part (probably 95%), my sync will be down from Ancestry only from here on in. FTM is now a true mirror tree. (If this happens again, it won't be any big deal). I won't rename my media anymore (beyond the titles on Ancestry photos). I won't take all the screenshots or index only data. I won't categorize my media (I already do it on Ancestry anyway). And since I already transcribe and save everything in my Ancestry citations, I'm not really losing a whole lot (just a little). 

It was disheartening the restore didn't work...especially since I try so hard to make sure I have backups of backups. I suspect somehow the trees became unlinked, explaining why there were no options to restore. I've no clue how it happened (it certainly wasn't intentional and I don't recall seeing any pop-up confirming such an action), but anytime 2 different programs try to communicate, there are bound to be glitches from time to time - especially with all the changes Ancestry's been making. Everything happens for a reason. Yes, I felt (and still sort of feel) like the world stopped spinning briefly. But I'm trying to be optimistic and forge ahead. In a few days it'll be nothing more than a memory, like nothing ever happened. I'm back to researching (albeit adjusting to not doing all the double documentation, improving my speed thru hints slightly), so all is well with my genealogy world.