Would you like to always carry your genealogical records with you? All crammed inside a small gadget weighing a few ounces, how about your e-mail communications, checkbook data, family pictures, and much more? Would you like to quickly and simply copy data from a genealogy web site or visit to a local Family History Center near you onto a little data storage device you may carry in pocket or purse? Best of all, it is low cost and simple to accomplish.

One crucial habit you should conduct frequently is creating copies of your genealogy records. You have to guard the data kept after hours of typing information into your computer. Simply said, you have to create backups. This same tool can be used for backup storage. 

A modest device no more than a little pack of gum may hold vast amounts of data. Though you will find it under other names, such jump drive, flash drive, memory stick, or USB disk drive, it is a USB memory drive. For simplicity, let me refer to them as “flash drives.” These gadgets have memory chips, not disk drives as you may think. Your computer views a flash drive as a disk drive, though, when you plug one into its USB port. One major benefit is that these devices do not lose the data upon power loss. See one example by visiting https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/710dWgbaGuL._AC_SY879_.jpg. Every other brand seems to be comparable. 

I recently bought a 2 terabyte flashdrive. Indeed, that is about 2 trillion bytes, more than 2,860 times the capacity of a CD-ROM disk and 426 times the capacity of a DVD-ROM disk. On a little gadget smaller than a Bic lighter, I could fit 426 full-length movies. Although 2 terabyte flashdrives cost more than what I want to spend, smaller flash drives are also available today. One fact I discovered earlier is that high-capacity flash drives are actually cheaper than the lower capacity devices when calculating the cost-per-gigabyte of storage.

Ten or fifteen years ago, four gigabytes—or eight gigabytes—of storage on a device the size of a lipstick tube was unheard of. Still, these devices are somewhat common nowadays. Online searches turn up 4 gigabyte flash drives for $2 to $4. Prices become higher as you climb in storage capacity, up to my recent 2-terabyte flashdrive purchase for $135 (that is actually cheaper than the $4 gigabyte flashdrive when you calculate the price per gigabyte).

These little gadgets hook into the USB port present on all modern Windows, Linux, Chromebook, and Macintosh computers. You simply plug it into the computer, and it seems logically as another disk drive; no software is installed or questions to address. Copying files to and from the flash drive is as simple as copying files from or from a floppy disk or a hard drive. Actually, copying files to and from a flash drive usually is faster and far easier than using a CD-ROM disk. 

I use Linux, Macintosh, and Chromebook computers. I value the ability to copy a file to the flash drive into any one of my computers, remove it, then plug it into any other machine. I might then copy the file to the second machine. This is far, far simpler than trying to migrate files on CD-ROM or floppy disks. 

Although flash drives have been in use for some time, storage capacity of early flashdrives was limited and costs were not particularly appealing. With sixteen megabytes of data, my first flashdrives had about the storage of eleven floppy disks. (Floppy disks were still popular in those days.) Assuming the multimedia files are excluded, that most likely is adequate to hold copies of most genealogy databases. The 16-megabytes devices have been replaced by comparable devices with more storage. In fact, 16 megabyte flashdrives are difficult to find nowadays. Every new greater capacity USB drive release seems to cause a significant price drop in the devices of smaller capacity. 

With my new 2-terabyte flash drive, not only can I back up my genealogy database, but I also can store copies of my checkbook, income tax records, and all newsletters written in the past twenty-eight-plus years. Still, I am only using roughly one tenth of the storage space of this little gadget right now. It is fast, tiny, straightforward, and less expensive than most other backup systems I have used over the previous twenty years. For backup tape drives some years ago, I paid far more than this. Those tape drives were never terribly dependable and had limited capacity. USB flash drives I have used have been absolutely reliable. Not one of them has caused me any trouble. 

Flash drives are relatively robust as there are no moving components. You can freeze or drop these tools. They work better than the old Timex watches that claimed, “Takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin.” In this situation, nothing clicks. 

Most of these devices come with a key ring or some sort of adapter so that you can attach them to a key chain and keep them handy at all times. The easy access is also useful you want to copy a file from another computer when visiting a friend, a library, or a Family History Center. Not only is the USB flash drive much easier than copying to a floppy disk or to a CD-ROM disk, but flash drives are much easier to carry, too.

Flash drives work without any extra software on all the later versions of Macintosh, Windows, Chromebook, and most versions of Linux, laptop and desktop systems alike. 

The major downside of flashdrives is that they are not guaranteed to preserve data for ten or more years. In fact, the life expectancy of data stored on these devices is not published. However, I would never plan on using USB drives for long-term storage. They are intended for use for “work in progress” data. They will certainly store data for a few years. I would look elsewhere if I needed to store data for a longer period of time. 

You can also install a number of applications directly onto the flash drive instead of your hard drive. That way, you can have your applications with you when you visit and use someone else’s computer. Applications that work well on a flash drive include the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, and the OpenOffice.org office suite of programs (word processor, spreadsheet, etc.) All of them are available free of charge. You can learn more about Windows programs that run directly from a flashdrive at http://portableapps.com.

Macintosh programs also can run directly from a flashdrive. Go to https://portableapps.com/download/macos for more information. 

Here is a thought: computer users have been taught to always store a database on a computer’s hard drive and then to make long-term backup copies to removable media. Of course, these flash drives are the latest removable media. Keeping duplicate databases on two or more computers in sync is always a problem. If you own both a laptop and a desktop computer, you know what I mean. You update the information in one and then have to figure out how to copy the database to the other computer. There are several methods of copying files, but none of them seem very convenient.

I propose a different solution: keep your primary database on a USB flash drive! That is easy to do with these new, high-capacity flash drives. Install your favorite genealogy program on both computers and, in each case, specify that the database is stored on the logical drive assigned to your flash drive. 

To use either computer, simply plug the flash drive into the computer’s USB connector. Load the genealogy program and go. Update the data, run reports, or do whatever else you normally do. When finished, exit the program, remove the USB flash drive, and put it into your pocket or purse. You can then use it later on the other computer. 

Of course, you will want to make backups, as always. In the past, you kept the database on the hard drive and made backups to removable devices. In this case, I propose the opposite: keep the primary database on the removable flash drive, and make backups to each computer’s hard drive. The backups guarantee the safety of your data in the case of hardware problems, software problems, human error, or even a lost flash drive.

As prices drop on removable media, we need to re-think our procedures.

Now, go back up your genealogy data!